OK, I know, I’m slipping, shut up. Anyway, multiple things to post about, since when they occured I promptly didn’t post about them. So I’ll post a few of entries on consecutive days to cover the various things I should have said but didn’t. Therefore, without further ado, I present … MENSA. Ado (dammit).
So the Mensa test, that happened on Saturday. Had it not been for the fact that after the test I went and got some liquid chalk (so the grippers don’t slip), it would have been a complete waste of a day. Yes, the test went THAT badly. There were actually two tests, a “culture fair” test and the “Cattell III B”. I’ll talk about the Cattell III B first, though it was actually the second test.
In fact, it wasn’t so much of an IQ test as it was an an English paper, the first four sections (out of six) were all about words, which word “most closely means the same as,” or, “is the opposite of,” etc. The fifth section was fitting words into a paragraph to make the most sense, however, the paragraphs were … bizarre to say the least. The final section involved mainly English also, with one maths question (to which I’m sure that ALL of the possible answers were wrong, having worked out the actual answer after the test) and a spectacularly ridiculous question which I will pose to you now.
A man is very depressed because he has lost all of his money, so he goes to a bridge over a river to drown himself, however, he does not commit suicide, why?
- He was ill.
- Someone talked him out of it.
- He discovered that he had not lost all his money.
How the f’. So you see, whoever wrote this was obviously on something mind altering. There was actually a fourth answer to that question, I can’t remember what right now, but it was equally … well there’s no word for it, but that’s what it was.
The first test, the culture fair test, was conducted at warp speed, that is to say, many questions, chokingly short time limit. To say the least this was contrary to what I was expecting, because I had done some preparing for this test, during which I read, Some readers might wonder what use there is in giving the test under untimed conditions. Indeed, this use is completely experimental at the moment and under no circumstances should it be followed when a conventional IQ is desired.
The questions themselves were not particularly taxing, given time to actually consider them, however when you have two A4 pages to run through in THREE MINUTES, there’s little time for any contemplation of the answers.
To sum up then, I very much doubt that I’ll be getting a congratulatory letter from Mensa any time soon, perhaps one along the lines of, “Never mind, try again next year.”
“Your plan simply doesn’t hold water, in fact it repels water, like a … like a duck with a machine gun.”
Well, as for that question, I’d say he couldn’t drown because he’d probably be dead before he had the chance to drown. Jumping off a bridge can be quite hazardous to your health…
That time limit sounds ridiculous! I doubt I’d do very good on it…
Anyway, I hope you get some good news. 😉
Well it says, “he does not commit suicide, why?” If he jumped off the bridge and died on impact with the water, that would still be suicide.
Yeah, the time limit was ridiculous, but it was like that for the whole of the culture fair test, the time constraint was less of a problem for the Cattell III B, though I was still very much aware of it.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the Mensa test, was not the time limit as such but the fact that after every section we had to stop, and wait for the person who was timing the test to say go again, very frustrating indeed.