Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Here's a major revelation for all of you.

I'm a smart guy.

I have proof of that too, because I was one of those people who waste . . . er . .

spent last Sunday evening taking part in Test the Nation, the national IQ test that was on CBC.

No, I didn't get a perfect score of 60 correct answers, and that's probably a good thing. Can you imagine how insufferable I'd be if I were that smart? Just think

how full of myself I already am.

But I did do quite well, although I intend to keep

score to myself for a number of reasons, including

the fact that I don't like

be too blatant when it comes to bragging. I'm the kind of person who likes to

a little subtle when it comes to patting myself on

back.

Besides, if I stated what

got, a lot of people would probably not believe me, so what's the point?

I might have done better,

I recall I was tired, and

little preoccupied. Mondays and Tuesdays are

two busiest days of the week for me at work. I'm always a little tense Sunday nights, thinking about what's to come, thus probably not at my best.

The truth is I have always done rather well on these tests, so I didn't need two hours of jazzed-up glitz on a Sunday night to tell me what I already knew.

Some parts, of course, saw better scores than others. I did very well on the language section. I guess that should be expected of me, considering the line of work in which I'm in, but these were really the parts of the test I enjoyed the least. There are people who know I write for a living who are surprised by the fact that I hate word games. A rousing game of euchre, or even Monopoly, will hold my attention a lot longer than Scrabble. I'll do a Sudoku or Kakuro at the drop of a hat, but I think I was still in elementary school the last time I started a crossword puzzle. Different things amuse different minds.

Math problems have always entertained me, so it's not too surprising (to me at least) that I did very well in that section of last Sunday's test (okay, 12 out of 12).

I've always enjoyed logic problems, so I was a little disappointed in my score in that section.

I also thought there was a little dirty pool played on the part of the people running the test. Those of you who actually took it will of course recall we were told there would be practice questions at the start of each section. But the visual memory part opened with some video of two little children at dinner, and I remember being led to believe it was down time, as far as the brain gymnastics were concerned. I'll bet there were many people who left the room to answer calls of nature, or deal with other concerns. Then, we were suddenly told that we were being quizzed on the little flick. The next four questions were based on it.

I was angry, and my wife was angry too. I would have been angrier, had I not correctly answered all four questions.

I did tell you I was a smart guy.

An exercise such as this has its amusing and fun aspects, although I suspect it prompted a lot of country wide frustration and consternation. I know, because I saw an example of such at the other end of the sofa on which I was sitting.

"I don't know why I'm putting myself through this," Beth indignantly exclaimed at one point. "I don't need this."

As things turned out, Beth's score was very respectable, although this was one of those few times in my domestic situation in which the male ego won one.

But that still leaves open the question of just how useful are these quizzes and tests. Most of us were subjected to them when we were kids, as some people tried to figure out what our IQs were. Yet I'm at a loss to see any particular use that information was put to. In school, I was surrounded by kids who were smart, answered all the questions right and naturally hung around the rarified circles, at least as far as academics were concerned. And there were others whose understanding of involved math consisted of them grasping that seven is greater than six. I, and most of my other classmates, were clumped in the mushy middle, yet the whole gang of us were in the same class, subject to the same rules, with the same homework assignments and expected to write the same exams. Some of us just received more impressive report cards at the end of term.

And those good marks didn't necessarily mean success in later life. We've all heard stories (if we didn't actually see cases) of kids who goofed off in school, yet demonstrated an uncanny ability to turn a buck later on. And I know at least one person who graduated high school as an Ontario Scholar, but who was on welfare last I heard, and there was little in the way of expectation that that person would ever get off it.

Granted, there are a lot of factors in individual secrets of success, with brains and marks just being part of a long list. Adverse living situations can either be inhibiting or motivating, or both. My friend on welfare, for example, grew up in a domestic version of a hellhole, and had all kinds of trouble trying to get over it.

And if we're going to discuss success, then we have to define it, and each of us has a different definition. I have friends who are extremely intellectual and well-read, who can speak with authority on a variety of topics and can verbally defend their positions with confidence, yet they are content to spend their work hours doing what many would consider manual labour. But it's their choice, is it not? One of these friends stated very bluntly once that it's his life and he's living it as he chooses. Good for him. My wife's uncle once told me about the value of having a job that you enjoy, and the cases of which he had heard of people leaving occupations they enjoyed for the prospect of bigger pay cheques, and found themselves enduring heart attacks, sometimes fatal ones, just a couple of years later.

So scoring well on an IQ test, to my mind at least, offers very little, outside of bragging rights.

As proof of that, I offer the words you have just read.

You do realize I would have thought of something else to write a column about if I had wiped out on last Sunday's test.