“Today,” my psychology professor began, “we’re gonna talk about the psychology of intelligence: what it means, what it doesn’t mean, the history of the psychology of intelligence, and how intelligence is handled now…”

“Seems interesting…” I boredly thought to myself as I scribbled down a header for that day’s notes. 

“Intelligence is often viewed as something of a virtue…” my professor continued, “The more intelligent you are, the better, right? Well… not exactly…”

“Yeah… I know all of that…” I thought to myself as I wrote, “There are pros and cons to intelligence like everything else.”

Funnily enough, aside from some obscure facts about language and how language on its own separates humans from the other animals, everything my professor was saying that morning were things I’d heard before. I knew about the Dunning-Kreuger effect, and the debunked myth that smarter people tend to be more mentally ill than others, and that exercise was an important component to learning and problem-solving. Simple stuff like that. 

At some point in the class, the professor drew a bell-curve diagram on the board to illustrate IQ test scores and what percentage of people fall into each category (AKA how many people, on average, fall into each standard deviation on the graph). At the far end of the IQ spectrum, the professor explained that only about 2% of the world’s population had an IQ at 130 or above. 

Then she asked, “Anyone here know what it means to be labeled twice-exceptional?”

Meekly, I began raising my hand as I glanced around the room. Everyone just stared ahead at the professor, clueless, so I quickly put my hand down to avoid being called out. I mean… I knew what it meant to be labeled twice-exceptional, because I had been labeled twice-exceptional in K-12, but I wasn’t about to admit that to the class. Or, frankly, to the professor. 

“Well, twice-exceptional is an interesting term.” the professor said, “It’s often given to kids with ADHD and/or Autism in school, as well as kids who may have some sort of physical disability that prevents them from succeeding in a typical school environment. However, in order to be diagnosed- for lack of a better term- as twice-exceptional, students typically have to go to a psychologist and undergo an IQ test. Not only that, but they have to have a genius-level IQ, which is around 130 or above. In other words, twice-exceptional students are students who struggle to get good grades at school for reasons beyond their control, but are otherwise incredibly gifted…”

“Oh fuck… that’s me!” I thought as I stared down at my notes. 

To be honest, I can’t remember what was said for the last fifteen minutes of the lecture, because I was in the midst of an existential crisis of sorts. I knew all about what it meant to be twice-exceptional, but hearing it come from the mouth of my professor hit me pretty hard, in the same way it hit too close to home when my high school biology teacher mentioned Cystic Fibrosis in a lesson about genetics. 

In a way, I felt completely exposed, even though nobody saw me raise my hand two inches above the desk before I quickly put it down. I felt… disturbed… almost. Hearing my professor describe my K-12 experience as a twice-exceptional student so perfectly freaked me out. Simply put, it was a profoundly uncomfortable experience, and I drove home in almost stunned silence.

It took me a few days to come up with a few reasons for why I felt the way that I did in class, when the prof was talking about intelligence and, more specifically, twice-exceptional students like myself. 

Perhaps, it was because I’ve always felt like an idiot; completely unworthy of the “twice exceptional” title, for lack of better words. Even today, while I logically understand that I’m not stupid, I still often feel like a complete fucking idiot, especially since I don’t really fit into the professional, classy culture of academia. 

However, more likely, I probably feel stupid today, because I was told I was stupid by multiple teachers, across multiple grades and schools, who were frustrated by my learning struggles when I was a little girl. 

Their insistence that I belonged in the special education classroom was what prompted my parents to get my IQ tested in the first place, multiple times. And each time I met with a psychologist and basically did puzzles for two hours, I ended up “testing out of” special ed, given the label “twice-exceptional”, and basically left in the “normal kid” classroom with very little support. All while teachers continued to openly express their puzzled frustration with me… sometimes even bullying me for struggling for reasons far beyond my control.  

Long story short, school really did a number on my mental and physical health. To this day, whether or not I like to admit it, those experiences weigh down on my shoulders. But, since the fall of 2021, I’ve been in college, successfully filling knowledge gaps left unfilled by my K-12 education, and finding out what it feels like to live a normal life as an average twenty-something-year-old. 

Of course, I’ll never be completely normal or average (even though, some nights I still lay awake, pondering what things would’ve been like had I not been born a genetic fuck-up to a profoundly dysfunctional family). I’ll always be a bit… eccentric and introverted… to put it nicely. I’ll probably always be haunted by existentialism and a hint of survivor’s guilt, too. For as long as I’ll live, I’ll probably also struggle with the notion that I really shouldn’t be here, as in I shouldn’t be alive… at least, statistically speaking. 

But, none of those things are particularly bad or destructive. 

It’s probably a good thing I’m not exactly normal. Had I been born normal, I would’ve probably done a lot of stupid shit as a young kid and teenager, and wouldn’t have taken college nearly as seriously as I am now. 

Being a borderline-hermit isn’t a bad thing either. In fact, it’s probably a good thing that I enjoy my own company way more than I enjoy groups of more than a few people. It keeps me outta trouble, anyway. 

And, because of my experiences with illness and death, I think I appreciate the little things in life far more than I would’ve had I made it to my twenties unscathed by those things. I mean… just this morning, I was mesmerized by the blaze orange sunrise against grey-blue clouds and a salmon-colored sky. As I was scraping frost off the windshield of my Xterra, a Blue Jay fluttered up into my blue spruce and yelped at me. Both things filled me with a sense of awe and wonder; a feeling I’ll never get tired of.  

In class, despite it being math, I’ve reframed my way of thinking about math so it’s less about my past, and more about the fact that math can literally tell us how God made the world. Why wouldn’t I want to learn it, if math can tell me how the world works and answer all of my dumb “how does X actually happen” questions about it? Plus, if I wanted to, I could learn how to use math to build cool shit, such as new rocksliders and a skidplate for my Xterra! 

Plus, suffering in life has made it easier for me to suffer with my studies. After all, math is hard, and I were any less resilient than I am now, I would’ve quit trying to figure it out long before I got my highschool diploma. Yet, here I am today, willingly putting myself through classes in college that previously seemed completely unreachable to me, and successfully learning the material by sticking with it even when it feels damn near impossible to understand (and by sticking with it, I mean I’ll put everything away if I remain stumped on a math problem for more than a few minutes, go and do something physical and mundane for a few minutes, then come back to the material with fresh eyes and try it again till I get it). 

Consequently, I am beginning to understand how math works. Is it my favorite thing to do these days? Definitely not! But, because I’ve changed my view of math from “I’m far too stupid to figure it out because my teachers told me so” to “This shit is the key to understanding how the world works, therefore I really ought to learn it at as deep of a level as I’m willing to go”, math’s no longer something that feels impossible for me to learn. That, in itself, drives me to keep learning math… and science, and writing, and art, and everything else that can possibly be learned! 

To be continued…