Chris Holmes Online

When I finished college I thought I had pretty much taken my last test. And thank goodness, because after several years of school I was really tired and burned out on the whole acedemic lifecycle: attend lecture, do homework, study, test, rinse & repeat. Doing my work in the real world – coding, testing, and designing software systems – is much more intellectually challenging, dynamic and interesting. It’s just flat out more fun. I learn more every day doing this line of work than I ever did in a semester of school (not to say school wasn’t valuable – it was – but at times I felt like we spent way too much time on things that weren’t really important).

But two Sundays ago I found myself in a classroom on the 3rd floor of an engineering building at Gonzaga University. And for the first time in my life I was actually excited to take a test; I was actually looking forward to it.

The test was the Mensa admission test.

The start of this journey dates back, oddly enough, to Donald Trump’s television show, The Apprentice. Tarek Saab was one of the contestants, and when he introduced himself to Trump and the other contestants he added, “I’m also a member of Mensa.” That got me interested. I’d heard of Mensa, but only vaguely knew what it was. So I checked it out online, and it turns out it’s a society – a club if you will – for folks whose IQ’s fall into the top 2%. I thought that was interesting, because I value intelligence a lot. Like honor and trust, it’s something I think is pretty important.

A few months later I stumbled across an online IQ test and scored pretty well. But I knew a lot of online tests are bogus and report inflated results. Their goal is to get you to spend money on some other bogus test, or to earn ad revenue through clicks. So I didn’t consider it an accurate borometer – but it did prod me to take further action. The next step was to order the Mensa Home test. The results were encouraging, so I opted to try for the real thing.

Yesterday the results were in, and I made the cut.

I post this mostly for friends and family, who had no idea I was doing this. Mostly, this is just my thanks to my mom and dad, who always encouraged me to think. Some parents encourage their kids to be superstar atheletes. Others encourage a particular profession, like doctor or lawyer. My parents encouraged me to think creatively in general, and to focus on the things that interested me.

Some people, like Tarek Saab, are wunderkinds; smart from birth. Tarek, it says in the Wiki, was testing at the collegiate level at grade seven. That wasn’t me. I did O.K. in school, but I was no valedictorian. Scholorships did not reign down on me upon graduation, and even college was tough (although I did choose Computer Science, which is not exactly basket weaving).

Apparently, like a wine or ale, my intelligence required aging. And that aging process happened because my parents encouraged me to think, to use my brain to figure things out, and to be curious about subjects I found interesting. They made it ok to be smart.

And I think that’s pretty cool.