"Intelligence"

It's kind of striking that I haven't written this post, even though, at some level, I've been thinking about it, on and off, for decades. If all goes according to plan, this will be about how I ended up with a reputation for academic giftedness, the extent to which I feel I am gifted, and connections to general thoughts on intelligence. Bear with me -- those who know me probably don't anticipate a self-aggrandizing ego fest, but those less familiar might be leery of reading further.

It's taken me a while to articulate and accept, but I think I can say that I'm definitely above average in certain areas. I have, or had, an above-average memory for material I've read, whether technical or literary in nature. I have or had an above-average ability to make connections in seemingly disparate fields. I have an above-average ability to solve mathematical problems.

But I can't be any more specific than that. The quantitative data I have is all outdated, and perhaps problematic. I tested in the 99th percentile in most, and sometimes all, standardized test subjects in K-12 education.

I took a single IQ test in 7th or 8th grade--I couldn't tell you what grade it was, but I can tell you I badly mangled the spelling of luciferous and reversed a pattern I was supposed to construct with red and white blocks, which in retrospect might've indicated some sort of visual dyslexia. I got a 140, which is gifted, but not quite genius level. I got a 1580 on my SATs, which sounds horrible, until you realize that, under that system, a 1600 was a perfect score.

Note that these measures aren't stable over time, are each problematic in their own way, and, obviously, thus far, haven't translated into financial success or personal happiness.

I had some native advantages growing up. I was middle-class in a mostly low-income school community. Unlike many of my kindergarten classmates, I had English as the primary language spoken at home. Additionally -- and precisely how or why this is remains a bit of a puzzle -- I came into kindergarten able to read and count at least to 100. Also, even though I'd say that my mom is not at all academically inclined and of average intelligence, she was an elementary school teacher, and read to me as a child. She also facilitated a culture of reading by providing me with plenty of children's books.

I can't emphasize this enough -- these were substantial advantages at my elementary school, sufficient to identify me early on as a "gifted" student. I'm not sure how unusual any of this is now -- I think many, many children come in knowing more than I did. But it set me apart then, which research has shown can be maintained and extended throughout K-12 education.

Some of the path was shaped by external expectation and reputation. In kindergarten, I had my own reading group in kindergarten, which, being the TV child of the '80s that I was, I promptly named the "Scrooge McDuck reading group". In 6th grade, I was sufficiently advanced in math to be permitted to play Amazon Trail in the back of the classroom while everyone else did math lessons. Most critically, I had a 4th grade teacher that pushed me to do more advanced work in both math, writing, and public speaking, even over my mother's objections.

Notably, my mom did not put pressure on me. She even laughed the time I brought home a "C" on a 6th grade math test. I think she was relieved her child was normal, like her, even if it didn't last.

A lot of the push was internal. I deliberately forced myself to max out reading hours during reading competitions in elementary school. In a high school English class, I wrote essays that regularly exceeded the page limit by a factor of 3. I wish my motivations were more pure, but I genuinely relished the attention, even as I was blind to how isolating it was.

I think I did well in school, in part, because I depended tremendously on the approval of teachers for my self-esteem. As I've written elsewhere, my father is bipolar, and even though I didn't live with him after the age of 3, I saw him regularly, and had enough negative experiences that I'm still dealing with it. I'm also an only child. So I wanted to do well, which ended up distinguishing me from, say, people I met in high school who were brighter and more articulate, but very lazy, or resentful of the pushing they got from their parents, or from even more chaotic homes.

For these reasons, it's difficult for me to accept that I'm somehow innately different. Maybe I just had lots of advantages. Perhaps I deserve some credit for taking advantage of certain opportunities, or making certain choices with time. (I was a quick reader, but it still took a lot of time to read my US history book twice, and I did so just because I was genuinely interested.) But I also recognize that I did have time--I didn't have to work during high school. I didn't date. I did some sports, but not a massive amount. I had time to waste on video games. I spent time on Academic Decathlon, which, in retrospect, wasn't as structured as it could've been, but it did give me the opportunity to get a bit more well-rounded with some self-taught instruction in art history, psychology, music history, economics, and other fields.

But that could just be my liberal, egalitarian philosophy talking. Maybe I do have some genetic advantages. Maybe my application early on translated into increased abilities that, while not necessarily genetic, are more or less permanent.

So, after nearly 30 years of life, if someone were to ask me, "Hey Ryan. Just how smart are you?", I couldn't reply with anything other than "above average".

Because I was. Not just in high school, but college. I went to school with a lot of really, really bright people. No von Neumann savants, but some people who must've had some genetic and cultural advantages AND took advantage of them. I was probably an average to above-average physicist my year, though I looked better on paper (GPA-wise) thanks to good grades in my history courses.

I was also very, very lucky that I made a conscious choice the first semester of college. The first semester at Harvey Mudd College is pass-fail-- there are no letter grades, only "high pass", "pass", and "fail". Some used this as an opportunity to get drunk. I personally felt fear -- people were talking about double-majoring, placing in advanced math and physics classes, and I had tested just below the cutoff to be placed in the incrementally advanced introductory physics course.

Simultaneously, I didn't assume I couldn't catch up. Maybe it was irrational, or prideful. But it worked. I studied my ass off, high-passed a few of my classes (enough to get the "get a life" letter), and generally did well until I hit junior year physics (the triumvirate of statistical mechanics, theoretical mechanics, and PDEs). Even as my grades started to drop off, I still graduated with a GPA somewhat above a 3.7, which is a very respectable grade at HMC.

Grad school was weird. I got the NSF based on a massive amount of work put into the application, and, possibly, because of some things I did in undergrad that let me characterize myself as someone who might serve the country in a science policy position in a few decades. But I was out of my depth, and, honestly, didn't care enough, or believe in myself enough, to keep from drowning. And I've paid various consequences for putting all my emotional eggs in that academic basket.

But back to the positive. In many ways I got very lucky. But I guess I am a bit different. I was with some of the brightest students in the country, and if I didn't hold my own, I did better than I might have reasonably expected.

Looking back, my best friend in high school worked a lot harder than I did. I don't know if it was because he cared more, or if it was because he had to. It did get him a slightly higher GPA (literally, 0.01). And while I paid for the lack of discipline and organization later, I got away with it for a surprisingly long period of time.

And yet, because I went to school with such smart people, my benchmark is a bit skewed, and I can't report anything stronger than "above average". It's taken me a while to say even that. I considered myself average or below average for chunks of college, and most of graduate school. If it's a surprise to you, then you see things that I didn't, and, to this day, still don't.

There are different models for intelligence, and different types of intelligence. I have a passing familiarity with some, but that's partly not the point here. There's a genetic component, and there's an environmental component.

Generally, I believe that the vast majority of us operate far below our genetic potential, and so it's a matter of improving the environment, customized to our history and our dispositions, to make us smarter. Don't drink so much. Exercise more. Eat more healthily. Do hard thinking during certain periods of the day. Sleep better, if not more. And so on -- things that are probably readily obvious, but we make excuses and cut deals with ourselves, with the end result being that we sell ourselves short.

There are other, more philosophical considerations. Why should we assume that knowledge and intelligence are the things that should be maximized for a good life? For a number of reasons, I believed (and a part of me still believes) that my intelligence, however humbly different, is the source of my unhappiness. I've done a decent job of smothering and suppressing it over the last few years through poor choices of time and action, ranging from Youtube videos to video games to chronic unemployment and borderline paranoia. I am, slowly, slowly, coming to accept that it's the same bullshit stereotype of the "mad genius" that makes me try this sort of cure.

There are smart people who are actually quite happy, stable, and successful, and serve as excellent counterexamples for the stereotype (which, by the way, is not really well supported by research). But one can lead a perfectly happy and meaningful life -- even a heroic one -- and be of far, far below average intelligence. Think of anyone you know, and love, with Down's Syndrome.

More mundanely, I did my best to undermine anything remotely resembling pride at my accomplishments, at least in K-12. Bright students with enough wits to be aware of their social surroundings know that a know-it-all can survive only by downplaying his or her intelligence (with it often being worse for women). I can only thank my excellent classmates and teachers for why I was never, ever bullied. Add to that some misguided Japanese false humility, and you had me, basically afraid to breathe in the same room as anyone else, less I affect their oxygen intake.

So yeah, I had, and still have, trouble accepting I'm gifted, or more intelligent than average, even though there is some evidence that I might be. And I don't even know what that precisely means.

What's the point of this post? I'm not sure. It's too long already, so I might cover some additional thoughts on intelligence in another one. But I think some parents have been quietly, or not so quietly, curious how I did so well academically. (We collectively are ignoring the whole dropping-out-of-grad-school-and-becoming-an-emotional-financial-social-existential-disaster component because it's inconvenient and uglies up the narrative.) So this is my retrospective read on how I achieved "success":

• I had some early advantages, which translated into both expectations and opportunities.
• I had access to books and read a lot as a child.
• I spent a lot of time alone as a child.
• I wanted to do well, perhaps to an unhealthy degree.
• I did not receive any pressure, or even guidance, from my mother, or really anyone else in my family.
• I went to a good college that challenged me to rise to a higher standard, and had just enough self-confidence at the time to rise to the occasion (as opposed to withdraw or crash from the system).
• I didn't have to worry about mundane things like money, or food, or personal safety (apart from a very few episodes with my dad) growing up. My Maslow's hierarchy of needs had a solid base, even if, in retrospect, I neglected the middle.
• I *may* have some biological advantages.

I rank the biological component last, for obvious reasons.

If anyone's truly interested, I can more formally write up what parents could do differently to improve their child's intellectual development, though in my experience, most parents just aren't up to giving up enough control to let their kid own their successes and failures, while providing structure for those less "gifted" or more confused. But that's that, for now.

Lawyer Humor

A conversation I had with a church patriarch/lawyer and his lawyer daughter.

Dad lawyer: So when are you going to do your stand-up routine?

Me: When are you going to do yours?

Dad lawyer: My efforts to convey humor in the courtroom have not been well received. The one time I did, the judge said, "Humor does not flow to the bench. Humor flows from it."

Me: I would have responded that something else typically flows from the bench.

Daughter lawyer: That's a given.

'Twas the Night Before Cliffmas

'Twas the night before Cliffmas, when all through the House
Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse.
The committees, hamstrung by the dimwits' despair,
In hope that St. Norquist wouldn't be there.

Cantor and Price nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Speakership danced in their heads.
Obama with Blackberry, and Reid with his trap
Had just settled their brains for this partisan crap.

When out in the markets there arose such a clatter,
Traders sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the terminal those trades like a flash,
Tore open the pensions and burned up our cash.

Lobbyists on the breast of the Washington ho
Gave the lusty noon quickie to citizens below.
When, what to their wandering eyes should appear,
But a sleigh of hand, and eight shifty financiers.

With a little old driver, so frothy and sick
I knew in a moment it must be that prick.
More rapid than vultures his backers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.

Now Adelson! Now Scaife! Now Perry! Now Koch!
Now Perenchio! Now Rowling! Now Griffin! Now Loeb!
To the top of the donors! With unmitigated gall!
Now go to hell! Go to hell! Go to hell all!

As vomit flows before the pissed drunk heaves dry,
When they meet with an obstacle, they mount an ad buy.
So up to the House top the donors they flew,
With the sleigh full of pledges, and St. Norquist too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on Fox news
The prancing and pawing of each of those spews.
As I threw up my lunch, and was turning around,
Down the Beltway St. Norquist came with much sound.

He was dressed all in fire, from his head to the sod
And his sickle all crusted by moderate blood.
A bundle of pledges he had flung on his back
And he looked like a dickhead, and spoke through his crack.

His eyes how they frowned! his donors how scary!
His cheeks were like Brillo, his body like (old) Drew Carey!
His mad little mouth was drawn with some words
And the spittle of his chin was as white as bird turds.

The stump of a dogma he held tight in his teeth
And the smoke it encircled policy like a wreath.
He had a mad face and a hatred of babies
And shook when he raged, like a raccoon with rabies.

He was chubby and plump, a right prickish old git
And I cried when I saw him, and my pants did I shit.
A twitch of his eye and a twist of some heads
Soon gave me to know all had much to dread.

He spoke tons of words--would his plan work?
And filled all the op-eds, and threw bombs like a jerk.
And laying his knives aside the country's throat
And giving a nod, on Sunday shows to gloat!

He sprang to his perch, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the screeching Nazgul.
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Cliffmas to the poor, and to all, FUCK YOU, I'M RIGHT!"

My grandpa, and writing

It's holiday season. Initially I was going to write about my grandpa, but it may turn into a longer piece about writing.

I've written about my grandfather before. Here's a post about pictures of him, describing both his love of haiku and his arrest during WWII. Here's a more detailed post about his haiku group. This is a long post about anti-immigration laws in California, with a bit about how my grandpa got around the property ownership restriction. (He mail-ordered a bride from Japan with American citizenship.) I also told the brief story about how I ended up with a golf hole in his backyard.

I surprised myself when I realized how much I had written about him. But I shouldn't be surprised; he was probably the man I spent the most time with in my life. He helped raise me and, for better or worse--but mostly for better--, a lot of who I am was shaped by him.

In a lot of ways, I saw the best of him. As a father who ran a farm, he was pretty much a dictator. Even the older cousins told stories about strictness on trips to Disneyland, or getting yelled at, or other things that cowed everyone else into submission.

But I am the youngest grandchild, the only son of his youngest daughter. So I was special. I could do things with both the naivete of a child and the fearlessness of one who is coddled, like scold him for coming home late. By the time I arrived, I was no longer a chrysanthemum farmer, but a comfortable owner (and groundskeeper) of a small trailer park. He wasn't rich, but he was pretty well off -- a member of the 5%, let's say. The trailer park was for senior citizens only, and he kept rent comparatively low.

So he had plenty of time, and a decent amount of money. He drove a Cadillac, and would take me to Chinatown (for haircuts) and to desert trips with his Haiku group. We'd go to McDonalds a lot. Whenever he went to Denny's, he'd always order his steak well done. And when we went to a seafood restaurant in Balboa, he'd always, always order Crab Louie.

He was someone of meticulous patterns. He folded his toilet paper into fourths before using it. (I know this because the flush on one of the toilets was not as strong as it could've been.) His wife would always make him breakfast the night before, leaving it out for him--including pouring the milk into the Cap'n Crunch. Yes, this was left out in the kitchen overnight. It's a testament to pasteurization, or modern paranoia, that he was actually quite healthy and lived until he was 91. When he rolled quarters, he'd stack them five each.

Thanks to the memory of youth, he lived in what will always be the most beautiful house I'll ever see.

It had a large backyard, with dichondra grass meticulously weeded-- he would be on his hands and kness, tweezing away weeds, even as he'd let me hack away with a tiny 4-iron. There were tiger lilies, and bamboo, and a rock path. He had kumquat and persimmon trees. And, of course, he had camelias, which, because of their prevalence in his backyard, I had always assumed were common, dusty, and ugly. (Only later would I learn they hold a special place in Japanese culture.)

He also had rice paper shoji doors to the tea room -- there was a dedicated tea room, with bamboo mats, that my grandmother used for tea ceremony. It also contained the butsudan, or the Buddhist shrine. As a kid, I'd stick my finger through those nice rice paper rectangles, which Grandma would dutifully repair with scotch tape.


He had these very nice scrolls of poetry and art in his house. Once, while watching either Card Shark or The Price is Right, they flashed a number on the screen. I must've really, really wanted to remember it for some reason. So I wrote it directly on the scroll. I might've gotten spanked then. That scroll got beat up quite a bit; it was near the television, where I'd lie down on a set of pillows.

I still have that scroll; it means more to me in its tattered state than anything else.

If someone knows what this blue writing says, please let me know.

The writing--I think he lived for writing. He used the pen name Hakuhanshi; to my shame, I don't know what it means.

He would always write at his old, reddish/brownish/black wooden desk, sticky and bumpy after years of disuse and not enough varnish. The lamp on it must've been at least 30 years old -- one of the lamps you see in the movies that take place in the 1940s on the desks of accountants or police officers. His haiku was written on very thin, crinkly paper. There was a red circle or dot, indicating the start of a line, I guess, and then his neat penstrokes. I still have his fountain pen -- it's a Parker, silver-plated, and it doesn't leak unless you let it. He wasn't a pen fetishist, and didn't really care about keeping them tidy. I was surprised, and a bit regretful, how clean it got with some polish.

I copied him a lot. Once, I had gotten it in my head to sit at his desk and write, just like Grandpa. I proceeded to scribble all over his very neatly written haiku, prepared for mailing to a journal in Japan. I don't remember this, but apparently there was a loud "haaaa!", and I froze, sitting on his chair, with a big crocodile tear starting to come down. (I might've gotten spanked that time -- for whatever reason, I think I got spanked precisely twice by him... probably far less than I deserved.)

We learned "haiku" in first grade. It was basic stuff -- you look at a picture and count syllables. Real haiku has a lot more rules. But he was still immensely proud of whatever I had written.

He kept a scrapbook of my writings. When I wrote my imaginary newspaper, he kept it. I think I had an article about why Orchie [sic] Bunker was so angry (Archie Bunker of All in the Family). I also wrote a notice about his chainsaw accident, where he nicked a vein in his hand and had to drive to the hospital, a notice that I posted on a wooden stick in the middle of the backyard.

As stated in other posts, I'd generally be there when he had his monthly haiku group meeting. They'd talk, recite poems, and occasionally be forced to listen to me sing a song, at the insistence of my very proud grandpa. He'd generally go to his bedroom before the end; he always had the sleeping habit of a farmer, and felt comfortable enough leaving hosting to Grandma.

He was editor-in-chief of that group. He'd correct everyone's poems; I don't know if they corrected his. And he could be jealous; May Sakoda, the creator of delicious cakes and one of the few group members who spoke English fluently, once told me he got upset when a Japanese haiku magazine turned down his submission, but took his wife's.

I'm glad he lived long enough for me to read to him "Grandfather's Table", probably the best poem I wrote before college. It was about being around that kitchen table and listening to the haiku group. Most of all it was about remembering.

For whatever reason, I got the honor of writing, and reading, his eulogy. I remember it included a call for family unity -- his was falling apart as he got sick and after he died, over money, property, and, underlying it all, unresolved problems of not feeling loved enough. I suppose, in the end, all arguments and breakups start there.

***

I don't believe in writing genes. My paternal grandfather wrote a lot -- from what I can tell, mostly angry letters to the editor about some point of Constitutional interpretation. So if you believed in writing genes, I guess you'd say my political posts come from Grandpa Yamada, and my creative ones from Grandpa Yasuda.

But I don't believe in writing genes. As far as I remember, I don't even remember either grandpa teaching me about reading or writing at all. Grandpa Yamada lived in Hawaii, and I barely saw him. Grandpa Yasuda spoke a sort of broken English, and wrote creatively only in Japanese.

What I do remember, and believe in, is a writing culture, a celebration of writing above all else. I think that's why I wrote; in the end, I did it to feel worthy of the most important man in my life.

Writing is a godsend, especially to those of us who feel awkward or uncomfortable in public. Thanks to another titanic influence, my fourth grade teacher, Maureen Manning, I feel quite confident speaking in public. But I remain uncomfortable in public, if you understand. I'm still insecure, with negative body image, and, though I've been told otherwise by lots of people, I still believe I'm not a good conversationalist, and that I don't have much to offer.

Writing is a way for me to communicate in a way that mimics closer to what I would say. I make no claims to being a good writer. But I care passionately about it, which helps. I can be inspiring, or somber, or whatever mood I can think of conveying in a written piece better than I can in public. Because I feel that what is being judged is content, and not me. In the end, this isn't really true at either end--people do judge content when faced with a person, and enough of me is still in the writing that I, and my grammatical lapses, or over-long sentences, am being judged. And I'm a selfish writer -- this, and other posts, are more a diary than a public statement. It's too long; it needs to be organized better; it's not interesting to most others.

But I enjoy writing, especially selfishly. It's liberating. When I'm writing, I'm not thinking about the other things that weigh me down in my life. I'm just writing. For that brief time, I believe I'm someone who has something worth saying, something worth reading, and I can't stop until I can get it out there.

It took my high school English teacher, Eric Burgess, to really teach me how to organize essays, and how to use the power of writing to analyze things -- a book, a poem, or parts of the world around me. I'm grateful for that. But it wouldn't have been possible without the culture of writing I had.

Maybe I depend upon it too much; I can't challenge my negative thoughts about my fitness for society if I stay in my room and just write. But I know that writing will always be a part of me--for better or worse.

Thanks, Grandpa. You gave me a lot, but this, I think, was the greatest gift.