I am literally crying right now. My friends and I were talking about IQs and, after taking the test, mine turned out to be 74

Wow, you really suck at IQ tests! I mean, that's pretty much all you can take from that result. Otherwise it's pretty much meaningless.

Also, I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're American. You should know that America has an unusual, and almost obsessive relationship with the whole idea of I.Q. and 'smartness' that the rest of us in the more enlightened part of the world might find a little odd. It's just not a thing we care about, and for what it's worth I don't understand why anyone would.

Finally, hand on heart, the most brilliant of my lecturers in university professed to have a below-average IQ. He didn't care. His mind worked in different, fascinating ways and I learned more from him than anyone else I've ever met. The ability to do silly little puzzles within in a given time limit tells you nothing about a person's capacity to, say, understand the human condition or complex socio-cultural systems.

I really wouldn't sweat it. It sucks if your friends are shallow enough to place more value on a meaningless test rather than their real-life experience of you as a person, but hey, maybe it's the universe telling you you deserve better friends. Go find them.

/r/self Thread