I am a 15 year old man and I joined MENSA recently, I met some people who said it wasn’t any good, so my question is, what was your experience with MENSA?
Here, let me see if I can get this moved to IMHO for you, man.
When I first joined it was more for an ego boost.
After a while I became more active by going to different events and meetings. I even hosted meetings once a month for a couple of years. It was interesting to meet the different people. One thing I noticed is that many Mensans drink. A lot. I fit in pretty well.
I also was a member of a lot of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and one in particular was very good.
However I’ve gradually have less to do with Mensa. I read the American Mensa Bulletin monthly and get a few interesting emails. As we discussed in another post, I spend more of my free time exercising and other outdoor activities. I still keep up my membership though. In fact I just received my membership card renewal last week.
Like most things, you’ll probably get as much from Mensa as you put into it.
Since the OP is asking for personal experiences, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I’ve been a member for over 20 years. I met my best friends through Mensa, and have had many, many great times.
I dated girl who worked for Mensa, but I doubt you’re looking for those experiences.
A question for Mensans - is it something you join when you are frustrated by the lack of smart people around?
Some people from my high school were members, but I don’t recall anyone at MIT being involved at all, and least a few of us would have qualified. I was never particularly interested myself.
I belonged about 25 years ago and didn’t like it since it seemed that most of the people were much older and far too cliquish to suit my fairly egalitarian tastes. I do understand the mentality. You’re made to be an outcast most of your life so when you find a group you fit in with you tend to adopt the same us-them posture. But honestly I never understood that sort of attitude when the people you’re talking about are presumably pre-qualified and intelligent enough to recognize and transcend that sort of pettiness.
There were a few people who did go out of their way to make me feel welcome but there was no way that they could make up for what seemed to be the near xenophobia of everyone else. Of course I will be the first to admit that my perceptions are not always accurate when it comes to social situations and can occasionally border on hallucinatory, so adjust your bullshit meters accordingly (if you’re still on an analog meter and the little needle just got wrapped around the pin - bummer).
But there is much more to membership than your local group. There are so many gatherings of different types and so many opportunities to congregate for different reasons with people from other groups, both IRL and online, the composition of your local group probably shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
Online stuff wasn’t really a ‘thing’ when I was into it except maybe if you were into BBS’s or starting to get into things like usenet. So the other main aspect of the experience for me was the various gatherings. These were sort of hit and miss though. Sometimes they has some phenomenal speakers who really got you excited about a topic. I still remember the first time I heard about oxytocin for example or that the casino game with the best pure odds (no card counting, etc) is craps. And those are great memories but they’re the exception. What the gatherings really seemed to be about was random copulation.
Now don’t misunderstand, I’m not a prude and anyone who’s into that should go for it - all day, every day. But when that is the primary concern of most of the participants, it just seems to detract from the experience in ways I can’t really specify except to say that drains away the interest you would expect to see with so many supposedly intelligent people gathered together in one place.
But like I said, this was a long time ago, so who knows what things are like now.
Some local groups of Mensa are great. Some aren’t. Within local groups, there are usually subgroups, and again, some of the subgroups are great, and others aren’t. As a general rule, most members of Mensa love to read, and they love to talk. If you go to a meeting and expect to be entertained, you might or might not have a good time. If you go to a meeting and expect to be entertaining, then you will almost certainly have a great time.
It’s basically a social group, like many others. Every group that I’ve been in has allowed non members to attend the meetings, no questions asked.
That’s good to know since I was thinking about rejoining. The problem is that I didn’t see a way on the web site to find out what my local group would be. I was preoccupied with other issues I won’t go into, but did I just miss it, or is there another way?
Since you’re staff, you should be able to PM if you wish and would be so kind should you prefer not to post certain information. Cheers. 
Like most social groups, you get out what you put into it. In my case this isn’t much - When I first joined a couple of years back the local group was really quiet and basically did nowt, so I didn’t get anything out of it and that’s basically continued. If you’re in an area where the group is really active then there’s probably a lot there for you if you want it.
I joined to a) see if I could pass the test (properly difficult, a lot harder than I expected), b) annoy my wife and c) maybe meet new people. a) and b) worked but c) hasn’t so it’s not something I’m going to continue. Given my lack of engagement just been a member is a little bit embarrassing if I’m honest. This is a bit of intellectual snobbishness on my behalf - mensa membership would be seen as a bit silly in my line of work. If I was active socially with it, though, then I wouldn’t care about this and would enjoy it I’m sure.
Aside from that the monthly magazine is shite, the website is shite, and the SIGs are shite. The magazine in particular has some really weak articles involving all sorts of credulous rubbish (one article in particular stands out about that bollox involving transplanted organs changing the personality of the receiver to that of the donor).
ETA I’m in the UK, a small, quite densely populated country. You can’t swing a cat without hitting an intellectual here, so there’s less call for an organisation like Mensa. It’s different for massive countries like the US, or Australia say, where you might be the only intelligent person for 100 sq miles. So Mensa has more of a community gathering role.
That’s the first time I hear something like that about MENSA. Where do I sign up for some high IQ copulation?
I went to a couple of events at got the newsletter when I was in High School in L.A. 30 years ago. I found the whole thing to be incredibly lame. I’m sure that there are some cool local groups somewhere but even now I find the whole concept to be ridiculous.
I joined after a SDMB thread where a lot of my favorite posters turned out to be or have been in Mensa at some point. I figured out, if that was the kind of people it attracted, it might be a good fit. And since I knew it to be an international organization and I was embarking on an international career, perhaps it could be a way to get “ready made contacts”? Turned out it was: SIGHT is a program whose purpose is to receive visiting Mensans, whether the visit is short-term, long-term or moving in. In Switzerland they were a lifesaver; in the UK, they organized a lot of activities (at least compared with Spain, a country where belonging to any club that’s not dedicated to sports is viewed with suspicion) and I was able to join several of them which I enjoyed, ask local folk about places I was interested in visiting, etc.
My first meeting was a national meeting. As I headed for the table with the Mensa logo, I heard my name: one of the organizers was a former classmate. For many members it’s a place where they can cut loose: occasionally this leads to someone letting his inner asshole loose, but in general it means that it’s ok to compare Kafka with Lovecraft, jump from a discussion on sex aids to one on recipes for whipped cream, or ask people to remind you to take your meds if you start acting funny.
My local group has recently been absorbed by another one so the local meetings are two hours away (hell, no), but the project I start next week is in the area with the most active local group in Spain. On Saturdays I’ll play boardgames with the people from Mensa, first Saturday every month is movie Saturday, there’s at least one dinner every week…
Local groupmails tend to be dead or almost; SIGs range from sedate to dead to bizarre. Attempts at getting people to talk long-distance more often (mailing lists, forums) have never really gelled. Part of the problem is that very often the mods are somewhat too keen on “let’s stay on thread” and will smack people for mentioning something that “is not this list’s subject”; part is that people who’ve seen that kind of stuff go down in a group will be afraid to so much as say “hey guys, I just joined” in any others.
As others have said, what you get depends a lot on what you put in. I understand there are three kinds of Mensans based on how they react in their first meeting:
- the people who’ve been told how AWEsome and intelligent and smart and wooonderful they are their whole lives. They strut in, get smacked down a couple of times, say “fuck, I’m among peers! These guys can kick my ass! I better start being able to back up whatever I say!” and go on swimmingly.
- the people who’ve been told how lazy they are, and how they’re not living up to their potential, and that they’ll never be any good, and who’ve been called freaks and geeks and told to get their nose out of the fucking book and… who walk in timidly saying “excuse me, I’m not sure I’m at the right place…” but who eventually go “hey, I’m among peers! Here I’m not a freak! COOL!” and go on swimmingly,
and 3) the ghosts. About 1/3 of Mensa Spain’s associates have never gone to any meetings, signed up for any forums, SIGs, mailing lists or anything, yet pay their dues faithfully. We think maybe they enjoy taking their cards out of their wallets and caressing them while gloating to their fireplace that they’re smarter than anybody else. Either that or they’re even more nuts than the average Mensan - probably both.
I have been a member of Mensa for a little over 10 years, and am reasonably active in my local group.
I first joined because I read something about Geena Davis being in Mensa and that her IQ was supposedly in the 130s. I remembered at some point having taken a test that estimated my IQ around that, so I thought, if Geena Davis can get in, so can I. I googled around and found the national website, and learned that there was a social aspect to the group - I hadn’t really known what it was all about, but the idea of meeting people sounded good.
From the national website I got contact info for the local group. When the next admissions test was scheduled in that area, I took it, and a few weeks later, after getting my results, I joined. I was eager to attend some local events, because I had always been a big nerd in high school and college, with few friends, and even fewer dates. I’d always felt like everyone in school had gotten a manual on how behave socially, except me.
I found the group to be fairly welcoming, although they were all quite a bit older than me - I was 23 at the time. I actually felt a bit more like I “fit in” than I did in high school. I believe many people probably joined Mensa for the same reason I did - they felt left out so they wanted to join a group. However, this means that there are a lot of people in the group who are book-smart but not people-smart. So in our local group you have some mostly “normal” people, some people who are socially awkward (like me), and some people who seem to have very few social skills at all, to the point where they need to be told explicitly when they are doing things such as invading someone’s personal space, or making unreasonable demands to a host when an event is in someone’s home. But generally those people aren’t a problem, just a bit annoying.
So, I have made a few friends in the group. In fact, it’s how I met Mr. Ipsum, and we have been married over 6 years. Yes, I do think the group can be a bit cliquey, and I’m not sure of a good solution. We definitely have members who feel they are part of the “old guard” and do not want “newbies” coming in and trying to volunteer for positions or run for office. It’s a shame. But I think they do try to be welcoming to new people, as long as those new people don’t try to express opinions on how the group is run. :smack:
But on the whole, I’m happy as a member. Our group has a lot of events - restaurant dinners, “games nights” at people’s houses, hikes, etc. I’ve been exposed to different activities and different cuisines that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I feel like I sort of belong in a group now.
My one gripe, aside from the sometimes-cliqueyness, is the lack of young people. When I joined at age 23, I was the youngest active member by over 10 years - the next-closest person to my age being the future Mr. Ipsum. I had always been comfortable hanging around much-older people, so I didn’t mind, but it would be nice to see more variety in ages. Over the years, we have had many 20-somethings come to meetings. The problem is, one 20-something person would come to a meeting, see that there were no other young people (except for me) and decide, “This is all old fogeys. I’m not coming back.” The problem is, how to get all these young people together at the same meeting so they see they aren’t alone? I tried to do that several years ago by having events specifically for the young people in the group, but I only ever got 1 or 2 other people to come at a time. (sigh)
I took the test just to see if I could make it, and joined for a year. The bulletins we got monthly came across as very condescending when members would argue with each other in the Letters to the Editor section, and I had no interest in any of the other articles. The local groups were all too far away and never had any special interests that I was especially interested in. There wasn’t much on the internet but mailing lists at the time (this was over 10 years ago), and the one I was in was heavily moderated (sneeze the wrong way and your post is deleted). I didn’t renew. I still have a form if I want to, but just can’t afford it right now, especially if it hasn’t changed in all these years.
My mom was a member and I joined at age 14.
Meetings were just grown-ups standing around talking amongst themselves. I didn’t really get it then, and I have no interest in doing it as an adult.
It may be something you want to explore. As you see above, different people get different things out of it. My experience was just one of being the only kid in the group, and so I didn’t interact much.
Oh man, the newsletter was the worst. It was an article in the newsletter that made me decide not to re-up. People who were married to “non-Ms” were asked to send in amusing anecdotes where their lesser spouse figured out something that their they couldn’t. hurr dee hurr dee hurr.
Mensa’s a do-it-yourself entity. Don’t like the newsletter? Want to help produce it? Not enough activities? Want to sponsor one?
Hajiro, I’ve more often seen articles in which people send in amusing anecdotes about their OWN dumb mistakes, usually about not using “common sense.” I’m surprised that you saw ones about non-M errors, if that is what you’re describing.
My experience with Mensa has been extraordinarily negative. They’re constantly claiming I don’t meet some sort of ridiculous “criteria” to be in their club. I keep taking some asinine test they shove at me, and a few weeks later they send me snooty letters that say things like “While you read this, please don’t forget to breathe” and “Every single character in The Walking Dead, including Andrea and the zombies, displays more intelligence than you do.”
I was on the verge of just not applying any more, when I was asked by the president of my local chapter to serve on a moderated panel they’re hosting next month. It’s called “Keeping Your Gene Pool Clean - Examples of People to Avoid.” They haven’t told me exactly what I’ll be doing, but I’m assuming they want me to be the moderator. So if that goes well, I’ll give them one more chance, but after that I’m done.