Your mental strengths and weaknesses

In My Humble Opinion
21

I tend to think in shapes rather than words, which I account for alot of my quick learning abilities. Like for a simple example, 7 + 3 = 10. My brain has a blob that merges with another blob, and that larger blob somehow equals 10, it’s weird but effective.

On the very negative side of this, it takes me forever to figure out what words go with what I’m thinking. Seriously, this post took me about 5 minutes to write, and I have to think quite awhile before speaking. This makes most people think I have some sort of mental problems (heh, maybe I do?) since I don’t communicate well.

I also have a terrible memory. I can’t remember a name worth beans (names don’t shape well), but I can clearly remember concepts/theories I haven’t studied in years.
Now that I think about it, this post seems really familiar. I might have made a similiar post in another thread, but for the life of me I can’t remember.

22

Weakness: Like Rubystreak, I have an abysmal sense of direction. I (and a friend of mine who is almost as bad as me) once attempted to pay a surprise visit to another friend. It was about a half hour walk there. We left at around seven or eight PM and got there… after midnight. We got distracted by discovering an ace playground on the way there, but still, it was a pretty ordinary effort. We’d both been there before on foot, too.

Strength: I’m passionate about what I want to be doing with my life (in terms of career, I mean). I’m studying what I want to be studying at uni, and I’m enthused about working on it outside uni, as well as getting a job in that area after uni. I’ve wanted to do the same thing pretty much as long as I can remember. Also, I have no trouble motivating myself to work in this area (other areas, though… yep).

23

I have a very good sense of direction and excel at useless crap like trivia games, word searches and other things that never show up on a resume.

I am a scavenger at heart. When garage saling and looking at junk, I instantly picture what else I could do with whatever it is. Vintage laboratory glass thingies instantly become a flower vase that everyone ooooh’s over. Empty cast iron clawfoot bathtub on someone’s curb becomes a gardening pot. Toss out a vintage ladies bike with flat tires, I repaint it, add a basket full of flowers on it and it is a purty yard ornament. ( that someone stole. bastids.)

I am the calm in the storm whenever the shit hits the fan. Always have been. Even as a kid. I become razor sharp on what to do and how to handle the situation. I’ve never panicked.

My weakness would be that it is the day to day mundania of cooking and cleaning that is overwhelming and makes me break out into a sweat. Help plan a funeral for a brother, no problem. Peice of cake. Ask me to bring a dish to a party, my brain spasms. Discuss.
I am pretty sure that I have Dyscalcula. Like Dyslexia, but with numbers. Give me numbers and my head swims. Soduko is Dante’s 9th Circle for me. I don’t even bother trying to do math at any level because there is always some Math Person nearby ( friend or stranger) who will shout out the answer. I do the same for Math People trying to spell something.

Which leaves me to hypoteneus that there are two types of people: Word people and Math people. One day it won’t be Black or White. Arab or Christian. It will be Word vs. Numbers.

24

I have no spatial sense. I usually can’t tell if something will fit into a container unless I actually try to put it in. I can’t look at something and say, “oh, it’s about three feet long” or whatever- my estimate will be ludicrously off unless I actually measure it. I don’t have much sense of direction, either, and I suspect these are related.

I don’t have the “sound filter” that Chotii mentioned, either. I can’t pick out what’s being said to me over background noise. I don’t think it’s hearing loss, either- I’ve been like this ever since I can remember, and my hearing tested fine in those screenings they do for kids.

I have no sense of time. If I don’t have my watch or cell phone, I can’t necessarily tell you if 10 minutes or an hour has passed since something happened. Days, weeks, and months all blend together unless there’s something notable going on.

I have a really lousy memory for anything that’s being said to me. I always tell people this at work- email me, don’t just tell me or call me, or I’ll forget. I can’t do math in my head, either- I lose my place there, too, especially if someone is talking to me while I’m trying to do it.

I don’t do too well at doing anything while someone’s watching me- I get nervous and make really stupid mistakes that I wouldn’t make if no one were watching me.

I have to see someone fairly regularly for a period of time before I’ll recognize them.

I’m a good speller- I don’t usually need spell check. I have trouble spelling words out loud (I lose my place), but I’m a very good speller on paper.

I’m really good at remembering useless trivia, as long as it’s not something that changes over time. In other words, I’ll remember when your birthday is (that doesn’t change) but not how old you are (that does).

I’m told I read really fast. Can’t read most cursive writing, for some reason, but I can read typed print really fast.

25

I blank out and I can’t concentrate. Like I’ve tried to write this post about 30 times and every time I get halfway through and go “… uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” and give up.

Like I’ll be filling out a form and can’t remember my name, date of birth, any of that. I eman- I’m lucid. I can figure it out. It just takes me a while because my mind gets all fuzzy. Thing is, I can usually do things that are a little more difficult. Like I can remember my student ID number and my social security number, but not my telephone number. And I can remember all my lines when I narrate the Christmas show, but blank out when I try to remember my name.

And I can’t do math quickly in my head. I have to stop and think about even most simple arithmetic. I can remember certain numbers because i remember the words- like “seven times seven is forty-nine” but usually I have to work it out in my head, which usually takes a minute.

As for my strengths, I’m both empathetic and reasonably eloquent. So I have this ability to know what someone’s feeling and articulate it in a way that makes them say, “that’s exactly it!”

And… I just KNOW STUFF. like… I watched Little Miss Sunshine tonight with a bunch of other teenagers and I was the only one who knew who Nietzche was. Or I recently explained to a table full of kids my age and a little older what schadenfreude is. Or I end up telling even the anime freaks the difference between sushi and sashimi or telling people about Chernobyl or thalidomide or even things like what “Arbeit Macht Frei” means and how it’s significant. I went to the crappiest private elementary school in the city and I go to the same high school as most of the people I’m talking about and my parents generally don’t know the answers to my questions or make stuff up, so I figure it’s got to be somehow attributable to some strength of mine. My guess would be a combination of curiostiy (I hear an unfamiliar word or a piece of a story and I MUST KNOW THE REST.) and perhaps just hanging out with an older crowd (like you guys)/reading books & watching TV aimed at adults (so I hear about things i the first place)

26

I can’t remember names to save my life. Freshman year of college, there were about 2 dozen folks on my dormitory floor. It took me until Spring Break until I knew everyone’s name.

On the other hand, I’m great at conceptual thinking. Give me an idea or a point of view, and I’ll understand it pretty quickly.

27

Another person with weak visual-spatial / sense of direction here. I can get on the elevator, ride up to the xth floor and get off and not have the vaguest idea which direction the street would be. I can work there for 4 years and still not have the vaguest idea which direction the street would be. I’ve had some bad moments in parts of Brooklyn where the street names don’t make it plain which way is uptown or crosstown or away from vs towards Manhattan, etc, and where a quick glance around didn’t let me see something obvious like the Brooklyn Bridge to clarify… whereas someone else would know they got off a train headed for Coney Island and know (without thinking about it) which turns they made going up the stairs and out the exit. Not me.

Oddly enough, I visualize abstractions. I see things like statistical figures as lines or comets with a gradually fading-off penumbra.
What my mind seems to do best is grasp a concept that’s already composed of concepts — the marxist/socialist ideas about power and oppression, let’s say — and hold that concept as a noun and consider how it is acted upon or integrates with some other concept, and I see those things visually or proto-visually. Dorothy Dinnerstein’s Mermaid and the Minotaur comes in more yellow and is flat in a certain dimension, as is marxist/socialism which is muddy brown, and the intersect like two razor blades turned at a 35° angle from each other, and each “flat dimension” is an aspect of power that each theory hasn’t considered well, and the angle of intersection says something important about how those two aspects of power themselves are related, and as the two razor blades cut into each other some things remain unaffected while others are cut away and … anyway, I start off visualizing it like that and after a while of just thinking of the way it “looks” I can start writing a paper that puts it into words. (Minus the weird visual stuff).

28

I’m good with mental math. While I am no Rain Man, there are a lot of things most people reach for a calculator to compute when I can do it in my head.

My navigational skills are good and I almost always know which direction I am facing. I have no trouble reading a map and I have a hard time understanding how this can be difficult for anyone (folding a map, however, is another story).

I am also good with remembering numbers, such as addresses and phone numbers. Names, however, escape me and two minutes after meeting someone I’ll forget his name. If we all went by our social security numbers instead I’d probably do better.

I am creative and I have an active imagination. I can apply this to writing, music and art. I am a good speller, though there are a few words that always trip me up. My perfect pitch enables me to mentally transcribe or recite a song in my head in the correct key. However, I am also easily discouraged. If I set out to do a project and I encounter unexpected difficulties, especially at the outset, or find that I have to take extra steps, I’ll decide “hell with it” and put the project aside.

Perhaps my biggest mental weakness is impatience, which is likely the root of most of my mental weaknesses. If something takes longer or is more difficult than I expect it to be I become very agitated and annoyed.

29

I’m the opposite. I can pick out a conversation in a crowded room at thirty paces. I can also completely tune out noises. I always say I was trained by listening to baseball on AM radio to develop super-filters for my ears.

I remember songs and poems after one exposure, but I often forget the entire plot of a novel. I forget most things that happen to me, but I remember trivia, passwords, telephone numbers, etc.

I have to ask my husband if a can of something will fit into a pan.

I won’t see whole buildings, but I’ll notice that there is a crack in the sidewalk that looks like Abraham Lincoln, and then I’ll write a poem about it.

I’m a detail person. I rarely get the big picture.

30

I am good with concepts. That sounds odd but I am pretty good at getting the overall big picture from a little information. I am also pretty good at troubleshooting stuff with limited information, which is kind of handy because it I troubleshoot stuff for a living.

I have a horrid memory. My memory is odd. I can remember technical details on stuff I haven’t used in years* but I forget birthdays, aniverseries, etc.

Slee

*A couple weeks ago one of my co-workers was having a problem connecting to one of our properties that is still dial up, it is an AIX site. Anyway, to connect you have to lock the modem down to 9600. I gave him the command for a USR modem off the top of my head. I used to know more about modems than any sane person wanted to but I haven’t done that in over six years, yet I still remember most of the commands.

31

My greatest strength is my innate modesty,although I’m very hansome indeed ,intelligent,witty and great in bed my modesty and lets be fair ,my humility allows me to interact with other people as though I was as ordinary as them.

My greatest weakness is my complete and utter lack of rational self judgement.