Mensa

I've just dropped my first years dues to Mensa in the mail, and it's with lots of mixed feelings. Let's face it, being in Mensa isn't cool. It's not.
But I did get in this week, and I'm willing to give it a shot. I took the application test a few weeks ago and got word that I was eligible for membership. Actually, I figured it was a sure thing. I'm pretty practical when it comes to organizations and thought the chances that I wouldn't get in would be very low. Think about it for a second.
Organizations love to grow. It's what they do. So any organization which has a larger chances of turning away new members as opposed to getting new members is going to fail and fail quickly. There was an announcement by the Catholic Church the other day trumpeting their decision to make the entrance requirements for Anglicans who wish to rejoin the Church easier. That may not make much sense from a religious point of view, but should be obvious from an organizational one. The Catholic Church isn't hurting for money necessarily, but they're going through a rough patch. Encouraging folks to fill pews is a no-brainer.
Mensa should operate the same way. On the surface it's a group of 'high IQ" people who join together for social aspects and intellectual stimulation. But I'm sure it's much less than that. If you started an organization targeting intellectual stimulation in America today, you're going to have some pretty lonely business meetings.
So when I took the entrance test, I really didn't think I'd fail and in fact was examining the test to see if it COULD be failed. From what I can tell, it would be possible to fail at the test, but you'd have to try pretty hard. It is easy? Yes. Are the answers obvious? I'm going to say yes. I hated a part of the test devoted to math, but that's just me. I hate math. And it didn't help that I could tell the questions were meant to be easy for the average person. Sigh.