Hello all!

Thank you for the warm welcome!

To clarify a bit: being less good at Maths than the 2-5 top successfull people in Maths in my country does not make me feel "not gifted", but it does make me think that, if I do not feel like I can discuss in a setting in which, at last, I am "average" enough in Maths, then there is something else than Maths ability at play here, to explain my difficulty finding "soulmates".
It is true, too, that I was acting a little bit "like a bear" there, limiting most of my interaction with classmates to in-class interactions, even though we were all living on campus! I only knew the names and faces of those classmates I was in class with, save for a handful of others, and therefore probably missed on a wealth of potentially satisfying interactions. What I meant was "just" that I felt like my profile was not "the mainstream one", even though I can easily have missed out on individuals with my profile. I did interact with others well enough, despite it all, to have an idea of "'mainstream interests".
In fact, it's interesting that, when I was in science, most people around me read science fiction rather than literature (I do read science-fiction too!), did sudoku (I'm not sure the game is famous in America too... is it?) rather than crosswords, and generally did display a more "mathematically oriented" profile than I have. That's why I was wondering about the "Maths-only" vs "Maths and literature" profile...

I was also wondering about disabilities simply because I can have been considered by the same people as "dumb" (once, I am really conscious that I began giving the guy a rather bovine and blank look when he explained things) and "really bright" (to the point that I was begged to stay in research when I left it to look for my dream job - I did take a windy path to arrive there, due to difficulties in getting the right information about how to end up in that kind of job).
I still see it in my current job, which is not in the field I master best, but a more "literary" one, when I see that, again, when it comes to processing oral information, generally both a little bit complex and full of gaps, I tend to shut my brain... so I "loose" against my Harvard educated colleague when it comes to "looking good" in meetings, and "win" again when it comes to "doing the job" alone in front of my computer. Anyway, I remember better auditorily (when I have to rote-learn something, I do it, as I was taught, in an oral way), but cannot remember any word in a new language unless it has been written up for me, I do think visually to solve Maths problem (by that, I mean a very symbolic visual solution, seeing "paths" to solve the problem as "doors" which I feel are either locked, closed, ajar but difficult to push, or completely open), but I cannot remember faces easily and of course have a ridiculous sense of directions (just shut my eyes and make me turn three times around myself, and I am lost!)... I remember how my brother, definitely less good than I've always been at problem solving (even though he was 2 years older), has always been, even when his Maths knowledge was lesser than mine, better than I was at following a Maths conversation with my father (a Maths University teacher)... It happens again in most conversations, and I suspect it would happen even in fields which do not interest my brother, and which do interest me. Colleagues and friends, who think highly of me, just think I will be able at this stage, inexperienced as I am, to synthesize all the (partial) information I've got and say "this is the right solution for education in Papua New Guinea" (for example), while in fact I am just there, in dinners, listening to them discussing work (well, those are older colleagues, since the youngest one is some 11 years older than me), and hoping they won't realize that when they laugh at how "stupid" someone's comment was, I cannot see what was particularly stupid there...
I remember how, in oral Maths exams, I got top marks almost all the time, but also sometimes lesser ones, because either I managed to find the solution (and then had only its development left to be done) during the time the teacher took to dictate the subject of their exercise to my other one or two fellow students, or I just felt "blocked" if the teacher went back to me before I had found the solution to the exercize. I couldn't stand the idea of the teacher "looking at how I thought'" and just scribbled in the little space on the blackboard I could hide from him with my body...
When I entered my top University path, then this is the latter phenomenon which dominated, and I felt like quicksands were sometimes opening under my feet. I taught hospital-ridden kids at some point in my life, and was marvelled at their ability not to have really understood the maths they were doing (they were learning rules rather than understanding and feeling the Maths!) and yet persist, and get an average grade!!!

This is the only reason why I have been tempted to take an IQ test (which I have not): the hope that, maybe, it would give me, past a "global IQ" number, which might be low enough, especially when questions appeal to culture (I've always been too lazy to "remember" the facts which make one 'shine' as having a lot of culture, and committed to memory instead things as "original" as half a dozen alphabets, Chinese ideograms, knowledge of alien cultures and religions, tiny pacific islands nobody knows about, etc.) or to visual memory (on online tests, I use "tricks" to compensate for my failing visual memory, when images seem to deform and deteriorate as soon as I stop watching them, but it takes time, which is not good on tests when each question is timed), some hints as to what really explains my mix of strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses do not manifest themselves in an "average" setting, of course, but with sharp minds, I am under the impression that I have a more uneven profile than most... Not many puzzles, mazes, or construction games anyway (while my gifted - 149 IQ I think- cousin was right into them). No visual memory, ridiculous ability to "notice" things (I even failed to notice when does crossed the road in front of our car, and I remember the only thing I "missed" in an old worksheets book was about "noticing" something similar in two images) poor fine motor skills, and feeling "dumber than my brother" (because of the memory thing) all my childhood, while he was feeling "dumber than me" because I understood things more quickly than he did, despite being younger (he even begged my parents not to explain things in front of me because "she will understand before I do it")... But well, jumping on my bed at 8 and realizing all my joys were as shallow and ephemereal as that one, and thus deciding to reject all those "fake" joys from then on in search of "true joy", one which would be eternal and deep is not usual (even though I question my decision now... not feeling it was as wise as I thought it was!)... and then I'm back to square one, to that strange slightly synesthetic self who sees letters and numbers in color, loves Maths and philosophy, can live in relatively poor material conditions (I probably just do not "see" them, as usual!) and cannot share colleagues' concern like in "oh!!! Poor them, that poor-looking house, with no fridge..." but am completely disturbed by the idea of human suffering as well as lost opportunity to open the human mind... That person who strives to *love* her colleagues and surrounding (maybe since I decided that, being similar to 50% of people, I may have chosen, like my brother, to like half and dislike the other half, but that, since I felt so different from 95% of them, it would be suicide to like only those who were like me... and therefore that I had no merit for being tolerant), and who can still has a hard time lying convincingly, even for diplomatic reasons...

Well... OK, to move things forward, maybe the question is:
- does this sounds like a simply "cross-disciplinary profile", which would explain that, even though I read science fiction and do sudoku, I remain insatisfied in such a setting, because I also love cultures, philosophy, religions or sensitivity in literature more than they do...
- does this sound rather more like some disabilities coupled with abilities (I KNOW I've got abilties at Maths, though I wouldn't bet on an IQ test result, and wouldn't bet on other abilities necessarily). How do I get to know what kind of disability that could be, then? And what good can it do to know that, beyond at last explaining who I am better (which would already be great)?
- meeting others like me through friends... My parents met one another in a kind of "club" for likeminded people, that's true, and most of their friends are from there, though they generally do not cumulate such depth in philosophical thinking, such academic success, and all the rest... My good friend with a Maths + literature profile is a better bet, since he is more "up at that level", though right now he's mostly unaccessible (he was working too much before - I even made him notice it was jeopardizing his family life! - and finally decided to leave his job to concentrate more on his family). Some Internet friends are good ones too...

Well, OK, so those are some more questions for you, and a big thank you for your answers!!!

Light