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Like Varun, most imagined upon joining that they'd be an outlier among the world's leading academics, but were surprised to find out everyone felt the same way."Occupation and intelligence are only superficially related," says Marie Hough, a Mensa member whose IQ ranks within the top 0.1 percent. She worked as a flight attendant for years before settling down to do a PhD in occupational health. "You don't need a high IQ to succeed in life, just like you won't necessarily be successful if you have a high IQ."Many say they actually hide their membership in a high-IQ society—from non-members and on their resume—to avoid prejudices. "It's only an advantage in the right circumstances," Marie says, adding that it can quickly become a pejorative."To succeed in a way that is applauded by society—like winning a Nobel Prize—takes relentless hard work, obedience, and dedication to a single, almost irrational topic," says Mensa member Sebastian Maharaji. "My experience is that most people that want to succeed in that way usually have some sort of chip on their shoulder, and have developed a lot of habits that feed achievement. But people who know they're smart from the day they're born don't really have that, and as a result develop a lot of character habits that are distractive and not necessarily complementary.""If people who think they're smart just wanted to do what everyone considered a smart job, I think it would be kind of silly."
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