Richmond Area Mensa members play a board game together before the pandemic brought their meetings online.
During a Richmond Area Mensa (RAM) meeting last year, members played Pandemic, a board game where players work together to combat a global viral outbreak.
Little did they know that a few months later, the real-life coronavirus pandemic would test their problem-solving skills as they tried to keep their board game group active while making sure everyone stayed safe.
Just as it has affected people worldwide, the pandemic changed things for the group, which is now meeting virtually. “We have a real mix of people, including some who are potentially vulnerable to coronavirus, so we won’t return to in-person meetings until it’s safe to do so,” says Brendan Dodds, who joined Mensa in the UK and started the Richmond board game group to get to know members after he moved to Virginia.
“Mensa members are actually pretty diverse, with a multitude of different personalities, backgrounds and interests, but the organization that requires an IQ test to join does tend to attract — surprise, surprise — people who like solving puzzles,” Dodds says. “It’s an activity that draws together all kinds of people and gives you a common purpose for a few hours.”
Many Mensans are avid board game players. Some members of the Richmond group hope to participate in the American Mensa Mind Games event in spring 2021, where Mensans from across the United States play new board games and decide which five to award a “Mensa Select” seal.
The pandemic has also affected RAM’s ability to add new members, who can be admitted only after scoring at or above the 98th percentile on a supervised standardized intelligence test. Currently, nearly 350 people belong to RAM, which covers all of Central Virginia.
“We typically test every other month at a public location such as a library but have had to cancel the last two scheduled sessions due to COVID restrictions,” says Deb Gribben, a RAM member who has volunteered as a Mensa-trained certified test proctor for more than a decade. The group hopes to resume testing in October, Mensa’s national testing month, when tests are offered for $30 instead of $60.
Although the test’s format and questions are confidential, if you’re wondering what the Mensa Admissions Test is like, Gribben recommends checking out Mensa’s online practice test.
Gribben, a retired Henrico County teacher, initially tested with Mensa “because I was teaching students who were identified as gifted and was curious as to whether or not I had a similar IQ to those I was working with,” she says.
After qualifying to join, Gribben was delighted to find an active Mensa chapter in the Richmond area and started attending events. “I’m not sure what I expected, but I found the members to be a fun, talented, culturally diverse group of people with a wide variety of interests,” she says. “In our midst are engineers, athletes, musicians, stay-at-home moms and dads, doctors, actors, artists, teachers, lawyers, writers, people with disabilities, and children of all ages. My son Josh is a college student, and he is a member, too.”
The word “mensa” means “table” in Latin. “Everyone has something they can bring to the table,” Gribben says. “As a teacher I always tried to find out what is their gift.”
“Mensa members become second families for each other,” says Jason Seiler, national secretary at American Mensa, who is also a RAM member. “Members who join and attend our functions often state they finally feel at home; this was abundantly true for me. Over the past dozen years, I have met the people I consider my best of friends. Before joining, I thought of Mensa as a brainy think tank where advanced physics and Latin were discussed by everyone. Instead, I found a warm, welcoming community of people.”
A screenshot from a virtual meeting of Richmond Area Mensa
Gribben recently began organizing a new monthly get-together for RAM, “Meeting of the Minds,” where different topics that interest RAM members are explored. The inaugural meeting on Aug. 10, held virtually, featured Gribben and one of her former Henrico County students, local spelling bee champion Tejas Muthusamy, who competed in the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Muthusamy and the 2017 Bee are featured in a new Netflix documentary, “Spelling the Dream.” Gribben, his teacher, wrote a word study program book, “Words to the Wise,” to help her students spell better and also appears in the documentary.
Mensa’s purpose is to use intelligence for good and to promote stimulating intellectual opportunities for its members.
“Game nights have given some members the opportunity to get together on a regular basis in a relaxing and fun environment, and good friendships have been made with people we may not have otherwise met if not for Mensa,” Gribben says. “I like learning from them. I’m a lifelong learner. This group brings different things to the table that I might not have had the opportunity to experience without this group.”
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