Life

Do You Have Poor Spatial Awareness?

by Rachel Krantz

July 8, 2015

Would you rather eat out of a trashcan than put Ikea furniture together? Do you bonk into the edges of tables as often as Kim K checks her Twitter feed? Did you consider seducing your geometry and/or physics teacher in high school just so that you could pass? If so, you might also have poor spatial awareness, my fellow clumsy, diagram-hating friend.

Simply put, spatial awareness is the ability to be aware of oneself or other objects in space. Or as Google defines it, "an organized knowledge of objects in relation to oneself in that given space. It also involves understanding the relationship of these objects when there is a change of position." If even thinking about objects in space made you a little dizzy and annoyed, you too might be less than spatially aware.

You might have heard that women in general have poorer spatial awareness than men, and there is some truth to that. "Studies show that, on average, men are better than women at mentally rotating pictures of three dimensional objects (the 3D shapes task) or judging the slope of a line (the angles task)," the BBC reports. But before you get too excited that you finally have an excuse not to put anything together again ever, it seems that "women outperform men at other tasks. For example, women are more likely to spot which of a group of objects has been moved to a new position." Right, then.

Whatever the cause of my poor spatial awareness (why didn't you make me play sports, parents?!), what is clear to me and everyone who knows me well is that I have it. Wondering if you have it too? Just take a look and see how much this list of impossible things annoys you too.

1. This OkCupid Question:

Why is this important? I resent the question in the first place, and refuse to answer it on principle. What? I mean, I could if I wanted to ...

2. Whatever this question is:

Seriously, WTF. This is a question?

3. Everything About Geometry

A teacher once pointed to a three-dimensional triangle with some other shape in it and some lines and equations and said to me "Don't you see it? Don't you see it???" No a-hole, I don't see it. That's why I'm here for office hours. Again.

4. The Fact That Physics Class Was Not About Debating The Meaning Of The Universe

Can't we just have a nice philosophical discussion about the nature of time? What are all these equations and diagrams?

5. When People Tell Us To Head 'Northeast'

JUST SAY THE NAMES OF THE STREETS AND POINT.

6. The Edges Of Anything

We will bonk into them.

7. Putting Together IKEA Furniture

I have never done it myself. I consider it a personal goal to always have at least one person in my life who's willing to do it for me. (Shout out to my cousin Sophie and every guy I've ever dated!)