# Life Member Occasional Mensan

> After years of renewing my membership whenever it crossed my mind, I finally became a life member, a day before Mensa Korea paused new life membership applications.

- Author: Sunwoong Joo (주선웅)
- Language: en
- Published: 2025-07-31
- Updated: 2026-11-01
- Canonical: <https://scrapsquare.com/en/article/mensa/>
- Other edition: [KO](https://scrapsquare.com/article/mensa/index.md)

At the orientation after my Mensa test, I was advised that the sooner I bought life membership, the better the value.
The advice replayed itself in my head as I renewed my membership once every 5-6 years. Somehow I waited nearly 24 years to take it. A life membership I had never particularly needed suddenly looked rather valuable once new applications were about to close. The magic of a limited edition?

There is also something of a donation about it, made at a time when I can afford to give a little.
When I first joined Mensa, the internet already offered ways to satisfy a curiosity about intelligent life, even without [SETI@home](https://web.archive.org/web/20010531095335/http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/). Now I find myself writing this with a life form born on the internet. I suspect most of the needs people felt when this organisation was founded are now met in other ways.