Sadly (and as a tangent to your story), it gets worse after graduating. I agree that being able to connect with such a talented group should be a gift that lasts a lifetime. Unfortunately, *for the most part* it only lasts about four years. It could just be that nobody likes me - I admit. But keeping in touch with classmates since graduating has been like pulling teeth at times (and no, wall posts on Facebook do not count as legitimate personal contact). I'm not going to place blame on the usual scapegoats (that our generation wants instant gratification because we get used to e-mail, AIM, etc.) I'll let the sociologists sort that one out. I do know that many folks find it surprisingly difficult to pick up a pen (or even tap a keyboard for that matter) and say hello now and then...talk about low SI. At least on campus, we're all physically in each other's presence. Once separated, people become involved with families, careers, new social groups, and...and...sometimes they just get too lazy to keep in touch. Perhaps there's still a point to the frenzy of social contact we experience on campus; perhaps we can still take personalities into the world with us even if the *person* doesn't follow. Or perhaps I'm just overly sentimental. Either way, I hope students take your advice and open up from time to time, take a risk and bear their souls on occasion, and take a moment to remind themselves that they're in some pretty impressive company - hold onto it if you can.
PS Remember to sell your EQ-SI scale "as is" at first, and then offer an expensive upgrade in which you subdivide the scale into *octants*. You may have to hire ten mathematicians to do this: one to write the scale, and nine to prove the scale exists. :-)

It's understandable for the person being asked that question to get upset a little bit, simply because it isn't really a question that can be answered (and I'm sure he has been asked it a great many times). It's almost like the dozens of times people have asked me where I am from, when really all they want to know is what country my parents came from so that they can group me into a suitable ethnic category and then go about their business. Having said that, asking a person where he/she is from is absolutely an innocuous question and does not deserve having your head bitten off. This guy's response is unfortunately typical of a lot of conversation I observed from my fellow students at Stanford: people who take a simple and harmless question and then overreact, either just to make someone else feel small or to fulfill their own egos. Simply because a queston may be annoying or inconvenient to you does not mean that you need to "make an example" of each person that asks you that question. The truth is, we should be intelligent and, more importantly, patient enough to say something like, "Well, that's hard to answer - I've moved around a bit, but I guess I consider XXX to be my home" etc without biting the other person's head off. Heck, it might actually foster better conversation and even help make you a friend or two...