personality order 9.29.04
being a policy and management institution, we tend to talk about the popular ideas in management and leadership, such as being innately in touch with yourself. personally, i like to not be in touch with myself-- i feel better when i think less.
so i was overjoyed, of course, when a piece of our senior project was moved up to this week-- a re-introduction to myers-briggs personality test. it's a popular personality test that most of you likely know-- then again, they don't give those things to art students, do they? anyway, it's designed to ask you a bunch of questions and pigeonhole you into a number of categories and describe the level to which you are each type-- whether you are introverted or extroverted, a senser or an intuiter, a thinker or a feeler, a judger or perceiver. okay, just take a sample test here.
for example, i am a sensitive ass wimp. i am an INFP:
Idealistic, loyal to their values and to the people who are important tot hem. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened.
A certain reader is an ENTP:
Quick, ingenious, stimulating, alert, and outspoken. Resourceful in solving problems. Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people. Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way, apt to turn to new interest after another.
according to that online test, i am also:
• moderately expressed introvert (44%)
• slightly expressed intuitive personality (11%)
• slightly expressed feeling personality (11%)
• distinctively expressed perceiving personality (67%)
basically, a big ol' waffler.
this annoys me, the self-analysis. i'd rather get work done than sit around talking about our feelings and tendencies, because i don't care and i don't care for them to know. i don't need to be reminded that my tendencies probably lead me to a career in writing or counseling or something else that would be poverty-making, depressing, difficult to sustain—i'm risk-averse.
and of course i hate talking about such profiles for what happened afterwards. i walked by my old hs classmate karen and one member of her group project. i was telling karen how much i disliked MB and her friend asked my type, responding immediately with "we wouldn't get along." which is what administerers of these tests tell you not to do-- jump to conclusions about the person. i'm all over the place and i think at times i act like a different person (who would have guessed me introverted?).
we weren't meeting so i took a walk to the pool when class was done and swam a little-- just enough to realize i haven't swam (swum? a little help, editors) all summer. my wrists hurt, my palms got weak, my arms were fatigued from the get go, and i left the pool empty in the stomach.
that's the way it's supposed to be. so i stopped at school and watched some intramural basketball. it was fun. when i should have wished nicky brooklyn happy birthday... but she'll forgive me.
3 comments:
of course i can blame the test because i don't like my personality. i like my personality, but i think it does not suit the purposes of school and such; i do blame the test for pigeonholing people in categories when people are at times not all they seem to be, or know how to compensate.
i believe that my social skills can and have been assets but someone who was looking at their group who is not "my type" could look at me and say, "oh, this guy's going to waste our time, he's going to want to do this and that, he's going to not say what he feels; he's going to be just like so and so INFP i knew in the past. adherence to these strict rules of defining people doesn't explain the world very well for me, there are exceptions, outliers, et cetera. some people ascribe heavily to this method of defining people.
i also think that people in their 20's should have learned how to deal with each other in a work environment... though we all know that's not true.
Isn't it funny that I ended up an E and you're an I? I would've thought that I was the introvert. Although if I recall corectly, I was only just barely an extrovert - remind once I get all of my stuff out of storage to look for that stuff, we did all sorts of personality assessments in talking about teamwork. Anyway, the description was interesting - I read it and thought to myself: "based on recent history, you're not at all good at reading people". Of course, that's not going to stop me from using the following line in my upcoming job interviews..."Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically."
I think jerka dulce here falls into the MUNT category.
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