March 2025 SOLC–Day 24
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Earlier this month humbleswede mentioned something about his Myers-Briggs type. Hey, I’ve got one of those, too, I thought. I dimly remembered a long ago session of completing the survey, and discussing the results. I had absolutely no recall for what they were though. 

Motivated to unravel the secrets of my personality (since apparently I didn’t pay enough attention the first time around), I got up and started digging. First, I looked in a likely spot (the file box) and within minutes (Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!), there was a drab looking manila folder, neatly labeled Myers-Briggs, in my hand. 

I opened it up and pulled out a pile of papers. The top one, slightly yellowed and crisp, read: “Your results from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.(MBTI)” My eyes skimmed quickly down the page, looking for the big reveal. Ah….there it was! “YOUR TYPE CAME OUT INTJ.”

Clearly, I didn’t pay much attention when this was revealed to me back in (I take a quick peek) 2004, because I really can’t remember what any of that means, except I’m pretty sure the “I” means introvert. And that tracks.

So I start to look a little deeper. There’s a handy summary on the back, titled, “Brief Descriptions of the 16 Types.” INTJ reads: 

“Logical, critical, decisive INNOVATOR of ideas; serious, intent, highly independent, concerned with organization, determined and often stubborn.” 

I sit with that for a minute. It doesn’t feel quite right. I’m not so sure about that “innovator of ideas” thing or the “highly independent.” Also, anyone who ventures into my classroom, might legitimately question the organization part of this. I will agree with stubborn –as will my husband. And my fourth grade teacher. (Maybe I should write a slice about how that teacher commented that I could be as stubborn as a mule…on my report card! In his defense, he’d first written about how he’d had a really good dream of having a class full of students just like me, and how wonderful that would be… It now occurs to me that my recently composed report card comments were a little bland.)

I flip back over to the front page. It states that the MBTI  it reports a “person’s preferred ways of attending to the world and making decisions.” There are four scales with pairs of opposite preferences: Extraversion and Introversion, Sensing and Intuition, Thinking and Feeling, and Judgment and Perception. Each has a quick explanation, and the examiner had marked where my preference lay. For example, on the Extraversion-Introversion scale, I had a clear preference for Introversion. Like I said, that tracks.

But as I continued examining this page, here’s the most interesting thing I noticed. Next to each completed scale, the “examiner” had noted how many questions I’d omitted answering. Overall, I’d chosen not to answer 16 questions. What!?? How many questions were there? How accurate could these results be? Also, isn’t that very fact perhaps the most telling personality characteristic of all? Ironically, I’d omitted the most questions on the scale that ended up marking me as showing a clear preference for Judgment, which in part is defined by “acting by organizing, planning, deciding”. 

Well, I guess I’m going to have to look to other sources for the definitive insights into my personality. Can I get a redo of the MBTI? Or maybe I’ll try Enneagram? Any other ideas out there?