Teacher... Here's Johnny!

We took a personality test in Business Honors last week and went through our results. I was oddly nervous about what I would be this time in the Myers Briggs personality test, because I kept getting different results when I was in different moods. I knew what I am basically, and I didn't want to be known as any of the other personalities that I had gotten when I was out of the ordinary moods, very focused, or very flighty and subdued.

Here is my psychological type and some description about what it means:

E (Extroversion) - oriented to the outer world, focusing on people and things, active, using trial and error with confidence, and scanning the environment for stimulation.

N (Intuitive Perception) - Perceiving with memory and associations, seeing patterns and meanings, seeing possibilities, projecting possibilities for the future, imagining; 'reading between the lines', looking for the big picture, having hunches; 'ideas out of no where', and letting the mind tell the eyes.

F (Feeling Judgment) - Applying personal priorities, weighing human values and motives, my own and others, appreciating, valuing warmth in relationships, and prizing harmony; trusting.

J (Judging) - Using thinking or feeling judgment outwardly, deciding and planning, organizing and scheduling, controlling and regulating, goal oriented, wanting closure, even when data are incomplete.

All together, these letters comprise ENFJ, and we were given brief descriptions about what all of the letters together meant.

ENFJ = Imaginative harmonizers, workers with people; expressive, orderly, opinionated, conscientious; curious about new ideas or possibilities. Having extroverted feeling as their strongest mental process, they are at their best when responsible for winning people's cooperation with caring insight into their needs. They value:
-Having a wide circle of relationships
- Having a positive, enthusiastic viewpoint of life
- Seeing subtleties in people and interactions
- Understanding others' needs and concerns
- An active, energizing social life
- Seeing possibilities in people
- Thorough follow-through on important projects
- Working on several projects at once
- Caring and imaginative problem solving
- Maintaining relationships to make things work
- Shaping organizations to better serve members
-Sociability and responsiveness
- Structured learning in a humane setting
- Caring, compassionate, and tactfulness
- Appreciation as the natural means of encouraging improvements

All in all, I feel this description is an extremely good fit for me. It touches on random aspects of who I am so vividly that I was pretty shocked at the level of specificity.

There was also a smaller description as follows: Leads by facilitating, helping others plan and cooperate to meet goals, influences by clarifying processes by which goals can be met, and focus is on encouraging others in building consensus.

How awesome! I did disagree with the coaching needs for this profile though which are as follows: Not getting down to business (... Definitely not me.), Taking criticism personally (Only time I care about this is when it's someone I really look up to and the phrasing is done in a very negative way.), becoming bossy or over zealous (I have felt this way before but I would never speak out in a manner that could be construed in this way.), and trying too hard for win-win, harmony (Been there, learned not to do it by now. Oddly enough, managing people on this site I used to be pretty dedicated to fixed all desire to make everyone happy. I am totally not falling for that one again.)

I have to write a paper about all of this stuff relating to my personality. I really don't feel like talking about myself in that way, but this post was to aid my logic and hopefully it has made the process seem more interesting. I think it has. I still wish the title to the personality type was something like... Commander of Everything, instead of Teacher. There seriously was one of the personality types listed as Mastermind. How colorful teacher is compared to that? Come on people? Make it fun and exciting to be a part of my fun and exciting personality type! I'll have to email the official Myers Briggs crew.

Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the masters' table.

A few days ago, one of my friends brought up something that happened between her and her boyfriend. She grew jealous because her boyfriend was looking at other women in this movie they were watching and making snide comments about enjoying it just to mess with her. One of my male friends was sitting there, and remarked that he didn't understand why women were jealous about guys looking at other women. I only listened at the time, but I've thought about it since. I know it would bother me if my boyfriend was staring at women in a sexual way. The reason is pretty simple. "I am my beloved's , and his desire is toward me." (Song of Solomon 7:10) When a person really loves someone else, they want to be wholly connected to each other, and both long for the other to want them.

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave" (SOS 8:6) In a marriage, the two must respect each others quirks and oddities, but they also must respect the other person enough to avoid giving any reason for jealousy. I want to be wholly entwined with my love, not merely on the outside of the relationship. My man has to be my best friend. The two becoming one is excruciatingly important to me. I would want him to be the other half of me. I don't understand stuff like bachelor's parties and bachelorette parties. I wouldn't want to see anybody else. My mind would totally be focused on the one person that really mattered. I'm like that now. I was pretty much invited to a bachelorette party, and there was mention of a stripper. I was like... I hope you aren't expecting me to come. I don't know what part of me is so devoted or where that came from, but the other stuff just doesn't even interest me at all. My focus is all on him.

I don't even know how dangerous that is to be wholly engrossed with someone like this. I guess that's why I relate to Bella's situation and why it was so addictive. Pretty silly I suppose.

Je ne t'aime plus

So... Manu Chao is awesome.

That was my public service announcement for today, which has gone pretty awesomely so far, even if I'm sitting here waiting for tutees to show up while being really bored.

1sts: I learned why Dad never let us get driven around by a bunch of random dudes in high school. Poor loaner car.

I ate at Maki Fresh. It was pretty good but not exceptional. The crunch maki was nice... I feel bad for never using wasabi on my sushi... Guilt. Sushi makes me feel guilty. That's really retarded. The sauce that came with it though was delicious, and a tad spicy. Seems just right.

I tried Edamame though... I didn't know you were supposed to pull the beans out. After eating one whole and deciding it tasted like a pile of strings from string beans, which of course I hate, Nick let me in on the secret. Don't eat the whole thing... Just the seeds inside. Brilliant, I know. Maybe I should ask people before I do things, expecting my actions to make sense or be logical seems to be a problem. Maybe that's some social knack that I never picked up... What more important reasons for etiquette classes are there? Too bad I can't find any available except for the business ones that only explain that we aren't supposed to apply lipstick at the dinner table and what not to wear with striped socks. I've gathered that beforehand; the girls at Kickoff did seem pretty cool for breaking the lipstick rule. General disinterested improprieties of common social behavior are pretty hot I think. I don't think, however, that includes spilling water on myself, or having my cheeks puffed out with water while waiting for the elevator, and someone just so happens to be in said elevator really counts as hot social disinterest. I'll have to work on that.

This week has been really fun, but pretty complex. My schedule will end up relaxing a bit, but right now is when everybody wants to be tutored and everyone wants homework and readings and so on. I was told today by Kristi that I would be able to do more hours than the 10 that she thought would be fine before. This is great news, except for the fact that I tried to fill in the empty holes here at Trio. And at present, I have about 10 random people looking for help and some of them are in classes I have absolutely no memory of. I guess relearning stats 1 will be beneficial... Happy 21 hours of classes to me. I suspect this is vaguely ironic because I do turn 21 in March... I at least won't be taking any tests for my students. Sigh of relief right there. I hate how I memorize things and they just slowly dissipate into no where. I especially abhor my memory when it comes to names and faces... I tried repeating these girls names that I met last Sunday in my head and trying to match them to their names, and the only name I remember is the first one that told me. I guess I'll have to keep working on that.

I wonder what I would have been like if I would have gone to public school..

Abrupt train of thought, I know.

I am reading "5 Minds for the Future" by Howard Gardner and was noting how different I am as a person than the person he described in school that suffered from an un-disciplined mind. He makes a claim that people are forced to spend so much time learning useless facts rather than structure and mental discipline and a rigorous desire to solve problems. I grew up avoiding facts. They were there, through hundreds of pages of books that lay around me. That couldn't interest me less. Now I fall into the realm of having a lack of trivial information to produce decent conversations, but structure and detail to my arguments that come from years of doing whatever I could to get through school without learning dead dates.

I learned adaption. Now that I've been in college for a while, I'm finally learning how to study in a way that I get the information. I've realized that I really love to learn, I just hate to learn too quickly and with lots of multiple-choice exams. Guh. I'm one of those people that don't get the base information until I delve deeper, and so much information fascinates me and continues pulling me away from the 'importants' that will be on the test. I suppose that is why adaptation is so important, to keep my train of thought connected to reality. I don't even really like school. I like the socialization, and I like the success of doing it well. I just don't have to be in there to be enjoying myself. I could be self-taught now that I do have this determination. Obviously I'm staying with the system though.

There's something of a fire burning inside my ribs; it determines that I will continue forcing myself to keep my eyes on the prize. Somehow I've gotten this venom flowing freely through my veins, telling me that I should pay attention to all these schedules and deadlines and dates but it's all over my head at times. I want to challenge myself, devote myself to things pertaining to the good and majestic and wonderful things in this world and make God the center of attention while juggling everything else.

Who do I trust? Who do I want to be? I guess it depends on my mood. This mood test in Honors this week is going to be hilarious. I'll probably end up in some cold, dejected mood and turn out to be introverted and cynical when that's not me at all. I read Shackleton's Way for that class lately and found a quote that is so totally me I should post it here.

"I love the fight and when things [are] easy, I hate it." - Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton was a leader and understood loneliness of choosing to make things a lot easier for other people to reach a goal. I admire him for a lot of what he'd done and imagine that this book will have to be in my personal collection because how strongly it teaches independence and the way to successfully rely on those around you. He has a lot of really great quotes throughout the book, and several parts of the book is solely devoted to what he said or what others said about him. He's no hero of mine though. I don't know what he lived for. Thrill? Excitement? I can't be that person. I don't have to chase danger to enjoy myself in what I do. God will always be a huge part of my life, even though conviction points out that I don't always know what's best for me even though I'm supposed to be listening to him.

I do know that I want to continue to learn, stay close to God, find and garnish closer friends with similar interests, strive to be my best. I guess I should write a mission as if I were a business of some sort to proclaim my intentions and put it on my resume and everything. Let's see...

My mission/objective: To serve God wholly through serving others, while dedicating myself to knowledge and wisdom, striving to be the best in everything I do, and discerning carefully what path I should take to greet the future, prepared for the new tasks life brings.

"Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge." - Proverbs 23:12

La belle dam sans merci

Twilight? If someone had mentioned this book to me before, I would have just stared at them and possibly rolled my eyes and questioned their taste. Silly hype, right?

I've finished the 4 books that are out now, gratis Christy's kindness, and Eclipse has left me pretty bewildered. The second book was my favorite, I could relate eerily, but now that I've read Eclipse, out of order to the other books, the relation has grown more vivid. Do I see myself as Bella? No. The situation surrounding her is close to home. (Yes, I have fallen in love with a vampire and have a werewolf as a best friend... Right...)

Anyway, at one point in my life, I had an Edward, and a Jacob figure, competing for my interest. When Edward was gone a few years back I felt completely shell-shocked, alone, and confused. I didn't know what was going on at all. I just knew that I needed someone around, someone that I could be closer too. Suddenly, a month after thinking how badly I needed someone I could be completely open with, that person fell from the sky and left a crater somewhere in the subcutaneous layer. My love for Edward was unflinching, but painful enough that I realized I needed some form of intervention because I had absolutely no physical contact with people in general. There was like this circle around me, and my personal space wasn't broken because I wasn't comfortable around people still. Jacob was vibrant, witty, personable, and friendly. He was goofy in a way that I couldn't begin to imagine in someone I knew in person. I was used to the solitude but loathed it, and he made things better through his presence. He supplied hugs galore, rampant excitement, and really made me trust him too quickly probably. While I was still hurting over my Edward, he tried to get me interested in him, I guess. Like Jacob, he was unpredictable, outgoing yet bashful, boyish, and very warm. At first, I thought he was crazy. He seemed so wild and reckless that I wondered where he even came from. His personality may be recreated by stuffing a meteor in a balloon full of helium. He loved me, even though I have the opportunity to doubt a lot of things now, and in my own way, I loved him back. Not as a lover, but as a best friend that I could really mix my feelings into instead of be all quiet and shy and demure like normal. I was confused, and I let him manipulate me in some ways, but I ended up doing the right thing. Unlike Bella, I have a backbone and would prefer sacrificing my own feelings or happiness to protect someone else. His relentless pressure about a relationship was not something that I wanted to deal with, as I still wholeheartedly loved Edward and did not want to be without him. Jacob began to call me callous because I emotionally checked out after our interchangeable warning matches, but the shock of his final abrupt conversation cutoff left me hurt, and in a way, forlorn. I remember complaining to my random friends coldly about how he had told me that I was a bad friend because I treated him like all of my other friends and was growing distant. He couldn't manipulate me if he was distant so it worked out quite nicely.

I, like Bella, still felt the negative impact of avoiding and probably hurting Jacob by the end of book 2-3. I could read his emotions, see the impact of our mutual agreement to avoid each other but he was still there for me and I feel so badly when I hurt other people. I did blame myself as Bella does, although she goes a little wild with those feelings. I'd like to believe my own were more reasonable. Then again, my Edward is thousands of miles away with no way to bridge the gap unless I somehow find a way or move out and so on. Maybe Bella wasn't that crazy to sacrifice herself for 5 years on a whim, or hope of something working out as I'd like. Maybe Bella was realistic enough to do something else with herself. Then again, Edward wouldn't leave her waiting unless it was for her own good. I suppose there's no reason being depressed over uncontrollables. I'd still wish him to be part of my life and I would kill for a chance to fall asleep in Edward's arms as Bella can so often. As Bella realized, there is one person that is the most important though. As I read these books, I found myself grinning over the random correlations between the books and my life.

The first book was still a sappy piece of typical teenager girl drama.... Disgruntled, I will have to leave the description at that. Books 2 and 3 had the power to make me think about how I do feel and have felt for so long, as a prisoner trying to keep it all together when nothing makes sense.

So to you, Jacob Black, I havae finally bid you an emotional farewell. Edward was always the most important person in my world. I was silly for trying to think around that due to my own momentary gratification or needs.

Bobble head syndrome

Waiting for my Entrepreneurship class is certainly going to be a challenge, given it's at 4:30 and I'm just doing random chores. Worse yet, I've realized today that dinner will be completely construed once I get into my night classes more. I haven't even had one yet, last week I got to skip out of Retail (with promised access to a video of the class once Mr. Gee gets around to it.) because of Kick off. This week will technically be the first I'll really have all 3 of them. I normally eat around 5, and so obviously I'll either have to decide to eat out before class or wait 2 1/2 more hours than normal to get home.... I don't want to screw up my metabolism either so I've just been balancing the options in my head. So far it seems that the best idea is to bring food with me to a certain extent, especially since I can't stand eating on campus that much. Still have to blow the $225, but being on campus all day for 3 days pretty much leaves me a lot of room to spend it. According to my calculations... I have about 5 bucks to spend every day there. Doesn't seem like much anyway with such ostentatious prices.

"Run neon tiger... don't let them tame you. You're far too pure and bold."

I don't know what I'm waiting for... School, work, all these random things I have going on doesn't seem like much at all. There's this internal yearning that makes me want to shoot farther; be more; know more. I have this feeling of puzzlement in the back of my head, attempting to push it's way out right behind my eyes of what I am, who I want to be, what I want to reach for and all that muddled up mess. I started to wonder if I am in the right field. Consultation is certainly close to my heart but would I prefer business or consumer? Would I rather tend to the problems of a company or group on whole, even a non-profit, or would I rather tend to the needs of the little guy? If I'd rather help the little guy than shouldn't I instead be double majoring in finance rather than marketing? What sort of information do I need financially for management consultation for that matter? And would I rather specialize in non-profits or technology firms or mix it up and be very broad? I know I would like to specialize so I suppose I should just keep adjusting to what becomes the new path. I think helping the little guy is more of a side desire, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and coaching on a managerial level is more proactive for career. I could always focus differently in graduate school if this turns out to be defective logic. For the present, I'd like to become more involved in coaching people one-on-one, and maybe mentoring at Trio if that is possible. At Kick off there was the mention of helping out the Shades Valley Y and maybe doing life coaching and that sort of thing for the people that go. My face lit up like a light bulb. How perfect? I guess I should start with Trio and keep trying to edge out and don't get blown out with all the stuff that will be going on this semester. I'll have to cut business honors in half just to get to my mentoring program and am going to have to get out of there as early as possible too.

Ahh... Busy busy. It was still cool seeing Patrick getting baptized yesterday. I had no idea he'd only recently been saved. God really is an awesome God. Next week I'll get to try out that service and see if I enjoy it more; I have a feeling that I definitely will. I hope so; it'll be a good experience to grow accustomed to. That's all for today.

Cheers.

So... there was today

Ah... First kick-off I have been able to attend with DAXKO and I have to say that I enjoyed it royally. There was so much to do and my team may not have won but it was a mixture of all these things that I've always wanted to do but never have. My team was awesome and was comprised of a mixture of over-competitive, unruly, crazy and fun people. Anne, Patrick, Brian, Jeremy, Jamie, Susan, and Ming all performed impressively; and I even surprised myself by not getting worn out as quickly as I expected to, given the lack of exercise. Exercise is definitely on my New Years resolution list, but not as the typical resolution. I'd decided for some time that it's something I want to retain in my life; I want to be active, whether biking, swimming, whatever it takes to be fit long-term.

Today made me think about the future in a way. So much research must be done to fulfill all of the goals I've set aside for this future ahead of me. Where do I want to live, or do, are very viable questions and are constantly changing, at least moving forward and spiralling out into specifics of interest. What do I really want though? I'd like to say that I know but there are so many different avenues that could be taken and my plans would change as I pass different possible roads. I feel like I'm on 2nd avenue south and my life can be taken so many different one-ways I couldn't imagine. Each one way that is taken to meet some aim or goal generally puts me on a road such as 20th street, chock full of many more main roads and one ways and places to stop. Where do I stop? Should I speed up? Slow down? Options, options, options.

For now, things seem right. Who knows once the semester starts though. I've signed up for so many things and am extremely excited to be involved around campus, even more so than last semester. I'd like to stick it with GFBC for a while too, even though there are other churches I'd prefer to be involved with that just happen to be too far away for now. I can never get stiffness, nor can I figure out when people react certain ways to me. I guess before I know why I don't particularly fit in there, I should see why my behavior is ignored, thwarted, or misconstrued. Perhaps, it's not something I can change in me once I know. What is though? All things concerning me are void of reason at times, so much so that it becomes apparent that God in no way controls man. Man is his, or her, own being, fully concerned with himself and following his own way and logic. The same goes for me and I also note that this perception is based on my own life and said logic. I just never really know how anybody sees me. I feel as if I am some person that's never really found herself in any one place, except for those little lovely moments that come and go, generally when solitude confines me in some coffee shop or store with half a dozen complete strangers. It is then when I feel wholly at ease.

Team building just makes me realize that I have no idea if I am coming on too strong, too weak, or just seem odd. To reach these goals I must find myself and my faults so that I at least have the option of fixing them. This whole Kick-off has inspired me to seek out those faults, even while things are crazy busy, and test myself further, make myself work harder, meet the need even more. Even if my findings hurt, they must be sought if I ever am to really improve myself.