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Bob Davidson
David,
My guess as to why some of those college experiences are still vivid to me and not you is that a number of my college professors were inspiring to me and changed my life. Since July I've been bicycle riding with the dogs every evening it isn't raining, for over an hour. Despite all the exercize, my blood pressure, pulse rate, and weight haven't changed; however, my appetite has shrunk and my clothes are loose. The bike rides are a good time to muse over things and I take advantage of that.
I was musinjg about why I have some strong memories about professors and classes. I, of course, have sharp memories of the amazing women I met -- especially the ones who broke my heart and the ones whose hearts I broke, and the ones where those categories overlap.
When I think about college one thing that stands out is that I ran into teachers who thought the way I do and seemed to appreciate my ideas. In high school, I felt disliked by the teachers who weren't indifferent. In Meyers-Briggs terms, RHS was an SJ institution, designed and run by SJs for the benefit of other SJs. The part of UT we encountered was pure NT. (Depending on what expert you look at, 35 to 40% of the population is SJ, an equal portion is SP, and NT and NFs are the remainder.) The essential difference between the SJs and NTPs like me is they have the overwhelming need for order, control, and predictibility. NTPs live for exploring, learning, and creating.
When my son was in kindergarten, his teacher had written her Master's thesis for the guy who developed the Meyers-Briggs test for children. The gifted-talented program HISD had at the time was justified as an anti-gang measure; they didn't mention the personality types, the advocates for the program showed the school board that the students who benefit by g-t programs are also the ones who form (as opposed to join) gangs and they are identifiable through proper testing.and controllable with proper education. The HISD Vanguard program when my kids were in it was gold for a small portion of the student popuation. They have since diluted it with equity cultural marxism into the shell of its former self. My son and daughter managed to get a first-rate education in a decaying big city school system. Our neighborhood elementary school was one of the two designated district-wide g-t programs at the time. There were complicated political manueverings that went on, but it was helped by the fact that our little neighborhood always had the dominant school board member living here during that time.
That teacher did a seminar for the parents obstensibly about dealing with their difficult smart kid. She had us all take the adult M-B test beforehand and spent two nights showing us how things worked. I was working for the FDIC at the time and our personnel people made us take that test and did presentations -- like all the workplace diversity training, and other h.r. crap we had to sit through. We trial lawyers generally skipped those timewasters because we were in court or depositions or mediations or something outside the office at the time. I went into the teacher's program totally skeptical.
That lifted when she divided us into the four temperments. I am a fan of Carl Jung (we have the same birthday) and am familiar with Jungian psychology so the framework of four key personality traits was easy to see, but dividing the people blew my mind.
There were two tables of people like my ex-wife, the women in their Talbot's and Ann Taylor outfits, the guys neatly dressed in labeled clothes, with their organizers out diligently taking notes, on the left of the teacher. They were evenly spaced around two tables and obviously convinced that they were the elite. Those folks have always scared the crap out of me -- they are smart in a way I just don't understand. They usually dislike me, hate my humor, and make sure I know it -- like the RHS teachers and administration or Donette Moss. They are the sensor-judgers: SJs. The arch-enemies of the NTP. Administrators.
There was another group, mainly women, of Heights hipsters (the arty people who moved away when the McMansion vermin took over the neighborhood) -- long dresses, sandals, long old-style hippie hair. The guys were the type who wear bow ties with a suit. They were bunched together at the end of one table, whispering together in the middle of the room. There were about as many of them as the SJs. They are the intuitive feelers: NFs. Artists, psychologists people in helping professions.
Another group sat in the back, with their arms folded, laughing at the whole thing. They had expensive watches, purses, and designer labels on their clothers. There weren't too many of them. They were the sensory perceivers: SPs. Salesmen.
The teacher told the other people where to sit and told our group, "Get a chair and sit where you want. I'm not going to try to tell you what to do because I don't want to argue." We pulled up chairs and sat in a row to the right, eveyone with crossed arms and legs, looking skeptical. We were the NTs. We were dressed comfortably but no designer labels. Intuitive thinkers.
The teacher was an NF whose dad was a retired Air Force intelligence officer and her mom a child psychologist, both NTs. As she told the parents, "I'm used to dealing with the critters in my family." She presented the information as a guide for SJs to understanding their difficult children.
No one had ever explained to me the differences in people's thought processes before that. It was an epiphany for me. My ex saw it as showing the personal failings and moral shortcomings of people who are not INTJ. She skipped the second session. That orientation towards one type is why schools love workbooks, repetition, and drilling the same material over and over -- and why it's torture of a number of us.
I went back to work, got together with the other litigator-bank closer attorney (three of us combined those jobs, the other one was deputy managing attorney), who was a great believer in Meyers-Briggs. She and I both tested ENTP, with the E and T being somewhat in the middle and the N and P being overwhelming. We got the personnel guy to share everyone's profile with us by being interested in what he was doing. We then experimented with different methods of getting them to do things. We figured that our sexual difference would take that off the table as a reason -- i.e., solidarity or sexism, if we both used the different methods on the same people.
What happened was mind-blowing amazing. If you try to persuade SJs with mere logic, it sounds like noise to them. If you use the procedures manual, they will do anything. It doesn't even have to make sense so long as it follows procedures and they are convinced they can't get into trouble. They love lists of things to do but don't want to know reasons. The FDIC middle management types are all SJs (usually ESTJ); so are paralegals (ISTJ).
With SPs, it's personal. Especially the female ESFPs, which is the legal secretary profile. They will walk through broken glass for you if they like you and you personalize things. They will do nothing if they don't. They hate paralegals -- bitches who drop lists of things to do in their inboxes. The paralegals think the secretaries don't like them because of sexism and the fact that they aren't lawyers.
With NTs, you reason with them. If they accept your reasoning they are on board. If not, you better convince them. NFs are similar, except that they need to feel right. Knowing isn't enough for them. The lawyers everyone loved were ENFs. The ones they were scared of were NTs. The ones they hated were INTJ. We had no SP lawyers.
It still works. Most NTs think it is like astrology -- NFs get it. I have no clear idea what SJ or SP people think, or how they do.
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