On Failing a Personality Test

I had to take a personality test for one of my classes this semester.  Before the teacher handed back our results, she went through each of the opposing categories and had us guess where we may have placed.  Long story short, I failed my personality test.  Or rather, I guessed only one out of four correctly.  It seems the only thing I know for sure about myself is that I'm an introvert.  Other than that, it's really just a shot in the dark.

Which has left me thinking.  Is personality really even something that can be tested?  It seems like my personality and preferences are in a constant state of flux and change between two opposing people:  the Kristen I grew up being and the Kristen I grew up to be, or am currently.

I know for a fact the Kristen I grew up being was extremely serious, driven by routine, probably seemed cold or detached, depended on organization, had little need for relationships, overly prudish, and so on.  And this was the Kristen I placed myself as before receiving the results.

As for the Kristen I grew up to be, she's really different.  Her personality has been shaped and moulded by a wide variety of life experiences.  She has compassion and patience for the weaknesses and shortcomings of others.  She's incredibly flexible, even spontaneous.  She's curious, she's idealistic, and she has a greater regard for the successes of others, rather than strictly the success of herself.  And this is the Kristen the test results reported.

So which category do I trust?  Is it possible to have two personality types?

The answer I seem to feel is that personality is a tricky thing to compartmentalize and it would be a great risk to the person I could become if I was to simply nestle into a certain category.

Possibly the answer is simply that personality adapts and I've simply adapted over time.  Neither personality is right or wrong.

What do you think?

On Choosing One's Hill

I almost chose a hill to die on this week.

The Registrar, like the actual dude with the title "Registrar," at my university made me SOO MAD.  I began plotting how I would publicly rip him to pieces and hopefully get him fired.  I was prepared to do whatever it'd take to prove he was out of line and then proceed to smear it in his face.  Editorials in the school newspaper!  Petitions!  Tattling to his boss!  EGGING!!!  ... okay, not egging ...

Thankfully, after getting control of my temper, I quietly slinked back down the hill.  However, if I let myself think about it too long I start marching back up that hill again, prepared to die a most stoic death.

So I've been thinking.  What makes us choose hills to die on?  What makes a cause or point so important that we'll sacrifice all of our energy in pursuing and proving and pointing out how right we are?  Some kind of "Martyr Syndrome" or something, I guess.

Perhaps I'm just an apathetic person because I can't really think of many hills I've scaled and then proceeded to die upon.  There was that one time I tried to defend myself against an anonymous bully, but was that really a hill?  Or even a death?  I guess perhaps Depression awareness is something I believe in, but in my life it's really more of a mound that I'm standing on, playing show and tell with my scars.

It seems like everywhere I look there are people dying on hills.  Pro-Lifers hanging gruesome posters off overpasses.  Women movements for the priesthood.  Elimination of bullying!  Same-sex marriage.  Save the Whales!  Vegans?  When did society become so hilltop suicidal?  Is it just a phase?  You know, like all the cool kids are toting an iPhone 5 at the front lines of a cause?

The biggest question I have about this though is:

Which hills are really WORTH dying on?

Ultimately, for me, it would be my faith and family.  Everything other than that just seems so superficial and fleeting, why would someone want to die on a hill that will eventually just erode and crumble to a null and meaningless point?

So, what hills are worth dying on for you?  I am sincerely curious.

Gone With The Wind

The last time I visited my Grandma Gibb, she told me I was sentimental.  In her life history she wrote that I had old fashioned values.  I think what she's trying to say is that I was born in the wrong decade.  Perhaps even the wrong century.  I couldn't agree more with her.

I just finished reading the book "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and now my heart aches. The darn book has consumed me for the past two weeks and now that it's over I'm left feeling hopelessly out of place.  Is it possible to feel like you are literally better suited to a different era?

Don't get me wrong, life in this day and age has its perks.  I am far more educated than I ever could have been in a different day and age and I'm sure the tangible inferiority of women back in the day would have seriously frustrated me.  Yet those two perks and other things from today, like faster communication, quick and reliable transportation and easier access to wealth and information, seem so petty in comparison to what my life could have been like if I was born years and years before.

So lately I've felt rather disconnected.  Perhaps it's my depression being kindly enough to remind me that it still exists, but I don't think it's just that.  I sincerely feel like I'm stuck in the wrong place.  I am Ashley Wilkes.  And this is where I really belong.

Pictures from my Grandma Wendorff.

"Yes, life has a glitter now - of a sort.  That's what's wrong with it.  The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour."

- Gone With the Wind