Thursday, March 22, 2007

Rantings of an introvert !


I was labeled as an introvert, in front of my whole class. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me squirm, my Meyer Briggs personality report was held up high in the air to for everybody to see the rare occurrence, when the bar charts showed me highly introverted in all 5 aspects. *sigh*
And then to my horror, all of us introverts were herded into one corner of the class, while the extroverts gathered in the other corner.

I’m talking about my ‘Career Management’ class yesterday, in which we were given out our Meyer Briggs personality test results. I was branded as an ‘INFJ’ which was somewhat different from my previous test results. Anyway, after the class was divided into two groups, they were both asked to come up with things that they liked and disliked about the other groups.

A couple of interesting things that were noted about the two groups were:

  • 80% of the people in the introverted group were wearing either blue or black. (For some reason I had decided to wear my favorite blue shirt that day)
  • All the extroverts were standing really close to each other while the introverts kept their distance.
  • The extroverts just couldn’t stop talking among themselves, while us introverts just finished the job at hand and then were trying to make uncomfortable small talk. (Did I mention that small talk sucks?)

Anyway … following are the things that my extrovert counterparts didn’t like about us:

  • It’s really hard to get us (introverts) get excited about stuff. (Which is rubbish … I do get excited about things sometimes, but I just keep it to myself)
  • We don’t talk! (duh .. if I start talking too … who is going to listen to you when you’re talking incessantly about anything and everything)
  • We sometimes don’t understand what’s going on in meetings etc. (if we’re quiet, that doesn’t mean we’re stupid. I’d rather stay quiet and let you take control of things until you do/say something wrong, and then I’ll offer my expert opinion that will leave people dumbfounded. hehe)
  • We write long emails instead of using the phone. (Oops … I think this blog post is getting quite long too. Oh and yeah, I do prefer emails over making actual phone calls)

So, next time when you see an introvert displaying some of these similar characteristics, try not to judge us based on what you see. We are just regular people with regular feelings. We are just a little stingy with words sometimes and like to keep things to ourselves if we dont know you that well.
And to set the record striaght I wore a green polo to work today (and I felt rebellious for some reason) ;)

8 comments:

En said...

That's so funny!!! I totally understand where you're coming from! I come off as in introvert myself...but I'm more of an extrovert once I'm comfortable talking to the person. So I'm a half and half :o)

Arf said...

hmm looks like you've got the best of both worlds there Enyur. :p I can be somewhat extroverted around people I know, but if you put me in a room with a lot of unknown people, I have this awesome ability to stand in the corner and become practically invisible. haha

Aya said...

"We write long emails instead of using the phone. (Oops … I think this blog post is getting quite long too. Oh and yeah, I do prefer emails over making actual phone calls)"
I enjoyed this as I can so relate to this... and yeah..small talk sucks..heh..but introverts rule, regardless.. :)

Unknown said...

dont worry big bro....it runs in the family......A quote i read it readers digest a long time ago......"its better to stay quiet and let people assume that you are stupid rather than speak and prove it."

Arf said...

thanks for visiting my blog Aya. And yeah, I totally agree ... introverts rock .. lol

Amna: haha thanks for the vote of confidence little sister. I think there's another saying that goes like 'Empty vessels make more noise' ??? :p

Huda said...

I took the Myers-Briggs when I was 15. I scored right down the E/I line, making me an ENFJ/INFJ.

I don't know if I'm different now, but I definitely don't do anything of the things INFJs allegedly do. (Especially the email thing... I'm notorious for walking over and sitting in your cube until you do what I want you to do!)

So what did the introverts say they didn't like about the extroverts?

Bee Amma said...

hey that was really interesting! i am not sure whether im an introvert or an extrovert. I guess the same as enyur. I don't shut up once i get to know someone, and what i am like around them really depends on the inital vibe i get off of them!
and i do prefer long emails to phone convos hehe!

Arf said...

Huda: I think I've read somewhere that your personality type changes as you grow older and go through various life experiences.
Some of the things that the introverts didn't like were:
-If an introvert is not talking, the extroverts assume that they're not interested or dont have an opinion.
-Extroverts talk a lot! Sometimes to the point where they dont let the introvert contribute to a conversation.

Bee Amma: If you have time, maybe you should take one of those Meyyer-Briggs tests ... they're about 10 minutes long .. Im sure it would be interesting to see how accurate the results are. http://similarminds.com/jung.html