The Life of an Introvert

Can You Tell if Someone's an Introvert?

During the last period of my school day, I have a class called psychology. Now, normally at the end of the day, I'm all burned out. I'm more than ready to go home, curl up in a blanket, and eat ice cream. But there's something about this class that interests me. Not a day goes by that I'm not paying attention in it.

Well, a couple of days ago, the teacher of this class began a short discussion on introversion and extroversion. And of course, I paid extra special attention to it.

So our teacher goes ahead and asks our class if they think he's an introvert or an extrovert, and the majority of the class say they think that the teacher is an extrovert. And looking at this teacher's behavior, I can understand why.

He spends most of the class period talking. Talking not even necessarily about the class material itself, but other things. So a lot of the students in my class, of course, assume that he's an extrovert.

But he's not.

As it turns out, our teacher has actually taken the Briggs-Meyer personality test many times. And for those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically a test that gives you a four-letter word that describes your personality type. If those four letters begin with the letter "I", it means you're more of an introvert. If they begin with the letter "E", you're more of an extrovert.

My psychology teacher has taken the Briggs-Meyer test over and over again, and each time he did, the score that he received always had the letter "I" at the beginning.

So I went ahead and looked up the Briggs-Meyer personality test scores, and I found something interesting. With each four-letter score, there were words that described the personality type. For example, someone with the score INTJ, which is on the introverted side, would be considered a "mastermind". However, the score associated with the word "teacher" began with the letter E. In other words, someone that has a teacher type of personality would usually be considered on the extroverted side.

Before, I continue, though, I want to reiterate something that I mentioned in an earlier chapter. I think of extroversion and introversion as more of a spectrum, and people fall on that spectrum in different places. As I said before, no one could be 100% extrovert or introvert. That person would probably go insane.

This is why when I use the word introvert, or when people use that word in general, they tend to mean that a person leans more toward introversion than extroversion, not that they are 100% introverted and there is nothing about them that is outgoing or extroverted at all. Vice versa for extroverts here.

So to clarify, everyone that is introverted is mostly introverted and a little extroverted, and everyone that is extroverted is mostly extroverted and a little introverted. Now, exactly how introverted that person is always depends on the individual.

That is where the whole "introverted extrovert" or "extroverted introvert" idea comes from. An introverted extrovert, for example, may be someone who has the qualities of both persnality traits, but leans more towards one side than the other.

So to move on, my psychology teacher went on to say that he was very surprised at his being an introvert, but then he said that he behaved differently at his own home than he did at school. He mentioned that while he greatly enjoys his job, when he was at home, he tended to be quieter than he was at school. He liked to build things and do work around the house.

This reminds me a lot of one of my classmates, who is reserved and more studious in school, while being the exactly opposite when she is at home.

I think the important thing that I realized here was that it is not easy to tell what someone's personality type is. I sometimes look at my classmates, observing the way that they behave at school and trying to classify them as "introverted" or "extroverted" (That is not stalking, I promise. It's observation. I think). But the reality is that while they behave one way at school, they may behave completely differently in another setting.

What I realized here is that a lot of people think that it takes an extrovert to be a great teacher. Why? Because you have to talk a lot.

But a great teacher is someone that can connect or identify with their students. And to me, talking more does not correlate with being able to connect or identify better with your students. Besides that, I have been thinking a great deal over whether or not introversion and extroversion relates to talking as much as it does to the way both personality types process the environment around them and reacting to things (sensitivity).

On the one hand, I understand that as a whole, introverts do tend to be quieter. On the other hand, when comfortable, introverts can speak for long levels on many different subjects. That's why many introverts are actually public speakers.

I won't deny that a teacher needs to be able to teach their subject to the best of their ability, and I'm not denying that that will require them to talk, but anyone that is passionate about the subject they are teaching will be able to teach it well, extroverted or not.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not as easy as I, or other people originally thought it was, to classify introverts and extroverts, based on simply observing them. Everyone in their life needs some type of balance between both introversion and extroversion. Which means that yes, the most extroverted of extroverts will need at some point to time spent in solitude, and the most introverted of introverts will have human interaction.