In the early ’80s Myers-Briggs came around, sweeping the Irvine Unified School District into its cyclone path, spitting out personality type info ad hoc. I worked at a small elementary school with perhaps two dozen staff – and everyone was an ENFJ!
Coincidence – perhaps not, for the staff was hand-picked – with kid gloves – to open a new school in a high social-economic area, a community where children were Stanford or Harvard bound at birth. We needed every ounce of personality, prowess, and perfection we could team-muster to deal with the forebears of this generation’s ‘helicopter parents’, the ones who taught them how.
Since we were all well-schooled in the poise, perfection, and prowess of IUSD, the educational equivalent to divine Disneyland, this naive young lass from Indiana (yes, me!) believed the tool to be an in-house personality profile. It’s length and in-depth questioning paralleled the interview process that had gotten me the job, moving me away from blizzards.
But, in the ever-expanding universe of compulsive creative thinkers (yes, me too) this charting of personality types has spawned a diverse array of re-incarnations:
- in the Star Wars system, I am Padame Amidela aka Natale Portman, who got all of the great outfits and a hair-do improvement over the Cinnabons on each side of Princes Leia’s head
- in the Harry Potter schemata, I am Dumbledor, a sage old wizard, a mantle I could wear sans the facial hair and other appendage
- in the Downton Abbey – well, my character is Lady Sybil Cora Branson, the family rebel among the aristocrats. (But she is dead, so I’ll transmigrate to Shirley MacClaine’s character)
- in the United States, I should have grown up in Michigan
- in the Animal system of personality types, I am a dog, though I will specify Golden Retriever, my favorite breed
- in the….well, you get the gist
When Vinlovers recently created a system of wine preferences based on the 16 personality types, I drank it in, reading every profile – and then spit it out! I do NOT like my wine type! I am signing up to retake the test post haste.
No wait, I’ll just run to the wine cellar (our pantry) and open a bottle of my favorite: ‘Seven Deadly Zins’. Old Vine Zinfandel, among the first grapes in California, wasn’t even named. Who were these vinlovers to typecast me?
Wine poured and slurped, back to Google I went, surfing to find the test…and then I found the Prayer list by Myers-Briggs Personality Type.
I had a good laugh as I fingered myself on the chart, heartened that everything is covered, even the Seven Deadly Sins.
So… what “type” did your vino and/or prayer list say you are? As if you can be boxed in by any one type. P.S.: MB said that I was a lab, too. The high school vocational test said that I should be a forest ranger. And, 1,800 people at GSLC probably think that I should have been a forest ranger, too!!
Ha-ha, Jimbo!
I am an ENFJ, always and forever, and have forgotten what the vino-typers’ wine preference was, probably a white. I do love ‘Seven Deadly Zins’ label of Zinfandel, a spicy wine that suits me just grape!
As I recall, the H.S. ‘Kuder Preference Test’ placed me in ballet. Me, Ms. Un-grace-full! Ha!
Hey, do you ‘pine’ for being a forest ranger?
I love my prayer…:) perfect.
On the Grey’s Anatomy test, I’m McDreamy and Dan’s McSteamy. 8)
I am an ENFJ too, and my prayer is a good one for me. Never heard of the wine one-will have to try that one. Now that I am retired I have time to take all these personality tests (not really!)
Cheryl – you are correct about not taking anymore personality tests: you don’t have to do it because each of the paradigms mentioned used the Myers-Briggs structure.
Besides, who could perfect on our personality that is…from our Maker?
Jessica – Larry and I adore that you two, the cutest couple in Tucson, are McDreamy and McSteamy! Hot stuff – perhaps that’s why our weather has been so great 😉