P - Personality

About a year ago I read about all the different types of personality, and I could never figure out which type I belong to, or at least I didn’t care to know myself enough to figure it out. Last week Careers Portal told me that I am a Theorist, which pretty much doomed me to a life in IT. Luckily, I’m not a team player, though according to the six – yes six – speakers we’ve had, all talking about the glories of IT, team playing is essential. I put on a serious face while mentally making a miserable attempt at break dancing to let out my feelings, since I couldn’t exactly do a few loop de loops on my Nimbus 2000 as Harry did.

I was kind of rooting for Idealist because I’m pretty sure that the inventor of Facebook was an idealist, but that kind of career path was pretty much out of the question because computers, as I mentioned before, are not exactly my strong suit. Or any part of my ‘suit’ really. Still, Theorists are cool enough, so I shrugged, patted myself on the back for apparently being smart, even though I’ve been cheating to make myself smart since personality tests were invented. One question was “I am analysing this test, yes or no?” and I was kind of like “dude I am pretty much hacking this test”.

Figuring out the personalities of others is an on-going study of mine, which I am relatively adept at by now, but that’s still about level 25 where master is level 100. There are certain people I tend to be a bit blind to, and it isn’t helping that people keep changing and revealing true colours. Life would be so much easier if people were painted with their true colours and I could match them up to a guide like a mood ring and avoid heartbreak, but the world’s an imperfect place, and no personality ring has been invented as of now. I don’t even trust mood rings, because when I’m really happy they always convince me that I’m sad, thereby ruining my happy mood.

That said most people, just not the people I hang out with, are easy to read. Other people have made me a cynic, because most of them seem to be exactly what I have desperately tried to avoid making my stereotypical image of a teenage girl. I can play their games too, I just don’t, but I enjoy watching them. I watch as a girl advertises her low self-esteem in order to have it elevated and then crushed when she’s no longer the center of attention. I see the fake smiles, especially the ones aimed in my direction, and the almost spiteful laughs. You know the drill, and maybe you stand to attention when society calls out the orders.

Personalities are hard to change, especially when you do it for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen smart people dumbing themselves down for so long that they have actually become dumb. By refusing to read anymore in order to fit in, they have become non-readers. By texting in Math class so many times, the formulas escape their understanding. I’ve seen it, and it’s sad, because suddenly intelligence is a threat and you can either create a social level whereby you can live in harmony with the aforementioned smart person or you can tear the scaffolding from beneath them, or try; because knowledge tempered with IQ makes a pretty solid foundation, even when you’re still making the structure of what you can achieve.

Watching this, I’ve vowed never to change who I am, even if it means being alone, because all I really have, when you take away everything material, is myself, and I’m the only person I have to live with forever, so I won’t make that someone I don’t want to share a mind with. Even if I don’t know what my personality is yet, it doesn’t matter. I could be a Theorist or an Idealist, but I’ll still be me. I’ll still have a slightly dark sense of humour and love learning things.

Don’t let personality be a label that you have to stick on your lapel so that the world knows who you are, make personality fit you, and it’ll always be your glass slipper. Remember, as Oscar Wilde once said, "Be yourself, everyone else is taken".