Remember when you first discovered you were an introvert? For me it was the fall of 1996: my freshman year of college. No major struck my fancy so I chose Business; more out of pragmatism--the business of America is business after all--than a burning desire to one day have a cubicle to call my own.
The School of Business required all incoming majors to take the venerable Myers-Briggs personality test. Several weeks later, they corralled all of us aspiring Dwight Schrutes into an auditorium and handed back our results. Admittedly, my results perturbed me. I only scored 98% in the introvert category, a letdown for a student accustomed to perfect scores. Before I could find a teaching assistant to grub the extra two percentage points from, the proctor offered up a biased explanation of the differences between extroversion and introversion (sorry, no prize for mastering the obvious and guessing which they favored) then asked us introverts to reveal ourselves through a show of hands. Being a naive young man, my hand shot up first. And stayed up. For a few seconds. Then reality struck as I scanned the room, looking for a fellow introvert with whom to mind meld. There were none. Or at least none but me flamboyant enough to admit it in a roomful of men and women who considered a three martini lunch a career aspiration.
Looking back, there were probably a few fellow travelers in that room. In anonymous surveys we make up a quarter of the United States population. And despite perceptions to the contrary, not all of us are librarians cloistered in the stacks or accountants primed to discover loopholes for their tax avoidant clients. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, forty percent of us have somehow managed to climb the mountains of the business world and summit as CEOs.
"People assume you can't be shy and be on television. They're wrong." These words are not my own but those of noted TV anchor Diane Sawyer. If given the chance, we introverts can make remarkable achievements in fields one would never suspect. While our critics love to point to Richard Nixon to show introverts are not cut out to be leaders, let us not forget that the man who led us through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln himself, was an introvert.
Think we're all party poopers? Think again. Noted wild and crazy guy Steve Martin is an introvert.
Think our women are bespectacled nerds with their heads buried into the latest volume of Twilight? Wrong. Oscar-winning beauties Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts are both introverts.
Think we're all boring, button-up types? Two words for you: Christina Aguilera.
As you can see we introverts routinely defy the expectations you have of us. That is all for today. My art class starts soon and the students will have no one to draw if their nude model, yours truly, does not show.
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Jeanette DeMain
From The Midwest
Patrick Frank
Kent Pitman
sueinaz
Harper Peterson
Salon.com
Comments
'Nuff said.
"I think its more than likely your class had plenty of introverts present. They just did not feel like sharing that fact about themselves with the others."
I did allude to that possibility in my post:
There were none. Or at least none but me flamboyant enough to admit it in a roomful of men and women who considered a three martini lunch a career aspiration.
-Travis
Sorry you're getting shit over your teaching post. Right now there is much conversation about grammar and punctuation and you just rattled a few teachers cages since they probably went to Dorinda's post first. I would be surprised if the amount of teachers on OS was less than 75% ;) watch your step or you will be pummeled with words. It's good here though, just give them time to right the hive and all will be well- none of the flapping was personal to you or your post.