Are you an introvert or extrovert?

[Bobby]

Introversion means preferring to recharge your batteries in solitude and finding large groups of people tiring. Extroverts are energised by large groups of people and do not really like being alone. Most people prefer one way of recharging to the other. So, which way do you lean?

I am an introvert.

[Petros]

I do not lean. I stand tall and affirm:

An Introvert I.

So Herself, Number 1 Son, Nice Niece Liesl, Julia, nephew Marc, etc.

Number 1 Son and I are closet introverts - in certain styles of company we act out, paying for it later. Herself and Julia are martyr introverts - in certain styles of company they get deeply emotionally involved, paying for it later.

[JimShedd112]

i have to describe myself as an introvert, particularly in terms of meeting and interacting with strangers. I do sometimes feed off the energy of groups though.

Jim Shedd

[Petros]

My mother in law, introvert at heart, always enjoyed group energy, like a comfortable plant basking in the sun and wicking up water. Hardly ENERGIZED - not a word you could use of her; but as it were comforted.

[Bare_Truth]

The sample size is too small to be definitive as yet, and I will be interested to see how it develops. Also as it is a poll only seen by those who communicate on the internet it is a skewed sample and all the more skewed by being on a naturist board. So it may be useful but must be understood to apply to a particular population.
But if the ratio stays about the same, I will be a bit bemused as I would not have expected it to be so.

Introversion means preferring to recharge your batteries in solitude and finding large groups of people tiring. Extroverts are energised by large groups of people and do not really like being alone. Most people prefer one way of recharging to the other. So, which way do you lean?

Bobby has cast the introvert versus extrovert issue as a matter of preference, however I do not see it as a preference but rather a condition of ones personality. As I have mentioned frequently before I am an Aspie (asperger's syndrome) My social klutziness is a condition of my existence and not a preference. My preference would be to function more smoothly in groups of people, but that does not seem to be "in the cards" for me. Also society's reaction to me is a bit beyond my control and influences how I function with respect to it. So when I responded to the poll, I responded in the sense of my condition and not my preference of how I would have it be.

I can best illustrate this with an anecdote from my years as a college professor of engineering. My lecture style could best be described as quirky with a touch of bombasticness. Students said that they did not sit in the front row because I was too loud when I lectured. So on one occasion I commented to the class that I was really a shy person. That comment was met with a universal look of incredulousness on their faces. I then felt I should explain, that as an inherently shy person, I had to overcome that to function in my responsibilities to interact with a whole classroom full of students, and being inherently shy, I was inept at compensating and tended to overcompensate. At that point their expressions changed from incredulous to one of "Oh, that explains it."

So in answering the poll my response was influenced by, not what I would be by choice, but rather what I am by nature. Asperger's brings with it a variable variety of other quirks in addition to the social ones. One of which can be a difference in useable learning strategies (e.g. a need for uninterrupted solitude to develop the concentration to learn, and some other common learning disabilities).

There are other differences and I found it to explain some of the social quirks. E.G. In order to develop a rapport with my classes I found it useful to explain to my students about my inability to recognize faces (prosopagnosia) so they would not think me uncaring and aloof. With freshmen students I usually finished this piece of my introduction with "So your college professor is learning disabled .......... so what is your excuse?". Besides being good for a laugh, I did have a considerable number of students who were encouraged by that and would share their similar problems during academic counseling now that I had "broken the ice".

To quote Popeye, "I yam what I yam.", however I do not let that preclude efforts to be more like I want to be, and I like to think that I have had some success, in spite of being considered a bit odd by some others. So I suppose that when people find out that I engage in common activities but do so without clothing, they at least have the context of my eccentricities to chalk it up to, rather than other more nefarious motivations.

[Petros]

"My lecture style could best be described as quirky with a touch of bombasticness."

You been stealing my lecture notes, man? It would be interesting to compare your somewhat Aspie Engineering lecture quirks with my somewhat Aspie Humanities lecture quirks.

With me volume has never been an issue - perhaps smaller classrooms?

Only rarely has prosopagnosia been an issue - though there have been occasions. With my eye phobia [beyond standard eye contact issues] I rarely look [except from a distance] at the face. I file people by where do they sit, question / answer style, enneatype vibe [though most of my life I did not know it was that]. AND carefully use names as little as possible. Though if one student pronounces her name wildly off tradition to avoid an obvious pun 'pataphysically, I will remember it, and I will assume the guy who shows at 2:15 when I have an appointment with Roland Liebert IS Roland Liebert.

No different in principle from my southpaw brother steering his life dexterously around our civilization.

[Bare_Truth]

"My lecture style could best be described as quirky with a touch of bombasticness."

You been stealing my lecture notes, man? It would be interesting to compare your somewhat Aspie Engineering lecture quirks with my somewhat Aspie Humanities lecture quirks.

I think it would indeed be. Curiously in my learning about Aspergers, I came across a list of professions where Aspies may excel and thrive. And on that list were, Engineer AND College Professor. So I hit 2 rolled into one when after being an engineer for years, I went back to college and added my PHD in Mechanical Engineeringto become a professor at two different universities. Too bad I cannot remember where I found that, perhaps we might find your specialty there as well.

..... AND carefully use names as little as possible. Though if one student pronounces her name wildly off tradition to avoid an obvious pun 'pataphysically, I will remember it, and I will assume the guy who shows at 2:15 when I have an appointment with Roland Liebert IS Roland Liebert....

And we score another match here as well. With a new batch of students who had never had me for a previous class, it was my custom to head off some awkwardness by informing them that
-- I would have difficulty putting their name with their faces, and
-- I would probably have to get to know them to the point of having a good bit of information about them before I could get their name right, and
-- I might only know them in the context where I had met them before and if we encountered each other at Walmart it might be 15 minutes after the encounter when after racking my brain I actually remembered their name and where I knew them from.

I also explained that I would get to know their names sooner if they had a uniqueness, hence:
-- I would learn the women's names first since they were unique in being in the minority in mechanical engineering classes.
-- I would learn the names of the outstanding students first, but not to read too much into that as outstanding bad worked just as well as outstanding good!

I too do seem to have a knack and penchant for odd words which I think resonates well with your own. Once when designing a large hoisting apparatus for nuclear reactor components in the weight range of 150,000 to 450,000 pounds, I named one of its components a "Triskelion" only to have one of the other engineers question why I had named the component after a planet that Captain Kirk and crew encountered in an episode of the originalversion of Star Trek. Obviously he was unfamiliar with the shape found on some ancient Greek coins and in Celtic decorations etc. [1]

I do not lean. I stand tall and affirm:

An Introvert I

So in functioning as an introvert professor have you developed any other strategies to accommodate yourself to the extroverts among the students and facculty?

--------------------
[1]
see more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion
or
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/triskelion
or
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708466/
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamesters_of_Triskelion

[Bobby]

You made some very valid points in your first post, Bare_Truth. I took all the sample size limitations into consideration before posing the question. I would like to know how many of us at CNV are extroverts and introverts. Obviously everyone will not respond.

As for the definitions of extrovert and introvert, you are right. Ultimately we have no choice in how we recharge because the Lord made us this way.

[Petros]

Bare Truth - I was aware of the triskelion even before marrying a lady of Manx ancestry.

Ah, faces out of context. How often I have met and talked to someone at the mall or on the street and had a good - careful - chat gradually gathering enough clues from topic and style that half an hour after we separate I figure who it is.

I might have done well in engineering - good time in my electronics courses. But I transitioned from biology OR forest ranger to language freak in high school - and paid for it.

Coping techniques mostly persona development. I am - with non-close colleagues and administrators and faculty at conference - der Herr Professor, formal, sesquipedalian, ignorant and incurious about current culture, totally focussed on language though occasionally surprisingly aware of other disciplines. With students - mostly undergrads who have had a chance to get used to me - quirks come out - eccentricities - not quite crazy. Advanced serious students and close colleagues - I get serious, focussed but not professorial, caring but not emotive or intrusive, on task but having fun. Very cautious moving from one format to another.

It is easier to pass as a stodgy stereotype than to deal with the wrong people knowing you are differently wired. Sorry, guys, I'm a Mac, not an HP.

[jochanaan]

I am two-sided on this. In normal societal interchanges, I tend toward introversion; in parties, I am often happy to sit and talk to one person throughout--or play a game with one person, as I once did with my former father-in-law. (Because of his increaing near-deafness, he found it difficult to interact at high-volume parties; so once I challenged him to a game of checkers. He appreciated having something to do while others were talking, but I came to regret my challenge. He slaughtered me twice! ) But as a performing musician, I become very much an extrovert when I get up to play, and I do very much "feed off the crowd." Yet it's mutual; I'm also giving myself to them in a very real way, since in playing music you open your soul to the audience's scrutiny, and that's scary! Physical nakedness is nothing beside the nakedness of soul.

[Petros]

Ach, ja. Number 1 Son - somewhat less introverted than I, but still that side - is charged by performance with live audience [how many musicians, I wonder, get a kick playing for the dead?]. Similarly, though at large family gatherings, I, Number 1 Son, bil Fritz and his son Jude would be sitting talking quietly in room A while all the rest would be running five simultaneous conversations in room B, always was in full performance mode lecturing. When they blocked me from doing that kind course, it hurt.

Mind you, we both mediate through persona [and in his case instrument] - but it is a mutual openming with important feedback. One wonders if true extraverts are fully charged by lecture / performance as opposed to party talk and games.

[New_Adventurer]

Am I an innie or an outie? Yes, I am, both that is. Years ago I took a personality test and it Indicated I was a strong introvert and a strong extrovert. The counselor said it happens more often than you would expect and that it means that person works well in many different situations. I was flattered, but I know better, I am an introvert.

[Petros]

You don't by chance recall the name of the test? Not all of them - certainly not all of the ones that have been mainstream adopted as part of the standard toolkit - are worth much of anything. Especially for people who do not fit the standard business or academic model.

I know on the MBTI there are two categories where I am on the cusp and - depending how I read the inadequately worded queries - show on different sides in two consecutive tries. One morning I took four different near-MBTIs - off brand clones - and got four different assessments.

[jochanaan]

"Introvert" and "extrovert" seem to be merely more labels. I suspect that we all go from one to the other to some extent, and that there are many who, like I, change "persona" in specific situations. I've heard, for example, that many actors are actually introverts until they get on stage.

[Bare_Truth]

.... Especially for people who do not fit the standard business or academic model.

Do I perceive from this statement an implication that you are also a misfit much as I am.

A couple of anecdotes here. Before I could be sent to a "Hot" nuclear plant site, (one where fuel was present), I had to take a psychological test for stability. The usual one that was considered adequate consisted of about 4 pages of questions with check boxes that had reverse carbon paper on the back sides of the pages. Marks for answers on the front side of the pages produced carbon paper marks on the test key that was on the back side of the pages. So the test was administered by an office secretary. who opened the sealed pages. Because of gender bias in how people answer the questions there were different scales for rating men or women. When the secretary opened the key and tallied she was appalled that my stability score was below the score for men and even below the lower score for women, and the lowest she had encountered. Since that was a crude screening test I was now required to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Which would take hours, and had to be adminstered and interpreted by a Psychiatrist.

So I took the MMPI and then visited the shrink on a return visit to get the results.
He assured me to not worry about not passing the original screening test because it was designed for the "average" personality, and many engineers did not possess "average personalities" and did not pass it.

He then querried me about several aspects of my personality, raising among other things the question of my gender orientation. He then explained that the "gender discriminator" score was low, but then he explained that in people of high intelligence that often occurs, but offered no explanation of why it is so. (I suspect that an intelligent enquiring mind has a proclivity of trying to see issues from multiple viewpoints.)

He also explained that the "reliability indicators of the test" were low, (different questions directed at the same issue that should have the same response and did not). I suspect that I interpreted the questions as being different one from the other, probably based on the Aspi inclination of taking words in their most literal sense ). He then gave me a clean bill of psychological health and stability.

One question on the test that particularly caught my attention however was:

True or False: "I have a special mission from God"

The next time at church services I told the pastor about this and asked him how he would have answered this: He tried to turn the question back on me by asking, "How did YOU answer it?". I explained that the question had given me some pause because of what it might imply, but I chose to answer it "No", and went on to explain that as a lay member of the congregation I have only an "ordinary" mission from God, but since he was a pastor I thought he would have to answer that he did indeed have a "special" mission from God!

I know on the MBTI there are two categories where I am on the cusp and - depending how I read the inadequately worded queries - show on different sides in two consecutive tries. One morning I took four different near-MBTIs - off brand clones - and got four different assessments.

Two points about that:
A. -- What does MBTI stand for?
B. -- I suspect that I see the hand of "Aspi influence" in our common experience.