I’ve known for a while that I’m an introvert.  I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test more than once, and even though I love people and I appreciate spending time with my friends, it’s obvious that I am, without question, an introvert.  So what’s that mean?  A lot of people think of introverts as quiet, shy individuals that just keep to themselves.  Well, I’m not quite that.  And that’s not really what it means.  Someone with an introvert temperament gains energy from time spent alone.  There’s quite a bit more to it than that, I’m finding out, but that is the jist of it.

For one of my classes last fall, I had to take the Myers-Briggs again.  I came out as an INFP, which makes sense.  I’m pretty much a strong I (introvert) and F (feeling), with borderline N and P, apparently.  Before announcing who in our class came out as what temperament, our instructor gave us the breakdown of what everyone in the class was.  Each Myers-Briggs personality type works out to be a certain temperament.  Not surprisingly, there were a lot of Rationals in our group, and some Guardians.  But only one Idealist.  Yeah, guess who…

I didn’t really give a whole lot of thought to this, since I already knew I was an introvert.  And some people might not even think it matters a whole lot, but I honestly had never really thought about this before.  Until I realized I was dating a textbook extrovert.  Ricky, my boyfriend, is pretty much the polar opposite of me on this temperament scale.  He doesn’t understand my need to be home and spend time alone, or why “going out” wears me out sometimes.  To him, being with people is a total energy generator, not drainer.  One of the things I love about him is that I never have to guess what he’s thinking, because I always know.  He is quick to tell what is on his mind.  Of course he is, as an extrovert, he processes things outwardly.  He is stimulated by what goes on around him.  Being around a bunch of people gives him energy.  I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite.  I like people, don’t get me wrong, but eventually I reach my fill of them and need time to process thoughts on my own.  That’s the real difference between us.  Ricky, an extrovert, processes things by saying what’s on his mind.  He reacts to outer stimuli.  I, a typical introvert, react to and process everything on the inside.  Only if you’re an introvert can you truly know what this means.  I see so many of my friends that just have this need to hang out with people.  I on the other hand, can go days without doing that.  I have enough of my inner thoughts to keep me company.

I started reading this book, The Introvert Advantage, to gain a bit more insight into some of these things that confound me about how I process things.  It’s been kind of enlightening.  Like, for example, it talks about how introverts can easily be overstimulated by the external world, creating a feeling of “too much”.  I so know exactly what this means.  I turn down lunches with people just to be able to get away to spend an hour by myself.  Extroverts, on the other hand, gain energy by that external stimuli.  They need people, activities, places to go, to generate energy. Their focus is on the outside world.  To me, though, the thought of going out or being somewhere every night just exhausts me and makes me irritable.  I need my time to recharge.  Extroverts get lonely if they are not in contact with people.  Not me, not for quite a while anyway.  I can go for days in my own little “cave”.  In fact, doing so energizes me.  It takes me time to recharge and to process all the thoughts and goings-on inside my head.  Not getting the time or ability to do so can make me totally stressed out.

If you are an extrovert, wow, let me tell you… you will probably never completely understand what goes on inside our heads.  There are so many thoughts and stimuli and things to process that it makes me tired just thinking about it.  Oh yeah, that’s another thing… sleep recharges introverts.  Quiet time, down time… yeah, that’s what helps me.  Ricky is just the opposite.  He is always going, going, going.  That just makes me tired.

I wish I could explain everything in this book.  It’s honestly just a continuous learning experience.  The more I read, though, the more sense it makes.  I get worn out easily with all of the stimuli in my life.  On the days that I have an eight-hour day at work and then a three-hour class afterwards, I generally just want to go home and relax.  And I *hate* having weeks where I have a lot of stuff going on on weeknights.  It makes me just want to go home and curl up with a book.

So here’s the lesson I’ve learned: that what I am is okay.  I’m not weird because I don’t like to go out every night.  The fact that a lot of times I just like going to lunch by myself to read is perfectly fine.  And the fact that I have a lot going on inside my head that never really makes it out, that’s okay too.  These are all perfectly normal, and they’re really just me being me.

If you suspect that you might be an introvert, I highly advise you to read this book.  It’s been helpful, and even given me some ideas to best utilize my introvertedness.  And it might just give you some new insight into yourself.

So since seeing that Isha posted an update and list of summer plans, I thought I would do the same. Right now, I am currently smack dab in the middle of finals week of my second semester in the Kelley MBA program. I have heard from a lot of people (the program chair included) that this is quite possibly the hardest semester of the program. I’ve taken a total of 4 classes, 7.5 credit hours. And keep in mind that 8 credit hours is considered full-time if you’re in grad school, so I’ve basically been working full-time while also going to school almost full-time. This is also one big part of the reason I am not on Twitter or Facebook right now. They both just became a big distraction while trying to make it through these last few weeks. I’ll likely be back this weekend, once finals are over.

I am SO looking forward to this summer. I made it through my biggest final yesterday (Finance) and am hoping I managed to do better on it than I did on the midterm. I have one more final left to take online tomorrow and then I am home free! …for a week. Summer classes start next Thursday. However, I’m looking forward to starting fresh and being basically done with finance/accounting/money/math classes. They have been killer, and I even came close to quitting earlier this semester, but I managed to stick it out. My summer classes are Business Law, which meets on Thursdays, and IT for Managers, which is online and only 1.5 credit hours. And I will be done with the IT class on June 23, and then done with the Law class on July 8 – which means over a month of no classes! Definitely excited about that. So – that being said, summer should be pretty good. Here’s what I’ve got going on this summer so far…

May
6th – Macroecon final (last one!)
9th – Mother’s Day – special lunch with my mom
13th – Summer classes start
14th – Swing dancing double date with Ricky, Ian, and Heather (Ricky’s first swing dancing experience!)
15th – Special surprise planned for my sweetie – we get to dress up!
22nd – Nickelback concert at Verizon
23rd – LOST finale party at our new apt

June
23rd – End of IT class

July
4th – Spending the weekend with Ricky at Forest Dunes
8th – End of Business Law class
19th – Sophie’s “birthday” (2nd anniversary of the day I got her)
22nd – Ricky’s birthday

August
14th – Mom’s birthday
24th – Fall classes start – Marketing, Operations Mgmt

Finally, here it is… the next one. (See previous posts – My 10 commandments and Commandment #2.)

3. Be me.

I’ve been having a hard time of it lately. Now, usually I consider myself a pretty strong, independent individual that gets along just fine in life, generally. But lately I’ve been struggling with depression quite often. I’m not too concerned – I’ve got plenty of people to talk to and people that watch out for me. And I’m pretty sure it’s related to the death of my dad three months ago. There’s been several deaths and hard circumstances in my life over the last few years, including the death of my dad, my uncle, and two cousins that were significant parts of my life growing up. And I think it’s just all starting to catch up to me. I’ve read that depression is a part of the grieving process. I think it’s pretty normal, and I’m just trying to ride it out the best that I can while taking advantage of the support system that I have.

This depression and struggle with life and motivation in general has contributed to insecurities and worthiness issues that are usually just a small part of my life struggles from time to time. Lately they’ve become even more pronounced. Here’s one such example. I look around my life and start to compare myself and how I think to the people around me. I start to see girls that are thinner and think that I should be thinner. I see girls that put more time and money into their appearance, like getting manicures or wearing trendier clothes and wonder if I should do that too. Should I be smarter, more successful, thinner, prettier, do more “popular” things, have a better or cleaner apartment, spend my money more wisely? All of these are questions that have popped into my head lately and made me doubt myself.

But here’s the thing… if I really dig deep, I know myself. I know who I am and what I’m like. I’m really smart… I got my bachelors degree from Purdue University with a 3.8 GPA. I’m soon to be working on my MBA from Indiana University. I have a good job as a software engineer. I’m a good friend, with a fun personality and a good sense of humor. While I’m not the perfect weight I might like to be, I’m pretty. But I don’t really care all that much about putting an abundance of time, energy, or money into fitting into the standard of what’s popular. I’d probably be content to just dress like a college student for the rest of my life, wearing mostly hoodies, jeans, and flip flops. I’m most definitely a geek. I like to swing dance, I’m a Star Wars nut (I even dated a stormtrooper), and I volunteer to help homeless kids. That’s me.

So why should I worry about whether who I’m being or what I’m doing is right or wrong according to someone else’s standards? I’m pretty great just being who I am.