I(sfj). Definitely.

In the psychology world, there is a personality-typing test called Meyer's-Brigg's (and sometimes Jung) for the three men who created it. It is 70 questions and determines 4 aspects of your personality: Introvert or Extrovert, Intuition or Sensing, Feeling or Thinking, and Judging or Perceiving. Jill loves this test and analyzes everyone she meets upon it. In fact, a few days back, her mom jokingly told her that she is surprised that Jill hasn't given it to everyone on this trip to take yet.

It's based upon the theory that states that there are two major "functions" in life: how we take in information and how we make decisions. The first letter is Introverted or Extraverted, so if someone prefers small group and limited interaction or large group and constant interaction. The next is how a person takes in information, either through Sensing (by the senses) or iNtuition (through logic and a mental process). The next is how they make decisions, via Feeling (emotional reactions) or Thinking (logical reactions). The final letter is based upon how we deal with day-to-day life, through purposeful, scheduled, and structured environments (Judging), or through open, casual, and flexible environments (Perceiving). Based upon that, there are a possible 16 different personality types.

I am an ISFJ. This means I really like my alone time, I take in things through my senses, I react and make decisions on how I feel, and I really like things to be structured. All of these areas have been tested for me so far, but the one that is killing me right now is my introverted-ness. I always need time to detox, to have a place where I can go that no one else will be. Jill's dad has his "man cave", and that's an accurate description of what us introverts need. And when we don't get it, no matter how Thinking we may be, we just want to beat someone up.

That's how I'm feeling right now. I have absolutely no time to myself, which I guess is expected since I live with 13 other people. But there's always someone in my room, on the terrace, everywhere I go. Yes, I can go out and do things in the city by myself and I'm fine with it, but that's not really the solution. Since I am quite introverted, it takes a lot of energy for me to go out; after, I still need down time, so I'm doubly exhausted. I'm just really frustrated. Once I was trying to Skype with Steven and there were 6 people in my bedroom (which for me is a sacred place.. just go with it) and 10 in the living room. I resorted to Skyping in the bathroom because it's the only quiet place, but it's not like I can go in there to hang out all the time. And that's just kind of gross.

So that's my biggest challenge at this point. Today we sat through 6 hours of presentations at the Food and Agriculture Organization part of the United Nations. That was a lot to absorb. When I got out, I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, frustrated, and incredibly stressed out, just like I feel every single day of every single semester. What I really needed was alone time, but unlike home, there is no possible way I'm getting that here. But it was really good information, and I think it's really cool that these people are presenting to us- and only us. This is definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I could never have this back at home.

But I am going to Berlin on Thursday (awesome!!), so that will give me some time to get back to reality, away from this atmosphere, and recharge a bit. But before then, I need to write two papers and do a powerpoint for my presentation on Monday on the current economic situation and food price crises effect on nutrition. Sweet.

For your own curiosity, you can take it here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp. And you can read about your result at www.personalitypage.com. Just type in your four letters and it will give you a profile of your personality type, best partner personalities, best jobs, etc.