Yup. Rabbit hole. Thread derailed. Thousandth time.
Lol, we were doing fine. B-)
My younger D who is going into 8th grade is an introvert. I think her being shy comes from she doesn’t care. We have to help her along in social situations like responding to texts or being the first one at times to start a conversation. She was on the 7th grade BB team last year and hardly ever chimed in on the group text the team had. She also loves to read. And I mean a lot. She doesn’t seek out social situations like having friends sleep over. She is plenty smart due to a good memory and being so well read.
The best was on the 6th grade travel BB team the coach asked the team to vote a captain. The team voted her. Mainly because I think she isn’t in everyone’s business all the time.
I doubt she will ever be a great leader, but if she moves to having passion about a skill that is marketable she will be valuable.
Based on this, it sounds like you’re an extrovert, or at least not introverted. See the 20 question quiz at the bottom. How do you score?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/will-the-real-introverts-please-stand-up/
Virtually all education is biased against introverts in a way that the adult career world isn’t. I’m an extrovert and an educator, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and training myself to attend to the specific needs and abilities of introverted students, and ignoring or devaluing them is asinine and unreasonable.
You think the adult career world isn’t biased against introverts…I guess you haven’t lived in that world.
I think the point a few make here is that there isn’t just one flavor of introverts.
Exactly, the Myers Briggs personality I took a long time ago, was clear to say that people have both introvert and extrovert qualities in them, so it’s more a scale than one or the other. And they also say introvert is not shy or reclusive. And many CEOs are introverts, see below:
I didn’t find the examples too convincing. The real lesson for Gates, Zuckerberg, and Buffet is if you own the company, you don’t have to care what anyone else thinks about your personality.
@CU123 - yes, I do think that. There are tons of great careers that serve introverts well, and many, many great accomplishments are only possible if one is willing and comfortable to spend long, long hours alone. I’m 45 and have been in the “adult career world” since I finished college at 21 (and had part-time and summer jobs before that, starting at age 15).
I come down somewhere in the middle. The people who rise to management in the corporate world tend to be extroverts. There are jobs, software development comes to mind, where if you want to spend all day by yourself sitting in front of a computer, you can do that. Yes, you have to e-mail occasional status updates to your bosses, and understand the requirements, but on the whole is solitary work. At a place like Google, a good software developer can make $200k/year without any management responsibilities.
Introversion is well suited for writers and musicians, athletes, scholars, engineers, dancers, artists, naturalists, fishermen, farmers, accountants, actuaries, drivers, architects, translators, designers, statisticians, and editors.
Meanwhile, in school, at virtually all levels, introversion is frowned upon and introverts are told to speak up, assert themselves, join in, be “leaders”, and form relationships with their teachers.
Being an introvert severely limit your choices, and yes CS is a good career for introverts.
Personally I have found that there are three things that lead to success in someone’s endeavors in life. Intelligence, work ethic, and personality. Score a zero in any of thes three and it’s highly unlikely you’ll be successful at anything.
Being an introvert is not a completely damning personality issue, but it does usually come out on the negative side of the equation. Like the @theloniusmonk mentions you can have qualities of both, but a true introvert would have little socialization at all and that would not work in most environments.
I’m an introvert and it was not my experience at all that jntroversion was frowned upon in school. In many extracurricular activities, yes, but not in school. They extracurricular thing can affect college admissions, sure.
Someone mentioned planning events unthread and one of the linked articles mentioned planning a party as an activity extroverts would do. I plan parties and events just fine. I’d much rather plan and host a party than attend someone else’s party. The planning part is all about logistics and doesn’t require socializing. If I’m hosting, I know almost everyone which always makes an event better. And if I’m hosting, I can excuse myself to refill the chip bowl or whatever. Hosting a party is a project with some socializing thrown in. Being a guest is all socializing.
Worth repeating from post 7, 3SailAway:
“Introverted does not equal shy. It’s also not synonymous with social awkwardness or lack of social skills. Introversion is about how you recharge.”
So why this assumption there’s prejudice in admissions against people who recharge in more private or personal ways, or in smaller social groups? Why assume all intoverts, eg, need to be told to speak up? Or that they can’t participate in valid activities? That may be a more extreme form.
The Myers-Briggs assessment was not to show that extroverts were better than introverts or thinkers better than feelers. It was to show the strengths and weaknesses of the personality types in the workplace and how to work with those strengths and improve on the weaknesses. Extroverts are as likely, maybe more likely to be mismatched with the job than introverts.
There are definitely some Myers-Briggs personality types that are not held back by “introversion” such as INTJ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ). Perhaps not ideal for being a leader in high school popularity contest, but more plausible in the workplace or startup life.
(MBTI (Meyers-Briggs) is pseudoscience at best)
I’m an introvert. I also was very shy as a young person. That did not prevent me from participating in high school activities, or befriending my favorite high school teachers, or even taking on leadership roles during high school years. My son is also very much an introvert,though not at all shy, and he had great LOR’s from teachers, and even got elected to be class officer. (He was elected student body treasurer … he’s good with numbers and the other candidate was disqualified for some reason or another – and, somewhat ironically, in his role as treasurer it became his job to line up the venue and do much of the organizing of his senior prom. But for that he probably wouldn’t have gone to the prom— but sometimes life happens to introverts whether they want it to or not).
I’d note that “leadership” doesn’t have to be class president or team captain. It can be an initiative or action of only one person-- it doesn’t have to be a group activity.
My daughter is very much an extravert and yes, that has been an advantage for her many ways. Another irony: I think my daughter’s extraversion empowers her to do things on her own that I am reluctant to do as an introvert, like travel by herself to exotic locales --probably because she knows that wherever she goes it will be easy for her to meet new people.
So I’d agree that a whole lot of things in life come easier to people who are confident in themselves and have good social skills, which are two traits that tend to accompany extraversion. (But not always).
But I don’t think that colleges “discriminate” against introverts. College admissions people love college application essays that show introspection…so why can’t an introvert write a great essay?
There is a huge difference between being an introverted and being anti-social.