So, many of my friends know that ever since I took the Myers-Briggs personality test in freshman year of college, I have been oddly obsessed with personality types. (If you’d like to take the test, you can also find a relatively accurate free online test here: http://www.16personalities.com/).

I couldn’t say exactly what it is about Myers-Briggs that fascinates me, because I usually find stuff like this way overly generalizing/arbitrary. I’ve often told people how I feel like everyone seems to speak in a different language, even within English, because each word has a different set of connotations, and each person has a different set of experiences and filters through which they experience the world. I think what I like about Myers-Briggs is that it doesn’t try to tell you who you are or how to live your life, but it seems to have some surprisingly accurate ways of explaining the different languages that people speak. And (as my personality type would indicate) I am very introspective, so getting insight into the way my mind works and how I can maintain a healthy mentality and more authentically communicate with and understand other people is really important to me.

I’m an INFP, which stands for Introverted (as opposed to Extroverted), Intuitive (vs Sensing), Feeling (vs Thinking), and Perceiving (vs Judging). What this means is that I draw energy from being on my own or with one or two people I am very close to, as opposed to being around larger groups of people. I tend to focus on big-picture ideas, favoring theory and abstract concepts over concrete facts and details. I make decisions based on gut feeling rather than logic, and prefer to discuss things in terms of how they affect other people emotionally rather than what is objectively wrong/right/true/false. And while I do need the occasional list or in-depth plan to keep myself organized, my tendency is to be spontaneous, to finish things last minute, and to be flexible in my interactions with others.

Anywhoo, the reason I bring this all up is that I’ve had a resurgence of interest in Myers-Briggs recently, and I’ve been thinking about how my personality type affects my experience abroad and my interactions with the other people I meet here. First of all, I’ve found that my Introverted and Intuitive sides are very appropriate for the style of work/study here. Granted, I am taking English and Philosophy, so a tendency towards theory is already very present, but I’ve found that the emphasis on independent research is very fitting for my learning style. While my tutors have provided me with reading lists, they are very flexible, and much of the additional research is up to me. My English tutor lets me write about whatever I want in response to the books we read, and while my Philosophy tutor gives me prompts, they tend to be very open-ended, offering me as much space as I want to explore different aspects of Husserl and Heidegger. As someone who does best when they are able to find personal meaning in their projects and have the freedom to work on it at their own pace, the tutorial system is ideal.

The desire for personal meaning is a pretty big thing for INFP’s. While I am introverted, I thrive on having strong interpersonal bonds, on being around people who can engage with me on many different levels, people who I can have long, deep conversations with. That sounds kind of silly maybe, but I really am not one for small talk. Which makes being in a new environment with all new people pretty difficult, because I am suddenly back at the getting-to-know-you stage of relationships. I find this both exhausting and fun– I love learning about people, but as I am slow to open up and I tend to do better communicating one-on-one rather than in groups, it takes a while for me to form the strong friendships I crave. Especially in a culture which tends to be much more emotionally guarded initially, I’ve found it hard to get to have the kinds of conversations I really enjoy with British students (I have, however, begun to grow closer with some of the other visiting students, which has actually offered a whole different bunch of new perspectives!).

One of the outcomes of this, I think, is that I have been far better at keeping in touch with friends from back home. Being an ocean apart seems to have magically given me the motivation to actually talk to long-distance friends more frequently, and it makes me really thankful that we have the technology that allows for that. (I am finally actually using Facebook?!?)

INFP’s are known as the Dreamers or the Idealists, and Oxford has been the perfect place for me to dream. I can walk for hours and just let my mind wander, I can create my own way of exploring different academic areas, and I can lose myself in the vast number of stories surrounding me. Yesterday, I went to explore unseen parts of Oxford with two of my new friends here, and we found ourselves climbing towers and looking over the entire city:

(look at those moody clouds!)

I wanted to write something about how cool it is to see all of the people below, to have the Oxford wind blowing in my hair, to be with new friends and to share the moment with old friends in just an instant… But I think I’ll leave you, for lack of an ability to communicate this feeling, with a Florence and the Machine song (because Florence Welch is, of course, an INFP too):

+ lyrics (because what kind of INFP listens to a song without paying way too much attention to the lyrics?): http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/florencethemachine/allthisandheaventoo.html