Type (9 page)

“What’s that got to do with anything? Secondary is Secondary, right?”

Noah leans his head back to laugh and ends up stumbling, pulling me off-balance.

“Hurry up, guys!” Emily calls, holding the door open for us.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, pretending to be an Intro, do you? If you think tonight was boring, just wait until next weekend!” Noah laughs.

I stop walking and push Noah against the wall with all of my weight. “You promised you wouldn’t say anything about what I did!” I whisper wildly, glancing at Emily as she holds open the door. “What if she heard you!”

“I never promised you anything, little girl. But don’t worry, back at Primary my school motto was
Loose lips sink ships!
”

“Was it really?”

“Oh my god, you’re so naïve!” he laughs. “For a girl who lied her way in here, you’ve got a lot to learn!”

“Don’t tell! I mean it!” I push him harder, digging my elbow into his side. He bangs his head against the concrete wall. “If you tell my secret, then I’ll tell yours, too!”

“Is that a threat, little girl?” Noah closes his eyes for a second. “That would be too bad, because I was starting to think we’d actually be friends.”

I wait for the punch line to what he’s saying, but he seems serious. I feel my cheeks start to burn. “You want to be friends with me?” I whisper.

“Unless you can think of someone better to fill the role,” he says back. He grimaces.

“Guys? Um, the door is getting really heavy!” Emily calls.

“Ow…” Noah says again, as he moves away from the wall and leans against me once more. “This one’s a killer. Go slowly, okay?”

Just as we walk out of the building and into the night a group of boys heads over to us. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, dude!” says one, punching Noah in the arm. He pulls Noah away from my weak grip. “I think we’ve got it from here,” he says, dismissing me.

“Noah?” I ask, my voice sounding overly female and young in the darkness.

“It’s okay. They’ve got it,” he says, letting himself get dragged away by the group of large teenage boys.

Emily stands next to me and pats me on the shoulder. “At least now we might not miss Lights Out Count!” she says, then starts to race towards our dorm. I follow her, feeling a strange mix of relief, excitement, and disappointment. As I run towards my dorm and get to our room just before the count, the night’s events run over and over in my mind. Noah said that he wanted to be friends. Cool, kind of crazy, older Noah, wants to be friends with me, a little twelve-year-old who still wears undershirts and seems to know nothing about anything, despite her father being one of the top head Psychologists on the continent.
Maybe there’s more to me than I thought.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“The intentional design of a culture and the control of human behavior it implies are essential if the human species is to continue to develop.”

— B. F. Skinner

“I can’t believe
we’re finally starting Typology 101,” Emily whispers to me as we pick our desks in Lecture C. “I understand why they don’t teach it in the first semester, but I’ve been so impatient to learn more!”

I glance at my friend and then look away again, her bright eyes and huge smile almost too private for anyone else to see.

Suddenly the lights go off and a screen comes down from the ceiling. The students around me start whispering excitedly.

“A movie! We get to see a movie!” Emily grabs my sleeve. “This is going to be even better than I imagined!”

“Yeah,” I say, starting to feel a bit interested in spite of myself. Maybe Typology 101 won’t be so bad after all. Maybe this is what Hannah was talking about, when she mentioned movies!

I put all my attention on the screen, as the movie starts. It begins in black-and-white with an old photograph.

“Born in 1875 to Swiss parents, Dr. Carl Jung is considered to be the Father of Typology, and a true genius of his time,” a male narrator begins. 1875? That’s almost two hundred years ago! I sigh, and try to force myself to stay interested. “It was Dr. Jung who determined in the 1920s that for all individuals, a preference exists in terms of which direction they tend to expend their psychic energy, either directing it outward, or inward. He referred to such preferences as Extraversion and Introversion.” All around me I hear students murmur. I glance again at Emily and she’s staring at the screen with her mouth open. “While Dr. Jung believed that most individuals fall between the two extremes, he argued that almost every person does still have a preference, with Extraverts becoming more energized by interactions with others, and Introverts becoming quickly depleted and needing time to reenergize by themselves, turning more inward.”

I start to doddle on a piece of paper, using Noah’s initials to make different designs. Noah Philips. NP. NP. NP. I then scribble them all out, to start over again.

“In the 1940s, a mother-daughter team by the names of Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers used Dr. Jung’s brilliant theories of Type to develop their own assessment tools in order to better determine an individual’s personality preferences. The first MBTI was created in 1942 and has been revised numerous times since. The MBTI has been translated into many languages. Countless reliability and validity studies have been conducted over the course of the last century…”

I now mix Noah and my initials together. Noah Jenkins. Sophie Philips. NJ. SP. NJ. SP.

Suddenly the movie stops and the lights turn back on.
It’s done, already?

“Class, I hoped you enjoyed that walk down memory lane,” a woman says from the front. It’s Dr. Harper, the only female Psychologist at ISTJ. She smiles at the students facing her, a warm smile. “I’ll leave the rest of your history lesson for Dr. Witmer and instead focus our time on what each Type means, what the distinctions are, and why all Types truly
are
equal.” She smiles again. “By the time you’re done Typology 101, I hope that you’ll not only have a solid grasp on the scientific theories underlying The Association’s hard work, but also feel a sense of pride in each being your own unique ISTJ.”

I glance at the initials I wrote in front of me, and cover them with my hands. Introvert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging.
More like liar, liar, pants on fire
.

gh

I quickly learn that Typology 101 is one of the most boring courses yet, despite the fact that Emily is so revved up before each class that she could use a sip or two from Noah’s bottle herself. And not only is what comes out of Dr. Harper’s mouth incredibly boring, I find that listening to her talk makes me incredibly angry, too. I don’t know what to do with these feelings, because I know it’s not the teacher’s fault that she has to lecture about this stuff. If anything, she’s the nicest teacher I’ve had yet, full of caring and respect towards her students.

Still, after about three classes I stop paying much attention, as I can tell that anything Dr. Harper will be teaching is stuff my father used to tell me as bedtime stories, back when he actually spent enough time with me to tuck me in. Children (ahem), do you prefer to focus on the outer world (
Extraversion
) or are you more inward (
Introversion
)? Do you prefer to live in the now, attending to present opportunities and focusing on the information that you take from your senses (
Sensing
) or do you try and consider future possibilities and mentally live in the future (
Intuition
)? When you make decisions, do you prefer to look towards logic and facts (
Thinking
) or do you seek out personal feelings and consensus from others (
Feeling
)? And finally, folks, when dealing with life, do you prefer to decide things quickly and focus on task-related action (
Judging
) or do you tend to plan more on the go and be open to new information as it comes your way (
Perceiving
)?

Now take each of your preferences (that’ll make four altogether!), mix them into a pot, stir frequently, and voila! Your supposedly unique, one-of-a-kind self is really just one of sixteen personality Types for Psychologists like my father to pin on you. Put yourself in their oven and bingo, bango, you’re cooked, with a future baked in stone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘You must be a friend,’ said Corduroy. ‘I’ve always wanted a friend.’

— Don Freeman

On the way
to our next Typology 101 class, Emily is so excited she’s practically skipping.

“Slow down,” I say, trying to catch up to her. “It’s not like we’ve got to find seats or anything.”

“I know, I know,” she says. “It’s just that today’s the day we learn everything about ourselves!”

“But, how can someone else tell you everything about yourself?” I look at my friend, who suddenly seems so much younger than me. “I mean, aren’t you the one who knows the most about you?”

Emily stops skipping to face me. Her eyes look serious and her dimples aren’t showing. “Sophie Jenkins, you of all people should know that the only way to understand yourself is to understand your Type.”

“But, isn’t your Type based on whatever you understand about yourself instead of the other way around? I mean, wasn’t that what the Assessment was all about?”