I decided to go to GMS, Green Mountain Summer, a Navigators summer training program (STP). Many of my Penn State friends have been there in the past and highly recommend it. Never had I seriously considered it until spring break in Nashville this year, when I learned much about the value of community. My heart strongly desires community, and I look forward to experiencing it and learning how to develop it. GMS will give me such an opportunity.

I finally got my act together yesterday and drove up to State College Park to apply for an apartment for next year. Part of the application is $315 for the application and activity fees. I don’t have $315! So, I called my dad, and he said he’d send me a check to pay it. Then I found out that I have to have my parent, as guarantor, sign a part of the application. Ugh! I can’t do it until Easter! But wait… I talked to a girl in the office today, and I can save that part until later and apply now! Hooray! Praise God for goodness!

Talking to my dad about it this afternoon, I realized that I don’t have much money left. $55 credit card, $35 for gas today, and I need to pay a $75 application fee for GMS… A total of $165… I only have $150 in my bank account… Yikes! My dad offered to send me an additional check for $75 to cover the GMS fee. Grace again!

Good things abound!

My roommate had an assignment. He was to take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, have his roommate (me) do the same, and evaluate how the results reflect how we relate to one another. Hence, as I have done many times in the past, I soon found myself carried away into the world of personality types, through Keirsey and Myers-Briggs/Jung.

Carl Jung proposed that all people can be categorized into 16 personality types. Each type is signified by a sequence of four letters: E/I, S/N, F/T, J/P. E/I refers to a persons Extroverted or Introverted tendency. S/N, Sensing or iNtuition, is the primary method by which an individual acquires information about the world. F/T relates a good deal to decision-making, standing for Feeling and Thinking; does one go through life acting more on thoughts or feelings? Finally, J/P stands for Judging and Perceiving, which refer to, in this context, those who tend to be more structured in life, using schedules and appointments, or those who are whimsical and fanciful, with a bent toward spontaneity, respectively.

One can find multiple tests on the Internet to provide you with your personality type. I recommend taking as many different ones as possible, as no test is perfect and you will thus gain a better perception of your actual type. Lots of information describing the types is available.

I have been typed as INTP: Introverted, iNtuition, Thinking, Perceiving. Though not all people fit well into any specific type, reading about the INTP seems to fit me incredibly well, much better than I would have expected for such a simple thing. So, if you are curious about me, read about INTP!

Check out the following links:

• Keirsey Temperament Sorter
  
     This is the first site that I looked at upon the request of my roommate.


• Myers-Briggs Test For Programmers
  (Not remotely specific to programmers)
  
     This is a site I found last night that I think is very useful. The test is not long and the results are given in a very straightforward, easy to interpret, manner. It also includes the supposed distribution of personality types across the United States’ population, and links to not-so-detailed Wikipedia articles on each type, plus very detailed “Details” links for each type, the INTP one of which fits me very well.


• TypeLogic
  
     Contains a lot of good resources about each type.


• INTP.org
  
     All about INTPs, though it certainly has content for anybody.


• An INTP Profile
  
     Sheds even more light on my life as an INTP. Very accurate, though not perfect, for me.

As a rule, man is a fool;
When it’s hot, he wants it cool;
When it’s cool, he wants it hot;
Always wanting what is not.
—Anonymous

I have recently begun to write down a significant amount of my thoughts in a small spiral-bound notebook, at the encouragement of a friend who has done so for quite some time. It really is very freeing, in a sense, to know that I can go back and read what I have previously written, and perhaps expand upon thoughts from days gone by.

Keeping a journal is something I have never seriously tried in hard, written form before, partially due to the inconvenience of carrying around the average notebook, which to me is hardly a good place for notes! Although I would prefer a still smaller one from the one I have, this notebook can fit into my jacket pocket and takes up little space in my backpack; it’s convenience is much less of an issue. Keeping a journal certainly seems to have value.