4/20/23 Update: This article was written about a year ago, while I was still in eighth grade. I just want you all to know that I do not endorse MBTI as much as I did the moment I wrote it. I believe MBTI is very prone to false application and makes users susceptible to the Barnum effect. I also think it has a rigid, overgeneralized dichotomization of each of the four dimensions, thereby making personality results a bit vague. That said, though, I do believe MBTI is a good start in determining the person you are, and I do still identify with the INTJ result I receive, and while my writing style is a bit different now, I do still believe in a lot of the things I had written in this article. Feel free to keep reading it!
If you want to learn more about how I perceive my personality and MBTI now, you can look into the following blog post for details.
The INTJ personality (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging) is a Myers-Briggs personality that is also known as the "Architect" personality. We architects prefer thinking for ourselves, solving problems, making discoveries, and having privacy. It is said that about 2% of the population is INTJ. As an INTJ teen, it can feel as if the world works against me, or as if I am alone, so I decided to create an article about how my personality impacts a variety of subjects, including values, schooling, education, and (possible) misconceptions about my personality.
Values:
The following are some values I uphold that I believe are influenced by my personality in some degree:
-Critical thinking: To be honest, I believe critical thinking is the most important skill humankind can acquire. I actually wrote about this in the perspective of a fictional character in my soon-to-be published book The Reformation. (Just for the sake of time, I won't elaborate on this in this post, since I already wrote it down in my book.)
-Independence: I believe people should learn to support themselves, instead of depending on others to do things for them. I like to think for myself. Solving a problem without help or teaching myself something gives me that glorious sense of accomplishment. The desire to be independent and learn for myself, in fact, is one of the reasons why I hate group work.
-Writing: I think an answer I submitted to an author question asked by Goodreads exemplifies the connection between my INTJ personality and my love of writing:
Q: What’s the best thing about being a writer?
A: The best thing about being a writer is that you can write about a diverse range of subjects, whereas other careers usually aim at topics from only a few academic disciplines. For instance, if you were a physicist, you would typically only be working with physics and possibly other sciences. However, as a writer, I have the liberty to write about multiple topics, instead of just writing about physics. I could write about logical fallacies, stereotyping, politics, history, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, chemistry... well, I could write about anything, or learn/apply skills in pretty much any topic.
In other words, the multiplicity and liberty that can be exercised within writing has allowed me to embrace it.
-Polymathy and Multiplicity: As mentioned in the Writing section, I wanted to be able to exercise multiple skills, and acquire knowledge from multiple subjects, instead of being specialized in a single subject. In career, only so many technical skills can be exercised. If you are an accountant, you cannot expect to be able to exercise biological knowledge within your career, because your specialization is accounting, not biology. I am pretty sure a lot of people are fine with specialization in a few subjects; it's practical, less overwhelming, and helps people prioritize what they want to learn and do, but let me tell you about my ridiculous ambition: Specialization is way too narrow for me. It doesn't feel right to choose a few things to be committed to learning about. Just imagine being good at analyzing literature but having little knowledge about physics. Doesn't that just suck? Doesn't that sound so restricting? If you said no, you probably are much saner than I can ever be, but I need that polymathy and multiplicity, not just specialization in a specific handful of college majors!
Schooling:
I'll put it simply: I just want to get school over with. I know that many INTJs might be depicted as school-loving prodigies who always raise their hands and answer questions correctly, and there are probably some INTJs who actually do this, which is cool, but the way my personality has impacted me shows otherwise. Allow me to elaborate:
Traditional schooling constitutes of an academic curriculum that controls the pacing of instruction and the content that can be learned. This is frustrating, because as an INTJ, I like to learn and deduce things for myself, instead of having a teacher try to physically and verbally present the content to me, and I like to move ahead in school, but since the curriculum typically has some degree of control over a student's pacing and content material, I am essentially restricted, not from schooling, but from education. There is a reduced sense of accomplishment at this schooling, because the teacher and the curriculum act as the dictator of my pacing and learning, making me unable to manipulate my education independently. School, counterintuitively, restricts critical, self-sufficient thinking and self-confidence TBH. I think schooling can be terribly rigid and narrow.
I think college is the type of schooling that exemplifies this rigidity and narrowness. Recently, I thought about the classes I wanted to take in college, but it took me a while to do this, because I kept distracting myself by raging about college's rigidity and narrowness. (I don't want to talk about it). Anyways, I believe college is overrated. You see, college can be pretty expensive, and from what my parents told me about their experiences with college, the coursework can be difficult to manage. Thus, students can only select so many classes to take in order to save money and still have a school-life balance. I think this makes education more rigid and narrow than it should be, because many constraints are placed on the amount of material you can learn: student loans, course load, and time management. There are good reasons for these constraints to be placed; there is our civic virtue to the economy, the need to ensure that students receive sufficient content to learn a subject, and the skill of punctuality. It's just that I don't want to work with this, because as I mentioned before, I don't want to specialize in a handful of subjects. I want to be a polymath. College totally destroys my goal.
Plus, for college in particular, schooling can be frustrating, because who the heck would want to spend money just to learn something new? The concept of needing to pay just to learn something new infuriates me. I mean, I could learn mathematics through informed online searching and Khan Academy for free, and yet, college proposes that we spend thousands of dollars to have access to the same content! I just hate how one's own education can end up pending on the amount of money they have. Disgusting!
With that said, there is one form of schooling I really enjoy: self-directed learning. This was a form of learning I was introduced to partially in seventh grade, and throughout the entire year of eighth grade. In this form of schooling, all the content and assignments would be given, and daily instructions would be added, but that's it. No teachers. No classrooms. No lectures. This means that although there are suggested daily instructions, you can still work at your own pace, and even get ahead in school, just as long as you have completed the assignments correctly and on time. You can also have more free time because of this. This form of schooling is the opposite of the traditional way of schooling I so desperately want to avoid. It helps me apply my own methods of learning and learn more things for myself.
Education:
Although I hate traditional schooling, I passionately value and pursue education. As an INTJ, learning something new is glorious.
My enjoyment of subjects may vary, just as anyone else's enjoyment may.
Of the core subjects (subjects that aren't taught as electives, such as math, science, language, and history), history is my least favorite. I have actually heard that an INTJ can make a good historian, but I am still not the biggest fan of history. This is because of its dependency on memorization. In education, I love subjects that involve analysis and require a person to understand the logic behind something, and while you can analyze historical events and make parallels to the contemporary world, you cannot analyze anything until you have MEMORIZED everything. For instance, you cannot try to determine what you believe to be the main cause of the war of 1812 until you have memorized all the events and history behind it. Additionally, since this is human nature we are talking about, you cannot just deduce or hypothesize what the causes of the war of 1812 was. You can only learn through memorization, not through logical deduction. All the other subjects require some memorization as well, but analysis and deduction can be utilized throughout each one, especially math and science. For instance, in language, there might be a word you do not know, but you can always apply it in the context of the text you are reading, or you can dissect its parts (prefix, base word, suffix) and deduce the word's meaning, and because science is meant to help people comprehend how the world works, there always has to be some logic behind it. Otherwise, the world can crumble. Plus, we use the phrase "SOLVE math problems" for a reason.
I don't necessarily have a favorite subject. I would say that language is the most fundamental subject, because all the other subjects depend on literacy, pronunciation, and vocabulary acquisition, but for language and writing to actually be valuable to me, I like to assume the mindset and skills of math and science. Language and writing can be open-ended, free, and spontaneous, which can be very powerful, but I like analysis and discovery, so the logical and analytical mindset that can be assumed within math and science can be helpful to making me love writing more.
Now, I know I said that I don't want to take college courses, and I really don't want to go to college, but if I had to go, these are some of the subjects I would like to take:
-Logic
-Applied mathematics
-Grammar
-A science (IDK what to choose; there are just too many to choose from!)
-Possibly business or the fine arts(?)
Ideally, I would learn these subjects autodidactically, but these are probably the subjects I'll take college courses on if I go to college.
Misconceptions about the INTJ Personality:
I think there are some stereotypes about this personality type, and as an INTJ, I would like to address possible misconceptions and refute them.
We are less emotional.
I think that we are capable of being emotionally perceptive. It's just that we don't like to show it. This notion applies in my case, at least. I actually think I can empathize with others pretty easily. I once watched a video sent by the father of a deceased Youtuber I have never even watched, and I did shed a few tears at the video. There are times when I can empathize with certain people and characters that my family just laugh at (although I never show that I empathize with the characters).
The thing is, when it comes to emotions, I feel exposed and vulnerable. I do not just walk around telling people about the importance of "tend and befriend" or emotional wellbeing. I prefer to discuss my discoveries and accomplishments, not my emotions. Sometimes, I get self-conscious when I discuss my emotions. To me, revealing emotions to others is like revealing a naked body part.
In summary, I have an emotional core deep down, but I feel vulnerable and underconfident when I begin revealing it.
2. We are workaholic, or just unable to relax.
Well, I actually am a workaholic, but I am still capable of being laid-back. I actually don't do much deep thinking when I am watching TV. (I mostly do it after watching a night's worth of a movie or show, if there is something worth thinking about.) Plus, I still listen to music for entertainment, watch and laugh at the silly videos my brothers show the family, talk loudly with my loud family members, and have leisurely walks in my backyard.
3.Morality isn't as Good as Math
I did say that I believe critical thinking is the most valuable thing humanity can acquire, but I would not use a love of critical thinking to justify the neglection of moral standards. Just because INTJs love rationality and independence does not mean they neglect morality!
Being an INTJ Female:
I have heard that less than 1% of women are INTJs, making this personality type the rarest among them. I am a girl! From the moment I scored INTJ, I was consciously aware that there would not be many people, especially girls and women, like me. I think the thing that scares me the most is that women with my personality (or at least traits similar to mine) could easily be forgotten, making it likely that people can get the wrong idea about me based on my gender and sex. I have heard of this notion that women talk about problems and men solve problems, for instance. It's not wrong for women to talk about problems and men to solve problems. It's just frustrating to see how people can generalize about a person based on sex and/or gender, because I know I prefer solving problems over talking about them, but society can still create an image of people of my sex.
Concluding Thoughts:
My eighth grade writing class was where I learned about the 16 Personalities, and the curriculum required the test to be taken. When I received INTJ and read the description, I couldn't help but notice how freakishly accurate it was. Introverted. Intuitive, Thinking. Judging. Those words gave me a new perspective about myself, and I hope that by writing this article, I gave readers a new perspective about the INTJ personality.
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