I'm a Concrete Abstract Random...who the fuck are you!?

Aside from the dream jobs that I pretend exist in the real world, I think I can safely say that, in general, jobs tend to have at least one ugly side to them. Today (in the form of our annual staff meeting/"let's have a good year" rally) the ugly showed up and punished me for four (4) hours. (note: a solid 15 mins. of this time was used in the form of rambling statements about how:
a) we'd 'BRIEFLY' go over the material
b) we'd 'JUST GLOSS' over a couple of things
c) we'd 'COVER THIS NEXT SECTION QUICKLY' because we seem to be running overtime) ....I mean really. Jesus.

I suppose I should concede here, that despite my complaints already listed and those soon to follow in this post, that this will really be the only meeting of this kind that I'll have to endure. A BIG shout out to the good people at City Academy for that. Amen.

But on to what really got me thinking about the days proceedings...

We were going through learning strategies for students when we all participated in this survey that would tell us what kind of thinker we were and what kinds of expectations thinkers of each type have of the world. Apparently there are four categories of thinkers consisting of two types of 'random' thinkers and two types of 'Sequential' thinkers. The sub-categories on each side essentially just divide those who show slight affinities towards one way of thinking from those who show dramatic ones. It struck me while I was filling out this form just how problematic this, and almost every 'test' like this one really is. I call to mind the 'Archetype' and 'Colours' tests that I'm sure many of you have encountered while in highschool or whatehaveyou. My complaint is firstly that these things are not implemented in the right spirit, and secondly that; really, when you think about it, they don't offer much new information or insight. An arbitrary category gets assigned to you and with it, a list of very general, vague (and here's the tricky part: universally applicable) character traits. To illustrate, I refer to an episode of the Simpsons. In this episode, a factory worker in a peanut canning factory looks out the window to see a full grown elephant storming towards the open doorway next to him. He remarks as he watches the elephant tear through the place that his horoscope was *exactly* right. He then pulls out the horoscope and it reads: "You will face challenges today". Did I really need to undergo this procedure to be told that I am not a fan of highly structured or regimented learning environments? What burns me the most is that the people who developed these tests most likely profited amply from the patents and distribution rights. It would be like me going up to a person who is shivering violently and saying the them: "Gee, I think you are the type who needs a blanket...that'll be 5 bucks bitch. Where's the blanket you say? You got the wrong guy...you want this guy over here..."

I actually ended up with a description that said I was mostly Concrete-Random, also showing an affinity towards abstract random. Now, the abstract random I can understand, but concrete random is quite the oxymoron. It's supposed to suggest that I an comfortable in both highly structured and unstructured worlds...but really what it boils down to is that its a cop-out category... It's not that this test in particular is a cop-out, its just that I feel like all of these tests can't escape the sort of surface level pop-psychology riff-raff that ignores the larger complexes of human thought. These tests through slick language and comforting categorization strategies make us feel like we can adequately contain all of our quirks into a defineable space and suggest that if we just follow the steps that accompany the test, we can do x, y, and z. My 'Imperial' alert is buzzing. Hasn't that anti-christ Dr. Phill ( a whole other discussion) done enough to make it obvious to people that there are no easy answers when it comes to the ebbs and flows of the human experience?