Med students like free stuff. Even free personality tests. That’s why I gave up several precious hours of sleep to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) during my first year of med school. Or maybe I was just curious as to how accurately this test could define me. Or maybe it was because the administrators claimed that they would use the data to aid in instruction in our warm-and-fuzzy-doctoring class. For those of you not familiar with it, the MBTI was developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Myers based on Jung’s theories of psychological types. Based on a battery of questions, a person is classified on four criteria: extraversion (E)/introversion (I), sensing (S)/intuition (N), thinking (T)/feeling (F), and judging (J)/perceiving (P). The combinations of these criteria lead to 16 different personality types (e.g., ESFJ, INFP, etc.). Descriptions of the criteria and 16 types can be found here. A free online test based on this methodology (but in no way affiliated with the MBTI people) can be foundhere (if you want to take the real thing, you’ll have to pay and jump through various hoops). Once you’re done, you can go here for cool descriptions of your type (including strengths, weaknesses, relationships, careers, etc.).
So what did I find out from my little MBTI? I’m apparently an INTP, which is disturbingly accurate. And I’m quite glad to know that physician is listed somewhere as a suitable career for me among artist and entertainer/dancer and other things. What did my school do with this information that was supposed to help them adapt their warm-and-fuzzy-doctoring class curriculum to meet the needs of different personality types? Well, they must have decided to assign the worst possible facilitators (to stimulate growth maybe or just for their own sadistic fun?) for each personality type because I was bullied to death in that class. Hello?! I’m an INTP. So not warm-and-fuzzy! And you’re so not going to get any warm-and-fuzzy out of me by berating me and putting me on the spot for not being warm-and-fuzzy. Besides, if being warm-and-fuzzy in the way that the powers that be here think is best is so important to them, then maybe they should have worked that into the interview so that I would never have gotten in to begin with. I would have been glad to go elsewhere, somewhere where they are more accepting of non-warm-and-fuzzy types like me. And I’m sure I will still pass the USMLE Step 2 CS. No thanks to you, warm-and-fuzzy school.