Who am I?

In the last week, I received results from one personality/learning type test I did through Nucor as well as took the Meyers-Briggs personality test.  I attached pictures of the Nucor results if any of you would like to see them, but I will go briefly over the highlights.  First surprising result is that I edged (very slightly) toward extroversion, which I was not expecting.  I was in general in the middle of the spectrum for many of the topics, but there were some that shot out toward one direction or the other.  One was discipline/conscientiousness, where I was much more toward discipline than informal or casual.  I would have guessed this.  The other, more interesting one was overall learning style, where  was really, really far toward the edge of abstract, conceptual, and complex thinking (vs. literal and hands-on).  I would have guessed this to be more toward the middle, but I am happy with this result.  One other interesting result to note is that on my Holland chart, I scored differently from the great majority of people on campus.  Most people had the highest as investigative (as did I), but that is where the similarities end.  I was more heavily weighted toward artistic and social than toward realistic and conventional, which more normal for engineers.  However, I am told that my chart overall looks very balanced, which is rather rare.  Many people were within the last ring for at least one result, if not all top 3, and I was not that far weighted to any side.  All very interesting.  I should receive my Meyers-Briggs profile sometime this week.

My classes are all going very well, it is hard to believe I only have a couple more school weeks before finals and the end of my first semester at college!  I have had an amazing time here, and made a few friends that I hope I will keep throughout my college experience and beyond.  Ezra is heading off on a Coop next semester, so I will miss seeing him, but I think all of my other friends will still be here.

I finished the work order and other paperwork for my design for a bass endpin, so I should be able to make that very soon, potentially this coming week, which would be awesome.  I think my design is better than the one that came with the bass, and I look forward to testing that theory.  My current one rattles when I do too intense of vibrato, and since I am almost always using vibrato that has really started to bug me.  My design is another half-inch longer at the end past the notch, so the endpin should be just slightly further into the bass, and I believe this will stop the rattling.  I also have access to machines accurate enough that I will be able to file it down to the exact diameter necessary to fit into the bass, and no wider, going down to, well, as accurate as I can get it with my own two hands, which I estimate will be around .002 inches with my experience making the spinning top.  It sounds really small, and it is, but I have access to a digital readout and much more patience than most, so I think I can do it.  Some nicer tools will let you just input the exact value you want and will move there itself, but ours are all manual controls with an electronic readout.

[Warning: video games ahead, skip if you wish]

Yesterday (Saturday) much of my time was spent participating in a Hearthstone tournament that Sam and Jon convinced me to attempt.  For those that don’t know, Hearthstone is a mixture of a card game and a video game.  Everything is electronic, but the gameplay is done through cards that you have in your hand and deck.  Since it is all electronic, though, it allows for very crazy interactions that simply could not be done with a physical card game, the most defining of which is the addition of random variables.  Anyway, I started playing the game last summer at Sam’s suggestion [read: command] and I have enjoyed it quite a lot.  Since I am a fairly new player, I do not have access to very many of the cards, and I did not think I would do well at the tournament.  I was wrong.  Call it good strategy or luck or whatever you want to, but I managed to go undefeated all the way up to the finals of the double-elimination tournament, finally facing off against Jon for first place.  Since it was double-elimination, the way it ended up for the finals was that I only had to beat Jon once to win, while he had to beat me twice in a row [e.g. I was the finalist from the “winner’s” bracket and he was the finalist from the “loser’s” bracket].  I had already faced him earlier in the tournament and beaten him just by a hair (putting him in the loser’s bracket), so we were both rather nervous for the match.  Long story short, I did as well as I could, but Jon did manage to pull two wins on me and I ended up placing second. with Jon and Sam on either side of the top 3.  Very fun experience, but really, really long.  I was expecting to win maybe 1 or 2 rounds and then be pushed off the line, maybe staying for a max of an hour and a half or so, but since I had to play in every single round, I ended up being there for nearly 7 hours, which means I have to work like a madman to get everything done this weekend that I planned to.  There were no prizes other than bragging rights, but I enjoyed the opportunity to play against so many people who brought such crazy, awesome, unexpected strategies to the tournament.

[End video game section]

I have this following week, then one day of school before Thanksgiving break, then one more week, then 2 days of school, then finals.  13 days of classes left.  Sill upcoming for me is the completion of the battleship project, which is coming along excellently, and an absurd quantity of Geography tests.  In the time we have left, we are supposed to do 5 tests.  And I do mean tests, not quizzes.  Six or seven pages each.  Ughh.

Talk to you all next week! -Christopher