Listening and Small Groups

Right now part of my time, and part of the reason why I've not blogged as much this month, is taken up by a night class I have. I'm taking a quick, 4 week, Summer course in Interpersonal communications. What is interesting in the class is watching the nearly 30 other faces while one person is doing a presentation. It goes back, oddly, to my thoughts on how introverts and extroverts deal with social information.

In a setting like this you can really tell who is more extroverted: They keep their gaze on the presenter. Introverts,  like me, tend to stare off in the distance or downward. We're listening and processing the info rather than sucking in the scene waiting for the next. And rather than listen attentively I end up writing this (or, transcribe my notes the next day ^_^).

It's also interesting to realize how some people hover between these two states. You'll see attention paid out, but then switch to processing. Back and forth they go, sometimes with more attention or more processing time. It goes to prove my idea about the MBTI being more percent, rather than absolute, based. I mentioned in my Healer post how I switch between Feeling and Thinking. Same idea here, but between extroversion and introversion. Something I would never accuse myself of wavering on (I AM an introvert, damn you). Also add in the fatigue of a 6 pm - 10 pm, Tuesday to Thursday class and you get some interesting reactions in the subject.

In closing, a sentence that came out of my notes but never found a place to fit in the above because it can stand on its own:

"When you are not accountable for what you are listening to, a truer self emerges."