Lobbying for Lawyers, Day 1
That’s the course title I’ve had in my mind all day for my Superior Court Mediation class that began today: “Lobbying for Lawyers.”
It’s not technically accurate of course, since mediators aren’t really lobbying for a specific objective beyond helping the parties resolve their dispute. But as we were going over the intro materials and getting an overview of the next 4 days, ((It’s a 5-day, 8-hours-a-day class that doubles as CLE for practicing attorneys. Perk of taking classes that double as CLE: free food for breakfast and lunch :D)) I kept thinking in my head of a quote by the fictitious lobbyist in Thank You for Smoking: “I’m a mediator between two sects of society that are trying to reach an accommodation” 
Overall I enjoyed the first day of class… we’ll see if that spirit continues after 4 more days of 8am-5pm 
Speaking of that schedule, the next 4 days are going to be certifiably insane. I got up at 6am this morning, went to class, came home by 530pm, and have quite literally been (i) reading for my other summer school class, or (ii) doing homework for the mediation class ever since I’ve been back. I didn’t even study this consistently during finals! I’m not done with the work for either class, but it’s late and I need to go to bed 
Two not-quite-random “About TDot” side notes:
- As part of the mediation course, we had to take a survey on how we deal with conflict. Of the 5 conflict responses, my breakdown is 30% competing, 26% collaborating, 26% compromising, 9% accommodating and 9% avoiding. So basically I prefer dealing with conflict and would really prefer getting my way, but if that doesn’t happen I’m equally willing to collaborate and/or compromise to find a mutually agreeable solution… just don’t expect me to budge much Not sure if that’s suitable mediator material or not
- We also took the full Myers-Briggs / Keirsey Temperament Sorter test. This is the 5th time I’ve taken the full test since I moved to North Carolina… and the 5th time I’ve gotten a different result:
* INFP (“The Healer“) when I first took the test my freshman year in Fall 1998;
* ENFP (“The Champion“) when I took the test again for a class in Spring 2000;
* INTJ (“The Mastermind“) when I took it for the Wake County Clerk’s Office in mid-2003;
* INTP (“The Architect“) by Spring 2006 when I was back at NCSU; and,
* ENTJ (“The Fieldmarshal“) as of today. ((Presumably the result of 2 years running the NC State Student Senate and 2 years running UNCASG?))None of those results really surprise me I guess, but it seems to be a common occurrence for folks’ results to change frequently — and how useful is a personality survey like this if the results fluctuate regularly? Do our personalities really change that much over time?
That’s all I’ve got for tonight’s entry. I’ll leave you, dear readers, with a random YouTube video I stumbled across today on perceptiveness:
Enjoy! Have a great night y’all!! 
How funny, every time I’ve taken one of those personality test (and I’ve taken them a bunch of times) I get the exact same result: ISTJ, heavy on the I & J (I think maybe once I squeaked over to INTJ – the middle 2 scores are less definitive – but only by a hair). ISTJs are the rulemaker/follower, police/bureaucrat type – very boring. The upside is apparently it’s the type most suited to law.
wow, seriously?
My E/I scores have always been close so I can understand those flipping, but the T/F and P/J are usually decisive in one direction or the other. The only thing I’ve ever consistently been is an N in various degrees