[Spooky]

...how many INFPs have furthered their education and gotten a college degree or are currently pursuing one. I think I read somewhere that INFPs are the least likely of the 16 types to follow through with a higher education. I took a couple of classes when I was around 21, and now I'm finally going back to college at 25. I was an average student in high school. Didn't try too hard; I graduated with a GPA of 2.2. Just wondering how some of you other INFPs did in school.

[Happy]

I don't know if it's just me, but I do notice that INFP's have a difficult time with school. They hate education because using logic is not their priority and for the most part, school teaches logic. INFP's want creative activities and not the typical education that society is placing on them.

[Nightriser]

I don't know if it's just me, but I do notice that INFP's have a difficult time with school. They hate education because using logic is not their priority and for the most part, school teaches logic. INFP's want creative activities and not the typical education that society is placing on them.

Hmm, while I agree that school doesn't encourage creative activity, I don't think logic is really emphasized either, drawing from the experience I've had at schools. Rather, the emphasis seems to be rote memorization and mindless regurgitation, which have nothing to do with logic. Where many intuitives take issue with the school system (so far as I can tell) is in the neutral to slightly negative attitude toward non-conventional thinking.
In college, the demands change, but the degree to which it does so varies from school to school, and you are finally given the option to focus on a creative activity, if that is your wish.

[NephilimAzrael]

Hmm, while I agree that school doesn't encourage creative activity, I don't think logic is really emphasized either, drawing from the experience I've had at schools. Rather, the emphasis seems to be rote memorization and mindless regurgitation, which have nothing to do with logic. Where many intuitives take issue with the school system (so far as I can tell) is in the neutral to slightly negative attitude toward non-conventional thinking.
In college, the demands change, but the degree to which it does so varies from school to school, and you are finally given the option to focus on a creative activity, if that is your wish.

Yes, very well said.

[snail]

I dropped out of college, then dropped out of art school. I'm a horrible failure, and I don't mind a bit. For me, the point of going was to learn, and if I wasn't learning more than I could teach myself, I saw it as pointless. I also had values that clashed with some of the assignments, so I was seen as a rebellious trouble maker, even though I tended to protest the assignments passive aggressively by finding creative ways to make my projects express my feelings about them. I got sent to the office a lot to explain myself, and even though I always defended myself in my usual softspoken way, I was sent there frequently. Until I went to college, I had only been sent to the office once, and it was for being bullied (I was accused of fighting, even though I wasn't fighting back.) rather than for being creative and controversial.

[Spooky]

I dropped out of college, then dropped out of art school. I'm a horrible failure, and I don't mind a bit. For me, the point of going was to learn, and if I wasn't learning more than I could teach myself, I saw it as pointless. I also had values that clashed with some of the assignments, so I was seen as a rebellious trouble maker, even though I tended to protest the assignments passive aggressively by finding creative ways to make my projects express my feelings about them. I got sent to the office a lot to explain myself, and even though I always defended myself in my usual softspoken way, I was sent there frequently. Until I went to college, I had only been sent to the office once, and it was for being bullied (I was accused of fighting, even though I wasn't fighting back.) rather than for being creative and controversial.

You got sent to the office in college? Do they even do that?

[prufrok]

I'm pursuing my Master's in English lit right now. I find graduate school, like college, to be a very painful experience. The powers that be are usually horrible people who are there for any reason but to appreciate literature. Like Snail has said, I try to subtly express my feelings about things in my papers and such, and I usually take a lot of punishment for it.

Case in point: I had to read a paper before a class about a book I really like. Our professor, this really reserved Oxford Ph.D., hates it whenever anyone claims that there is such a thing as "good" or "bad." (He and I don't get along.)

Anyway, at the end of my paper, the professor tried to embarrass me by asking a question that was so dense, it was barely intelligible. He did this to all the students when they read their papers. But where they sheepishly pretended to understand and offer an answer that not even they understood, I just told him I didn't know what he meant. He reworded it slightly, but it was still a fuddled mess of a question. So I told him I still didn't understand. In a burst of anger he slapped his palm on the table and yelled, "Why is this book good!"

I was thrilled to have not only provoked such a serious Englishman into genuine emotion, but also to have gotten this Oxford man to ask a straight question. But I was still frustrated, and I didn't know what to say. I knew the answer he wanted was "Well, the very question implies that there is such a thing as 'universal greatness'" or some other BS like that. So all I could do, to be true to my own feelings, was slip into metaphor. I asked him in return, "Why is the sun beautiful?"

That really made him mad, but he did calm down. I think he realized he would never get me to cave to his will, so he let it go. But yeah, the fact that you have to tell a fellow "lover of literature" (using the term loosely for this guy) why a book that is a respected part of the canon is "good" just makes me want to cry.

[snail]

You got sent to the office in college? Do they even do that?

Yes. They sure do. Creativity will inevitably be punished. At art school, I was more likely to be sent in to talk to my advisor, but at the regular school, I was sent in to see the dean on several occasions. They thought I had attitude probems because I wasn't conforming.

[Spooky]

Yes. They sure do.

I would understand being sent to the office if you were being obnoxious or rude or violent in some way, but not because of an assignment or your individual expression.

[snail]

I wasn't being rude or violent. I just wasn't willing to do the assignments the way they wanted me to.