I started to get nervous walking up the stairs to my first night of Personality Science: The Art of Face Reading. Because I really had no idea who was going to be there. Who else would not only know about the class but would sign up for it? It was me, an older single woman, a feminine young man, and a solitary married man probably in his mid-thirties. We sat around a small table in a Spanish classroom in West High and took in the wisdom of Sharon Crandall. She's not exactly what I was expecting. In my head I saw a trim, ex-government official with a stern expression. But that's not really what I got. Crandall has studied the applied science of personology developed by Edward Vincent Jones and later by his former student Robert Whitesides. After majoring in psychology, you would think that I would have been prepared for a non-science discipline, but I was too optimistic and wanted hard facts. Although Personality Science only stems from correlations and observations, I feel like I got a lot out of the class.
What I like about Personality Science is that there is a belief that you can change your genetically given traits and that there are no bad traits, you just have to learn to channel your traits for your benefit. It's humanistic, which I tend to really love. The class involved a lot of staring at each other and our teacher, but it wasn't really that awkward. Instead of making me too vulnerable, it was kind of liberating to have someone explain their view of me in front of other people I had just met. Crandall's assessment of me was fairly accurate. This is what she saw in the proportions of my facial features:
High Forward Balance, which means that I am innately more self-conscious and often dwell on future events.
Administrative, meaning that I am a leader and delegator. She told me I should be better at my job when I mentioned that I was a manager and didn't feel like I had fully assumed the role. Apparently the skills are innately in me, but another trait is holding me back. I haven't figured out if this is true or not.
I have structural appreciation and know how things look and work best.
I lean towards being skeptical, which of course I was skeptical of at first.
I'm very high in tenacity.
High on self-reliance.
Medium-high emotionality and on the first week she said I have expressive eyes.
Resolute in my decisions.
I have a sense of adventure.
I'm selective in who I'm friends with and harder to approach.
Innate confidence instead of learned confidence, which means I take action in whatever way I feel is right and learn from my own mistakes and gain fears after failures.
I'm in the middle of the idealistic and realistic trait.
I'm concise, thrifty, and efficient with time, words, and money.
I think fairly sequentially, so I don't always jump to conclusions.
I'm more wide tolerant, which means it takes me longer to feel the need to react emotionally.
I'm about 2/3 analytical in my thinking.
I have a middle score in being taciturn and choosy with who I divulge my secrets.
The one mood swing she did point out was on the acquisitive trait. In personality science, a swing means that you may feel differently about the same thing at different times or in different situations. It's not about moody, teenage angst. My swing refers to a need to own and collect things and then in another mood to give things away.
I scored high on two of the three ESP traits, and may have some of the third which is intuition, but she couldn't get a great feel (literally, she was touching my head at Denny's). But I am very strong on telepathy and fairly high in psychic. She didn't really go into these much, but I think it indicates that I'm good at reading people and understanding their feelings and thoughts.
The only trait I didn't agree with was PPA: Pride in Personal Appearance. I feel like if I was truly strong on this trait I would not only be a very different person, but I would not be a very happy person. Maybe I learned other traits to balance out this one? I don't know.
She got all of that after staring at me and touching my head for two minutes. I'm pretty impressed with her commitment and belief in face reading.
There's one other thing I learned from my two day crash course in Personality Science: That women don't really change with age. After the class last Tuesday, the other woman in the class and I met Crandall at Denny's to further discuss our traits and look at pictures of people. Come to find out, this woman in the class is 54, never married, and in love with her best friend. She took the class as another way to analyze why they aren't together and if they should be! And she flat-out told me this! While my motivation for taking the class was purely intellectual interest and entertainment value, I can understand where she's coming from, and I don't want to be her in 30 years. She took up most of the instructor's time showing pictures of her friend, but I was so fascinated, I didn't care. By the end, my heart went out to this woman. Apparently her friend has told her that she has three out of the four things he must have in a wife, and the one thing she doesn't have is the physical attraction. At their age, things are on the decline; there isn't much she can do. And I feel awful about it. Why is it so hard for women to fall for nice, available men? All I can say is that I hope I'm married with children in the next ten years; maybe I should have picked up Sharon Crandall's book, Compatible? or Combatable?.
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