The Essence of Being Resident Assistant: Analytical Essay

According to Myers Brigg Type Indicator test results, my four personality indicators are INFJ, that indicates that I am a Advocate with traits of introvert, intuitive, feeling, and judging. Each letter indicates major characteristics of my personality, Introvert draw energy from self, I prefer Intuitive over observant which means imagination and creativeness over practical personality, Feeling means to take decisions on emotions from the heart rather than from brain, I prefer clarity and closure over indecision or a lack of conviction that is trait of Judging. All the above traits indicates that of “Advocate” (INFJ-A).

All the four indicators define my character perfectly and I am going through every trait (INFJ) in my everyday life. For example, I was working on project given by a company called “IMERYS” with group of five people. As an imaginative and creative person, I worked on creating the designs for the filtration system. I was very comfortable working with all the teammates, there are many challenges we went through and I have given my best to handle every challenge. I enjoyed working on the project because I knew that by working hard and taking decisions on emotions, the project would be successful. Proper clarity on the project led to make good decisions from design to presentation made this project successful. I try to find the positive out of every challenging situation in every circumstance. This project is good example that shows my traits INFJ.

RA (Resident Assistant) have many responsibilities apart from being a student, Sometimes it would be stressful to manage many things at a same time, So MBTI indicator results help the RA to handle the situation. Being INFJ comes along with positives and negatives in their traits, taking only positives and improve my negatives to positives would help the RA to perform better. My strengths are being imaginative, creativity, patience, flexible, friendly, clarity, energy, helpful, closure, and hard work. My weaknesses are being too idealistic, more emotional, more self-conscious and being reserved.

One of the important roles being a RA is problem solver, conflict mediator, community builder, group facilitator and counselor, my traits would be helpful to lead these roles. RA has to face many challenging situations such as room mate problems, academic problem and alcohol violations where one should have patience to deal with different kinds of problems and as a INFJ, I have a lot of patience and clarity on the problem what I am dealing with to help the students with guidance and the proper approach to solve the problem. RA role requires to be patient when dealing with students because sometimes it becomes tiresome to solve same problem with different sets of people and every person is different from each other, So being patient helps to handle the different kinds of people, these traits would be helpful for roles such as problem solver, conflict mediator and counselor.

Community builder and group facilitator roles requires imaginative and creative person to initiate activities that would engage every student who is living the floor and create good social environment around every student. RA should be helpful to students on various things such as providing accurate information about writing center, academic advising and counseling services on campus. Someone needs to initiate activities such as floor meeting, programs, and fun activities on the floor, that person is usually be an RA who has to friendly and helpful personality.

MBTI results would really helpful to build team of RA’s in a building because there would be good mix of people with different traits in a group which makes things easier because everyone has different strengths, So that everyone can complements eachother strengths and weaknesses. As an INFJ, it would be important to be a part of team that is composed of different traits as my strengths are to be imaginative, friendly, helpful and hardwork, These are going to be useful for being a RA. My creativity could be helpful in making new interactive activities with students in the building, I would give my best to handle any challenging situation and my friendly nature with other RA would be helpful to create good social environment in the building. Finally, In order to be an effective team, we will definitely need to respect each other’s personality traits.