I teach organizational behavior (OB) at the undergraduate level. Well, to be more specific, I’m a TA for OB at the undergraduate level, but because of the structure of the class, students rarely see the professor for the class and spend most of their time interacting with me as the person at the front of the classroom.
This past week we talked about individual differences — personality. Naturally, we spoke about the Big 5. In reviewing the dimensions of personality we read through some scenarios together and had to identify which personality dimension was implicated. In one of those scenarios, we read about someone faced with a dilemma:
It’s Friday and her friends have invited her out to a concert and she also has plans for Saturday/Sunday. However, she has assignments that are due on Monday.
For folks that know about the Big 5, this example is clearly implicating the Conscientiousness dimension of the Big 5. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because this happened to me this weekend. It’s not completely surprising that this would happen to me because I usually score very high on conscientiousness, but I thought it was rather coincidental that it happened the same week that we were discussing this concept in class.
Both of the classes I have this semester occur on Monday (afternoon and evening). For both of these classes, I’ve got quite a bit of reading to do, which is okay, but since these classes are outside my field of expertise, some of the reading takes longer (as I have to look up words — from time-to-time — to contextualize my understanding).
If I think back to my days an undergrad, I’d often find myself reading on Sunday night/evening, to make sure I was prepared for class on Monday morning. This weekend, something different happened: I spent most of the day Friday and most of the day Saturday working — really hard. As a result, when I sat down to dinner on Saturday evening, I felt relaxed because I knew I had very little work to complete on Sunday. This feeling… is wonderful.
Jeremiah Stanghini 