I manifest the theme of deliberative in basically all parts of my life. I must think through the choices that are offered and weigh all of the pros and cons of each choice before I can make a final decision. It is a trait that drives my mother crazy and one that I am learning to become proud of. A great example of me being deliberative is when I going shopping. Shopping for clothing is pretty much a process that has a few more steps than the average person. For me I must think about if I actually want or need the idea and run through different scenarios in which I could wear the item and whether the money would be better used elsewhere. But no other shopping scenario has topped senior prom dress shopping. For a few weeks I researched and compiled dresses I liked and started diving in deeper, meaning that I looked at and compared prices and reviews to match sure I was making the right decision. Even when just regular shopping I walk around with the item that I am thinking about buying around the store while still shopping to make sure that I there is not something better or that I still actually like it. It is interesting that my deliberative trait also connects back to my input trait. Sometimes, I tend to make lists or compile information, collecting interesting information or creating lists of palaces that I would live to travel to in the future. A great example that shows the extent of my deliberative tendencies along with demonstrating my input trait is my junior and senior year of high school when I was thinking about what colleges to apply to. By the beginning of senior year, I had a color coded chart of colleges with SAT/ACT information, average financial aid packages, deadlines, and notes on the side with bits of information about the college. My parents thought I was insane and I probably was, but college is expensive and making the right choice for me was important. Eventually I did narrow it down and applied and then when it came down to officially choosing which college I would be going to I of course made another list and visited, and in the end my choice was an emotionally informed one. With the restorative trait I think sometimes it applies more to other people than it does to myself personally. In my friend group back in high school I was kind of the person to look to, to help solve a problem and to be calm. It could range from small things to bigger things. From figuring out how to do something on the computer to figuring out how to deal with personal problems in their lives, and sometimes it is not necessarily a problem it could be that they just need some feedback on what could be better. During senior year we have a yearlong project called Senior Project and of course that was stressful, but during that time everyone was under stress at one point or another. With dealing with stressful situations I tend to be calm and tame any the panic the comes along with stress in order to think about what to do next and how to do it. So in that respect throughout the year I helped my friends deal with problems that arose during the year. I did not really know that I possessed this skill until in humanities class when we had to describe ourselves and my friends pointed out that in stressful situations I tend to be the calm one with possible solutions. I do believe that I would like to work on the strength of deliberative as my primary strength. I think being conscious of the decisions you are making is a very important quality for a leader to have because a leader is someone that most people look up to and is someone that is generally making decisions for the group. If a leader goes and makes a decision without thinking about problems that may arise it is more than he leader that will be affected if the decision made was a wrong one. I do not plan to run for president any time soon, but being deliberative is critical. It is important for me to work on it throughout the semester because college and life is all about making decisions about what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.
