Monday, February 12, 2024

What are you testing for?

I am very intelligent.  I was a counterintelligence agent, which is the opposite of intelligence, which means I have been specially trained how to be stupid!

I am very well educated.  I dropped out of college twice!

I score very well on most tests.  Except...

When I first joined the military, back when Reagan was President, I went to Pensacola after basic training.  As part of the in processing, every Army trainee on this Navy base where dentists were also trained got two fillings, whether you needed them or not.  Ah, the joys of taking a typing test (real typewriters, following a program on real punch tape) while wearing heavy headphones immediately after getting two fillings.

We also had to participate in this new personality profile test.  I guess it was part of the counterintelligence program, but I'm not certain about that.  The Navy was just weird, sometimes, especially from a Soldier's perspective.

I had already done something like this in high school, as part of the vocational advisement program.  It showed that I was neither suited for nor interested in any profession.  Oddly enough, the vocational test had nothing in it about wanting to join the military, the only thing I had really wanted to do since I was 8 years old or so.

So I took the Navy's personality test.  A few days later, I was ordered to take a different one.  They were sort of silly, but something to do while I waited for my class cycle to start.

A couple days after taking the second test, I was called to the office of the testing program manager.  He railed at me for a while.  He accused me of cheating on the tests.  He asked me who I thought I was?  Who sent me?  What am I really doing there on the base?  Who did I really work for?

I had no answers to these questions, and no idea what he was going on about.  So I asked what the real problem was.  He told me that I must have been specially prepared by someone, because both tests indicated that I had no discernible personality.

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