True Blood: Sunset

Steve Barkley from Performance Learning Systems did a two day workshop at my job this week, during which he talked about learning styles and personality type. In 12 years of teaching, I’ve workshopped this topic approximately 873.27 times and it usually goes like this:

• presenter tells us there are different personality types and learning styles, as if no one has ever made this statement before.
• presenter says failing students fail because teachers aren’t delivering instruction in student’s preferred learning style.
• angry veteran teachers mutter, “What am I supposed to do? Change everything to accommodate that one kinesthetic learner? I have <insert number here> students!”
• teachers are administered the learning style preference assessment tool du jour.
• presenter passes out a flier with a bullet list of strategies for each learning style.
• teachers put the flier in the scrap paper bin and go back to fighting the good fight.

Barkley, though, I really liked. He did it in such a way that was genuinely useful and provided a framework that explained how the differing styles can be problematic at school.

And, because I’m a narcissist, I turned it on myself to discover why I’m such a pain in the ass. It’s because on his Personality Temperament Spectrum, I fall under “Intuitive Thinker.”

An Intuitive Thinker type values competence and reason, and is often that person – the person who watches The Dark Knight Rises and thinks, “That’s a terrible design for a prison. There was a better way to do that.”

Sometimes, like during this episode, that Intuitive Thinker trait ruins my fun.

See, here’s Alcide. Thank you, Show, for giving me an Alcide-does-handy-things-while-shirtless scene!

Then, as I’m watching him wield that axe, my Intuitive Thinker habits kicked in and I had to ask….

Is Alcide trying to chop the world? 

And it took me right out of it. Stupid intuitive thinker head won’t even let me enjoy half-naked Alcide for five minutes.

Other True Blood Thoughts:

• As predicted, Andy’s fairy sexytime is coming back to haunt him and, one way or the other, it’ll probably ruin what he’s getting started with Holly.
• That fairy elder was ridiculous. She looked like she was trying to shake off a dried-up poop.

• “I actually met him. Jesus was a boring hippie who stank of patchouli.” THIS is why Russell needs a spin off. Russell Edgington through history, people.
• The vampire nest mentality certainly explains why the chancellors are all hallucinating and wackadoo: they’re going bat$h!t from the blood and their own company.
• Awesome Pam has all the answers. She should be the Guardian.

• Really? “Vampires Suck” is the best graffiti that hooligans could come up with? It’s not even clever.

Lastly, I’m ecstatic that the larger world was addressed in this episode. It’s sensible that the government would have been aware of The Authority and worked with them, particularly since it’s been indicated that vampires often hide in positions of power among humans.

I thought it was going somewhere with the human general, but then Eric broke his neck. It wasn’t terribly upsetting because we hardly knew the general, but I had to ask:

“Did Eric forget how to glamour or something? There was a better way to do that.”

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