Hello friends, I am here jumping on that good good sortinghatchats bandwagon! For those of you curious, sortinghatchats started out on tumblr, and they have a page explaining the basics+ of their methods for the sorting quiz+ they came up with. 

Now, for those of you who know me pretty well (and, according to Twitter polls, apparently) a lot of you think I am a Ravenclaw, with Slytherin or Hufflepuff tendencies. 

According to the sortinghatchats system, I am a Ravenclaw Primary with a Burned Ravenclaw Secondary and a Slytherin Secondary Model.

This did not surprise me one bit!  

To simplify this introspective process, I'm just gonna quote a bit of the explanations because they do such a great job, and commentate how those are reflected in who I am, what I do, and how I do things. 

Ravenclaw Primary:

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Ravenclaw Primaries have a constructed system that they test their decisions against before they feel comfortable calling something right... it gives them a way to frame the world and a confidence in their ability to interact with it morally.

Yep, hi, it's me! While I *do* think I have some pretty strong moral views, a lot of that stems from my belief in a system that I, well, believe to be right. If something were to come up that goes against that system outright, then I will be very unlikely to reshape my view of that thing or update my belief system to include that if it is something I believe to be harmful. A lot of my system likely comes from having teachers for parents -- they taught us to be good, kind, and helpful kids, which is definitely a system I still find myself in as a graduate student. They also wanted us to do our best at things we tried out, which, I mean, I'm going for my PhD in chemistry because I wanted to do better, so that's clearly worked out well. 

However I have also seen where the system I grew up with has been detracting for me -- the example that comes to mind is the whole premarital sex, yadda yadda yadda. I've been with my boyfriend for nearly 7 and a half years (I'm 23 (soon to be 24), so you do the math on that one), and it took a long time for me to unpack the shame I felt about doing anything even remotely intimate with him because of the system I grew up in. Eventually, though, I was able to change my constructed system and am much happier for it. 

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Ravenclaws do not lack an intuitive sense of morality or gut feeling about things, but they distrust those instincts and have a need to ignore or to dig down deep and dissect those internal moral impulses. Living within their built moral system is as important to a Ravenclaw as to a Gryffindor; it’s the source of the morality that differs between them– what they trust.

I am probably one of the least impulsive people I know, and it becomes especially true when something "moral" is at stake. While I do often have gut feelings, I very rarely act directly upon them -- I have to first analyze why I'm having those feelings and then see if there's a reasonable explanation for them; if there's not, I probably won't listen to it unless it's literally screaming at me. 

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Ravenclaws want to do the right thing, but they think the "right thing" ought to come from careful reason, logic, and study, not anything internal.

Something I am also guilty of is being very quick to judge people, regardless of what my gut is telling me about them. I am guilty of sometimes shifting my right/wrong with people, but then I usually will have a sit-down thoughtful time and then realizing I did a shitty thing. For example, I'll get judgy of people sometimes because its a shift to my normal perception of them when something about them has changed significantly. And then I have to sit on it and go back and remove that judgy bit from their file once I can understand the change & fit it into their file appropriately. A good example of this is when a friend of mine recently got a boyfriend and just suddenly started bringing him to *everything*. I immediately shut down, judged (both of them) hardcore, and just last week realized the shitty thing I had done was really just shut out my friend for doing a perfectly reasonable thing in the beginning of a new relationship, which is hang out with their partner a lot. I just got super freaked out in my gut because he was suddenly at all of these events/friend hangouts he had not been at before, and I didn't know what to do, so I just judged instead. This is something I am trying to do less of as I am much more aware of it now. 

Burned Ravenclaw Secondary:

Briefly, a Burned Secondary may be too world-weary, resigned, or practical to put weight into specific methods or tactics, or they may have lost faith in their own ability to use the specific tools of their House. So, what does that mean for me? 

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Burned Ravenclaw Secondaries might want to be skilled, curious, and prepared, but they feel like they are (or like people think they are) limited, clumsy, or inconstant.

Helloooo, Imposter Syndrome is knocking, it'd like it's title back! But seriously, this is me to a T. I definitely know how some of this came about -- being a triplet, each of us had to kind of find our niche, or our "thing" that we were better at than the other two fairly early on in life. For me, that meant that I was the "smart" one. While my parents pushed all of us to excel, I feel like they really pushed me more, especially considering how much reading I did and how scientific I often was with the bugs and toads I'd catch in our backyard during summers. However, once I started undergrad, I realized I wasn't really *that* smart -- I was really just one of those "average above-average" students, and that really hit me hard the spring semester of my freshman year of undergrad, which was the lowest GPA I had my entire college career. Therefore, I really felt disenfranchised with my own supposed intelligence for a looong time. It wasn't until junior year when I finally got into the rhythm of my degree and the classes I was taking that I felt *less* limited/clumsy/unknowledgeable about my field. 

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They may feel disingenuous or like they're not living up to their own standards or potential.

Now that I'm a graduate student, the imposter syndrome has really only increased, in a sense. I know this is primarily due to my entering into a field I was completely brand-new to for graduate school, and I've made my peace with that (and learned a lot since then). However, the other part of the imposter syndrome is still there, because what if I fail? And what if I fail spectacularly? I've failed before, but this just seems like much higher stakes than previous things, so it's just kind of a constantly buzzing alarm in the back of my head. This is heightened due to the fact that I am advancing a whole 6 months early compared to the regular timeline for my track (I'm applying for a research program, it's a whole thing). While I know that I am going to be okay with doing this, it is still extremely terrifying and has me worried that I actually don't know shit about chemistry or my research is full of holes, even though my PI/advisor has the utmost confidence in me. Trying to make my parents proud by getting a PhD but so far having nothing to really show for it after almost two years of school is frustrating because it's so hard to explain how this works to them, and how there aren't the standard benchmarks they're used to as teachers, necessarily. I'm working on this though! #therapy

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They collect information, they strategize. They have tools. They run hypotheticals and try to plan ahead for things that might come up. They feel less at home in improvisation and more comfortable planning ahead and taking the time to be prepared.

Y'all, this is why ya girl loves her spreadsheets, loves her bullet journal, loves her *color-coded* Google Calendar, and makes to-do lists/backwards timelines for everything from my weekend plans/chores to advancement deadlines and research goals for the week. I analyze the SHIT out of my life, which is both a good and bad thing. This is one of the reasons why I often find myself helping plan events or parties with friends -- I don't like not being in control, but I also want to make sure things are happening the way they should and that we're prepared for eventualities. 

Slytherin Secondary Model:

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It doesn’t feel deceitful to a Slytherin to change to fit the needs of their environment– to be kind with this person, forceful with this one, erudite to the next. This adaptability can be applied to manipulation, influence, and power, but a Slytherin secondary can just as easily focus their efforts on maintaining friendships, making people happy, encouraging positive social change, or streamlining communication.

Y'all, there is a reason I am the Mom Friend. It seems like that would be a Hufflepuff thing, but honestly, I feel like I'm more on the Slytherin side of this friend role. Sure, I do listen to people's feelings and whatnot, but I also help them make decisions and can be very blunt and to the point with them too, if needed. If a friend is dilly-dallying over a person who may be giving me a bad vibe, once I have enough information (Ravenclaw peeking its head here) then I won't hesitate to let them know that they should drop that person. The second part of the application is definitely me, and I think that's more of the Mom Friend thing that I have going on. 

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If you model Slytherin secondary, then you are more likely to pull this skill out of your sleeve when you’re caught off-guard and need to think fast. It’s useful and maybe even fun, but it doesn’t feel genuine and true to your core. It feels a little like pretending.

This often happens when I have a friend text me who needs to vent or is having a crisis and needs my help working through it. I don't always enjoy having to think on the fly so much (hello again, Ravenclaw) but this is a skill I've improved upon over the years of undergrad and going through a huge change of moving halfway across the country to grad school, away from all of my family/friends/boyfriend. When confronted with a literal surprise situation like a friend coming into my office having a breakdown out of the blue, I tend to put on a bit of a facade to help them through it even though I'm flying by the seat of my pants and just hoping that my Mom Friend tendencies can pull me through to the other side. 

So, all in all, this sorting makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Something that I think could also be a possibility when I'm not so jaded with life/grad school because of constant underlying stress due to advancement is perhaps a Hufflepuff Secondary Model. As I've already said, I'm the Mom Friend in several friend groups, so I think this model would be a good fit for those times when life is on more of an upswing than a downswing. I also will sometimes just want to do nice things for people with no expectations for something in return, which I think is a very Hufflepuff thing. 

Overall, I think this has allowed me some really great introspection and gave me some good insights to myself I hadn't ever really analyzed before, but also made me start thinking about some of my behavioral patterns and why I might do them. I've always identified with Ravenclaw, so being a Ravenclaw Primary was practically a given for me. It's also made me realize that my sort-of obsessive nature of color-coding things and love of organizing and planning things is completely okay to do but is also sometimes a coping mechanism for a problem I may not be addressing. Being a scientist too, the Burned Ravenclaw Secondary makes a lot of sense -- I can get disenchanted with research pretty easily if I'm not understanding something, so I might turn to my Slytherin model to see if that might tease something out and make me focused in again.

So, to sum me up: I love spreadsheets and plans but also just learning new things for fun and doing my best to support myself and my friends as we go on this journey called life.