Friday, April 11, 2008

High school story (Valentine's Day)

My roommates are watching Sneakers right now, and the part with the computer dating reminds me of a story from high school. For Valentine's Day the student body offered a computerized "compatibility rating" service--you fill out your answers to a set of questions (music tastes, hobbies, etc.), and they tell you the top 10 other students of the appropriate sex matching your answers, on the grounds that that this constitutes "compatibility." They also told you your two least-compatible matches. Well, for fun, I signed up and filled out a questionnaire. My #1 compatibility rating was, IIRC, 63%. I asked around among my friends and found that for most of them, the top match was usually 75-80% and all ten of the top matches were rated higher than my #1 match. Even more amusingly, I showed up as the "least compatible" match on something like 25% of the readouts I checked.

It doesn't mean anything in particular, since the questionnaire was a bunch of trivial personality-level stuff that doesn't, IMHO, measure the traits I actually look for in girls. Perhaps it measures what girls look for, though--I suppose the student body officers probably knew girls better than I do.

Then there was the time I took a job aptitude test as a sophomore and they told me I didn't fit the profile of any known profession--I told everyone they basically advised me to become a bum...

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

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