Haha feeling other people's feelings for the longest time made me terrible at understanding myself at times. Perhaps there are more around me that I cannot see very well. I'm sure I passed by one but to recognize one is another matter.
What probably makes an NJ difficult to uncover is that academia is a very ennea 6 way of learning. Format and structure, cite and source. I've seen little difference of opinions. I often give different perspectives and sometimes to the annoyance of my teacher because I seem to be extrapolating or guessing on little data which is bad bad for education lol also makes me hate multiple choice tests but love free response. Everyone who doesn't abide by the standards or principles of teaching is either regarded as dumb or obnoxious in an unsaid way. Making those who are iconoclastic or individualistic hide in silence only making you guess by what clothes they wear if conversation doesn't take place seriously. I tend to outdress most people though haha. Which I kind of wish more people would stop wearing plain clothes and start expressing themselves more but not everyone cares about that which isn't a biggie but whatever. (And of course not all 6's are academic focused either)
Well fortunate for you to meet that many.
Well you're not alone in this.
I hated education as a child mainly for this same reason. Repetition is at the heart of learning but it's different kinds of repetition, not just the munch-regurgitation-munch cycle.
You can leap or connect different entities of knowledge and while you do need to have absorbed those entitites to make use of them (unconsciously or otherwise) just stopping at the absorbtion in order to present the right factual attainment was always.....incredibly dissatisfying . So I acted up and out and eventually round.....to the outside of the classroom.
These days I'm more balanced and would probably benefit to an extent from some rote memorisation. I just found it so hard when I was younger, I needed more meaning than the approval of the authority figure.
Minor point about how people dress, as an aside, I understand how difference of appearence can affect both how you interact with others and how they interact with you, therefore the change of hair or style of dress does indeed change a person because they believe in it's difference and this is affirmed by those who recognise it.
And as an expression of individual likes, drives, themes, psychologies etc...I can see how that works, but it's difficult not to see what is a visual appeal, which is (in part) designed to be noticed by those using vision as something done for others as well as for the self.
Because of this it also does risk the dreaded underwater mine of being seen as superficial or actually being superficial. A girl at 6th form used to buy garish clothes from charity shops and dye her hair a different colour each week yet protest whenever people pointed this out. An unintegrated paradox lay at the heart of this, I think, and she wanted attention, but only on her terms, yet didn't understand that she lives in a world of relations to other things living or not and you cannot exist in a vacuum where you get to choose the opinions you hear. Unless of course you lean towards some form of authoritarian regime.
Which could be the ultimate irony of the unbalanced individualist, particularly those who rely upon trickery of appearence.
