Lesson 2 Embracing Our Differences
Opposite Personalities, Great Partnerships
Everybody is ____. However, there have been many attempts to categorize people’s personalities.
One of the most common methods divides people ____ two types, introverts and extroverts.
____ to this division, introverts tend to be drawn to the internal world of thoughts and feelings, while extroverts are drawn to the external world of people and activities.
Introverts recharge their batteries by spending some time alone; extroverts ____ to recharge when they do not socialize enough.
Extroverts are good at ____ tasks under pressure and coping with multiple jobs at once.
Introverts, on the other hand, ____ to focus on one task at a time and can concentrate very well.
Extroverts ____ to do assignments quickly. They make fast decisions and are comfortable with taking risks.
Introverts often work more slowly and ____.
They think ____ they act, give up less easily, and work more accurately.
Based on all this information, you might think that introverts and extroverts do not get ____.
However, they actually work well together because their personalities complement ____ other.
Sometimes they can ____ accomplish great things when they collaborate.
____ take a look at some famous examples!
Try as we might, we cannot stay young ____.
Although this is a truth everyone knows, the ____ of becoming old is usually the furthest thing from our minds.
That’s why we rarely pay attention to the physical changes that ____ everyday life challenging for the elderly or the financial difficulties they may experience after retirement.
Many of us consider these problems irrelevant to our ____, so we have little understanding of what it means to be old.
In order to understand the ____ more, 27-year-old Regina Martin and 34-year-old Trent Bowman decided to participate in a TV documentary called Switching Ages.
For one month, they ____ themselves into old people.
In addition to learning how to walk and talk like people in their ____,
Regina and Trent also spent five hours ____ morning putting on make-up to look older.
They even wore heavy body suits and contact lenses that hindered their movements and ____.
Finally, they wore fake teeth and ____ wigs to complete their aged looks.
Their ____ disguises, however, were only the tip of the iceberg of the transformation they would experience.
Case One: Working Together for Civil Rights
On December 1, 1955, in the American city of Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman ____ Rosa Parks got on a bus.
At that time in Montgomery, buses were divided into two ____: one for black people and the other for white people.
She took a seat in the black zone and watched quietly as more and more ____ got on the bus.
Soon, all the seats in the white ____ were taken.
Then the driver ____ her to give her seat to a white passenger.
____ Parks was a shy, mild-mannered introvert.
She avoided ____ out in public or drawing attention to herself.
However, she had the courage to resist injustice, so she ____ calmly with a single word—“No.”
The furious driver ____ the police, and she was arrested.
Parks’s ____ response to the situation impressed many people.
Soon after, her ____ resistance came together with the inspirational speechmaking of Martin Luther King Jr.
When 5,000 people assembled at a rally to support Parks’s ____ of courage, King made a speech to the crowd.
He was an extrovert — assertive, sociable, and good at motivating ____.
“There comes a ____ when people get tired of being trampled,” he told them.
“There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed ____ of the sunlight.”
King was an amazing speaker, and his words ____ the people with pride and hope.
He then praised Parks’s bravery and hugged her. She ____ silently.
Her mere presence was enough to ____ the crowd.
Rosa Parks’s act and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech inspired Montgomery’s black community to boycott the buses, a crucial turning point in the ____ for civil rights.
The boycott lasted for 381 ____.
It was a difficult ____ for everyone, but eventually the buses were integrated.
Think about ____ the partnership of these two people accomplished this.
A powerful speaker refusing to give up his seat on a ____ would not have had the same effect.
Similarly, Rosa ____ could not have excited the crowd at the rally with her words.
When their introverted and extroverted traits were combined, however, his charisma attracted attention to her ____ bravery.
In the end, this ____ had a huge impact on society.
____ Martin has been a passionate dance instructor for the past three years.
Although she is still a few ____ away from turning 30, Regina is starting to feel even more pressure to retain her looks.
She obsessively takes ____ of her body and always eats healthy food.
She ____ a strong fear of her youth disappearing and feels uncomfortable around old people, to the point where she is unwilling to visit her 81-year-old grandmother.
On the first ____ of her challenge, Regina could only stare at her transformed self in disbelief.
After a few minutes, Regina sighed and said, “This ____ face doesn’t look nice.”
Later Regina was sent to a tiny flat in a retirement complex, where she spent several days enduring solitude and gradually adapted to ____ alone.
As part of the experiment, Regina worked at a grocery store that many elderly ____ visit.
Thinking that they would be boring and ____, she was reluctant to have conversations with them at first.
However, she soon found it ____ enjoyable to talk with them.
She ____ older people who still enjoyed bike riding and others who liked playing video games.
At her retirement complex, Regina joined a companionship ____, and she was surprised to find that older people could still fall in love and suffer from broken hearts.
Her new friendships continued to grow stronger over the next couple of ____, and she began to feel as if she were their peer.
As time went on, Regina ____ feeling guilty for deceiving them.
She decided to come clean about her real age to her two closest elderly friends, Susan and Charlotte, a week before the ____ was over.
She worried that they might feel betrayed ____ her confession, but they just laughed it off and shared some life tips with her to help her enjoy her youth more.
At the end of the ____, Regina said, “I don’t look at the elderly in the same way that I used to anymore.
I have realized how ignorant I was. I couldn’t see that old ____ are just like me.
Now I can look past their gray hair and wrinkles and see the young people ____ them.
Instead of worrying about my looks fading, I’m now fully embracing the idea of growing ____.”
Case Two: A Business Partnership
On June 29, 1975, Steve Wozniak tapped a ____ keys on his keyboard, and letters appeared on a screen.
He had just created a personal computer that allowed people to type on a keyboard and see the ____ on a monitor simultaneously.
At the sight of the ____ device, Steve Jobs suggested to Wozniak that they start a business.
Wozniak was a ____ inventor.
When he partnered with Jobs, however, he was ____ to do much more.
In fact, the two men ____ one of the most famous partnerships of the digital era.
Wozniak would come up with a clever engineering idea, and Jobs would find a way to polish, package, and ____ it.
The two men had opposite personalities. Wozniak hated small talk and often ____ alone.
It was these features of his introverted personality that enabled him to focus on inventing ____.
Jobs, on the other hand, ____ outstanding social skills.
According to ____, he was good at communicating with people.
Wozniak was a shy inventor, whereas Jobs was a daring ____, but they were alike in that neither was afraid to face challenges that seemed impossible.
So which personality type is ____? Obviously, the answer is neither.
The world needs ____ introverts and extroverts, and they often make a terrific team.
We simply need to respect different personalities as ____ as our own.
Then, when we have a chance to work together, we might be able to do ____ things!
Before participating in this documentary, Trent had had very little interaction with elderly people except for his ____ grandfather.
He enjoyed his day-to-day ____ without worry and thought it quite satisfying to live in his parents’ house.
During the weekdays, ____ would spend his time working part-time at a restaurant.
On the weekends, he ____ play basketball or go shopping with his friends.
In short, Trent had ____ ambition and little money saved up for the furture, but he didn’t care.
As he only ____ in the present, Trent never thought about getting old.
He just regarded the elderly as a ____ tribe that he would never join.
Spending a month fully disguised as a 72-year-old man was ____ more life-changing than Trent could have ever imagined.
He could finally see for himself what it was like to ____ as a senior citizen in society.
Early in the experiment, Trent ____ to get on a bus to go downtown.
Due to the special body suit and lenses, he ____ trouble climbing up the stairs of the bus.
____ a person waiting behind him started rushing him, expressing annoyance.
In his hurry to step onto the bus, Trent ____ fell on the stairs.
He was astonished to ____ the disrespectful attitude toward old people and the way they were treated.
Later he visited the restaurant where he once worked, but he ____ that no one paid much attention to him.
People acted as if he weren’t ____.
Trent started to realize ____ it felt like to be invisible.