These days, it’s nearly impossible to visit a Web site without being bombarded with offers to take some sort of personality exam.    They’re all over the place, and to be honest, most of them aren’t worth a damn. It’s pretty easy to spot the bad exams from a mile away, though — they’re the ones that want to help you discover your spirit animal, learn your happy color or figure out which “Battlestar Galactica” character best fits you.While there is nothing wrong with knowing your spirit aura is blue, most of those so-called exams are simple surveys, and within a few minutes nearly anyone can figure out how they work and realize they don’t mean anything.These exams aren’t all bad news, though. There are a few online personality exams based in sound psychology that don’t predict and explain people’s actions entirely but can help a person better understand their own thought process and learning style.The personality exam most commonly used in schools and workplaces is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) exam.Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers developed the MBTI during World War II, though the modern version of the questionnaire wasn’t published until 1962. Myers and Briggs grounded the indicator in the work of Carl Jung and his 1923 work Psychological Types.In Psychological Types Jung proposed that human consciousness was rooted in perceiving and judging functions augmented by a person’s natural introversion or extroversion. Using these functions Myers and Briggs created a strata of types that occurred in the population.Myers-Briggs works counter to what most American children are told from their youngest days — people fit relatively easily into neat little groups. We are not rare and distinct snowflakes our parents said we were — we’re special just like everyone else.Individual people will naturally have some minute differences, as it is nearly impossible for someone to be exactly the same as another person. But when we aggregate to larger levels of society those minute differences vanish and we are usually left with broad categories that are widely applicable.Thus as one begins to view people through their personality and psychological functions, some patterns begin to emerge. Myers-Briggs uses these naturally occurring patterns to group people into broad, mutually exclusive categories based on the way they take in information and make decisions on that information. The exam does not categorize a person’s actions — it categorizes the way a person’s brain reacts to certain situations.The MBTI is made of four dichotomous type indicators : Intraverted/Extraverted, Intuitive/Sensing, Thinking/Feeling and Judging/Perceiving.  Each person that takes the exam is given a four letter code which corresponds to their preferences for each of these indicators — this is their Myers-Briggs type.It seems like common sense, but knowing how your brain reacts to new information puts students at a great advantage — they can adjust their learning and study style to complement the instruction they receive in their classes. In doing some research on this exam I noticed this seems to be the point many people get confused about Myers-Briggs typology. The code one receives isn’t some sort of psychologically validated astrological sign.  Just being typed in one category is not the end-all explanation for your qualities or shortcomings — it merely describes the way your brain reacts in certain situations.The key is not to view one’s Myers-Briggs type as a roadmap for life, but as a communication and learning tool and then adjust study habits and materials accordingly.Finding a reputable site on which to take the Myers-Briggs test can be somewhat difficult as not all sites are as concerned with accurate representation of exam and the types it represents. Thankfully for University students the Office of Academic Success, located in Coates Hall, offers a reputable version of the Myers-Briggs exam that can be accessed for free through their Web site.  Interested students can log into www.cas.lsu.edu with their PAWS ID and take the exam.Once a student has completed the exam and feels comfortable in their results, they can then use the tools present on the site to explore possible ways to augment their learning style and study methods.Finding more information on the Myers-Briggs test is remarkably easy on the Internet — though anyone looking through the myriad of personality sites and message boards should examine anything they read with a critical eye.Personality exams such as the Myers-Briggs can make excellent tools if used in the proper context : Remember, however, they are not intended as evaluations of or justifications for actions — and they’re not an excuse to be stupid.—-contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]