Thematic Apperception Test

I think I'm in love. There's a website attached to the book, "The Secret Life of Pronouns." One of the things it does is look at your own writing samples and then assess your personality. I am, apparently, very optimistic, not very anxious, and psychologically distant. I am not incredibly outgoing. I am incredibly concerned about power dimensions. And I apparently do not care at all about talking about achievements.


Ellen was busy pipetting when Barbara opened the laboratory door and entered. Walking over to Ellen's work bench, she noted that her shoes were scoffed up, presumably with hydrochloric acid, and that she was still hungry. Ellen, meanwhile, wasn't actually pipetting anything of importance. She could have said she was practicing the pipette technique, although that wasn't quite true. She had been practicing earlier in the week, but now she was just tired of being in lab and anything was better than watching her titrated samples turn an innocuous shade of pink or green or blue. It was all very tiresome, she realized, this work to become a scientist. 
True--Ellen still wanted, very badly, to wear the lab coat and to walk around like Barbara walked around... infused with an unseen power one could call "professionalism." But no, Ellen had not been enjoying this week in lab and she was starting to wonder if she would ever enjoy another week in lab for the rest of the semester. 
"How are you doing?" Barbara asked, in her unplaceable and shrill voice. Ellen had found herself standing up straighter when she heard the door open and now, even though she knew her professor, Barbara well, she was still maintaining a rigid posture. She put the pipette she had been playing with in a large, otherwise empty, beaker and returned her hands to her lab coat's pockets. "The samples are going to be another" Ellen glanced quickly at the clock on the wall "forty, forty-five minutes." She kept looking at the clock. Why did it tick so slowly? Hadn't she already been here for ten hours? 
"That's good. But how are you?" Ellen had not realized that her professor might actually be enquiring about her--what an odd thing to enquire about with the samples promising much more. Any lab grunt could do Ellen's work. "I'm fine. A little tired." Ellen thought that sounded satisfactory, although she always hated whenever she admitted she was exhausted, as if saying such a thing would make her day that much more difficult to get through. 
"Are you sure?" Barbara had not moved any closer to Ellen and yet, Ellen thought that her tone had just breached a little bit of the over- formalized professor-student barrier. Ellen couldn't think of doing anything but shrugging. That's all she ever felt like anymore. Shrugging. 
"You have forty-five minutes of free time," Barbara must have noticed that her student's saline samples and the pipette were all distractors, "let's go to lunch." 
"Why?" Ellen realized that must have sounded rude so she softened it by continuing the doomed sentence, "If you don't mind me asking." 
"We need to talk about your future." Ellen thought that this sounded intimidating. She looked at her professor, right in the eyes, and she noticed that her professor did not look intimidating at all. Still suspicious, nevertheless she said, "Okay," and began walking over to the wall that held all their lab jackets, proceeding to take hers off.