The last ID challenge was so fun, I thought I'd do another. Here's another person I know. Perhaps he's the same time, or maybe a different one...you decide.
Person #2
This person is considered brilliant by most people, although to himself he never seems to do well enough. Probably the most salient feature in his personality is his uncompromising quality. He will never compromise on principle, or on his agenda.
His lack of compromise has been known to bend wills. Anyone who opposes his will eventually "blinks" and gives in. It is as if he charted a course for his life, and decided never to permit anything to stand in the way.
He appears very outgoing, engaging, and charming, being ready with stories about his many experiences. However, he creates the impression that there's more behind the surface that he doesn’t reveal.
He quickly creates the appearance of having mastered every subject with a certain thoroughness. Hence, he can easily carry on a conversation with people from many walks of life and speak of that person's topic with a certain sense of authority. However, he never tries to inflate the impression of his knowledge; if he doesn’t know something, he won’t pretend that he does.
Despite his breadth of knowledge and seemingly endless abilities, he remains focused and dedicated in his chosen scientific field. He works tirelessly, day and night, on highly obscure problems in very esoteric specialties, hoping to make some contribution, no matter how small.
As a teacher, he can be very difficult; he is extraordinarily demanding, and he has a tendency to expect people to make intuitive leaps so as to follow what he’s saying. However, through practice, he has learned to explain things more methodically for people to understand. When explaining something, he has a certain sense of excitement, as if he’s letting you in on some secret, something that only very smart people are allowed to know.
He is very skeptical of the ideas of people who seem to him uninformed. He deeply believes that one shouldn’t say anything about something one doesn’t know much about. He is very direct in his attacks if someone says something out of ignorance. He is not very accepting of what he considers wild speculation. On the other hand, if someone with some knowledge proposes an idea, he will search his mind to see if it's possible. When searching his mind, he sort of 'goes into himself' and creates the impression that he's going through a file cabinet inside there and coming up with the answer. When he has the answer, it's absolute: "No, that it isn’t possible, because XYZ."
One thing that's extraordinary about him is his thoroughness and discipline. Whereas other people, in learning a new topic from a reference book, would focus on just getting a few key details to be able to perform a given job, he will read the entire book from beginning to end, in one sitting, and with absolute thoroughness.
He strongly believes in the importance of 'hardening' oneself; thus, he admires qualities such as physical courage, extreme endurance activities, and "roughing it." At times, he can be authoritarian and commanding; he feels comfortable telling people to do, and he won’t take no for an answer.
Because of his brilliance and hard work, he's the natural leader in any organization, and used to find himself in leadership positions, but seems to have "outgrown" the tendency to be involved in anything outside his chosen path.