View from the North 40: You are who you are, until you aren't

Just be yourself. You are who you were born to be. You are unique and wonderful, don’t ever change. You’re never going to change, are you. Are you?

A popular, widely supported theory about personality is that five traits pretty much account for our entire personality: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Don’t worry, each trait is measured on a scale, not as an either/or situation.

Yes, the science world agrees that we are all born with our own personality, but traits can be tweaked a bit until about age 5, some even through our tee...