Aptitude test results

I did my second round of aptitude testing Wednesday (10/29). I also had a free consultation to discuss my results. So I learned a lot. Before I go into what I learned about myself, let me explain about aptitudes.

An aptitude is an innate ability that you have. These aptitudes are isolated and measured by tests designed at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. The best measure of an aptitude is your percentile score on these tests compared to others in your age group. Your percentile won't vary as you age (which is to say that you'll always outperform the same fraction of the population of your age group). So, by construction, these aptitudes are with you for life and can't be learned or forgotten. The aptitudes fall into these general categories (I don't have my results handy, so this is from memory): Convergent thinking (purpose-driven thinking), divergent thinking (idea-generating thinking), musical, spatial, physical, clerical, and memory.

Knowing your aptitudes helps with career decisions. If you have a job in which you must use aptitudes you don't have, you will feel frustrated and bad at your job. If you have a job which doesn't require aptitudes you do have, you must find an outlet for the unused aptitudes or you will feel unfulfilled and restless. Thankfully, aptitudes have many outlets. For instance, music composition requires both all of the musical aptitudes (for differentiating and remembering rhythms and pitches) and some of the spatial aptitudes (for conceptualizing the different layers of the music).

After taking the 20 or so tests to measure your different aptitudes, you have a one-on-one meeting with someone who works at the Foundation about the results and how they can guide you in your career decisions. Again, I don't have my results handy, but here's generally what I learned: I have a lot of aptitudes. I'm not great with small tools and I'm probably not great at physical labor in general, but otherwise I'm full of aptitude.

This isn't awesome news. It's going to take some work to find a way to incorporate all of my aptitudes into my life. Work takes up a lot of our lives, so it makes sense to try to match up as many aptitudes as possible with our choice of career, but, as I hinted at above, work isn't the only possible outlet. Hobbies do just fine for aptitude use, so long as they are hobbies you take seriously and partake in regularly. So, it's not impossible to find ways to regularly use my aptitudes, but it will be hard.

They do give one personality test. It tells you whether you are an objective or subjective person; I'm 100% subjective (I didn't give a single objective response). This means I want to be a specialist, someone who people respect for my knowledge and abilities in one area, someone who doesn't separate work and life (this blog is evidence of that). They gave me some suggestions for career paths based on my subjective personality and my strong spatial aptitudes (since a job is either strongly spatial or not spatial at all). The suggestions aren't meant to be the end-all-be-all for me, especially considering that spatialness isn't my only strong suit; one of the suggestions was "research scientist". I could probably be a good research scientist in a field I understood a little better, but as it is I can't use my divergent thinking aptitudes very much because I can't understand all the possibilities.

I could go on forever about what this all means. I've said most of the important stuff I wanted to say. There is one more thing: the good news. This information does help me know, once I've looked into a career, whether or not I'd like it. Patent law, for instance, is out, since it involves mainly convergent thinking and not much else. Design in definitely still in. And so on. I have a lot more information to work with now. It's overwhelming, but I think it will lead to better results, once I narrow down the options.

Let's say I get a job in December. Am I going to keep planning my whole life, trying to find the perfect job? Is this going to stop me from ever being happy with my work? The aptitude tests aren't designed to account for interests or training. As it's always been, the decision is ultimately up to me.