Dentist Conversations and Aptitude Tests

I was at the dentists office last week and while the dental hygienist was cleaning my teeth she decided that it was fun to keep asking me questions while her fingers were in my mouth.  Since I wasn't doing a very good job at giving detailed answers to her questions, unless they only required a mumbled "uh-huh" or "uh-uh", she would ask a question, remove her fingers and tools out of my mouth, and wait for a response.  I would have guessed she'd just start only asking me yes/no questions, but apparently we had plenty of time to kill before my dentist could come see me, so clean teeth -> ask question -> stop cleaning teeth -> wait for response, became her procedure of the afternoon.

She was super nice and other than the fact that she kept stabbing my gums with sharp objects over and over, I'd say we got along wonderfully.  I discovered that if during one of my responses I concluded with a good follow-up question I could keep her talking about herself so I could get a break from trying to say multiple complete sentences with the back of my throat filled with pooling saliva.  (Actually, maybe distracting her like that is exactly why she kept stabbing me with sharp dental tools instead of simply cleaning my teeth...)

Anyway, she told me (at length) how she took a career aptitude test in high school and it told her to be a dental hygienist, but she decided to go to college for Art and French.  She was working on a graduate degree in some kind of art when she realized she hated it, so she changed to the dental hygienist program and has been doing that happily for 20 years.

Today, after I finished a surprisingly frustrating day of Saturday work that was supposed to be super easy I remembered this conversation with the hygienist and thought to myself, "I wonder what the interweb has to say about what I should be doing as a career."  Sure, working for a geotechnical engineering firm is way different than teaching high school English (which for any out there that don't already know, is what I'm in college for), but  I still wanted to see what a career aptitude test had to say.

The test I took was at www.careertest.net, and after answering 75 questions or so it output results similar to the Myers-Briggs personality test.  The way it works is you're given a 4-letter personality type and each of the four letters has two possible options.  Each letter also represents a different part of your personality.  The way Myers-Briggs explain it is like this:

1 - Favorite World: (E) Extrovert, or (I) Introvert

2 - Information: (S) Sensing, or (N) Intuition

3 - Decisions: (T) Thinking, or (F) Feeling

4 - Structure: (J) Judging, or (P) Perceiving

Myers-Briggs makes you pay a lot of money to take their exam, and only have certain "certified" people that can administer it (even though you can take it online apparently.)  I had the opportunity of taking the actual Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument when I was a Junior in high school, but that was so long ago that I don't remember what the results were. I'm sure my results have changed since then anyway.  This little careertest.net version was WAY over simplified, but I wasn't taking it that seriously in the first place.  The results I got from careertest.net were......

ISFP (Introvert, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving)

Of those four items, I was strongly leveled towards the 'S' and the 'F', and leaning pretty well towards the 'P', but the Introvert/Extrovert was almost a straight up tie (I was 51% introvert).  I thought that wasn't too far from accurate.  I'm usually most comfortable in small intimate settings, but am still fairly successful at making new friends when I'm in a larger group setting.  So, after you're told your personality type, the site offers you lists of careers associated with all the particular types.  I looked up but the ISFP and the ESFP since I was close to being either one.  Here are the lists of careers it gave me for each group:

ISFP bookkeeper clerical supervisor dental assistant physical therapist mechanic radiology technologist surveyor chef forester geologist landscaper designer crisis hotline operator teacher: elementary beautician typist jeweler gardener potter painter botanist marine biologist social worker

ESFP nurse social worker caterer flight attendant bookkeeper medical/dental assistant exercise physiologist elementary school teacher minister/priest/rabbi retail owner officer manager telemarketer counselor special education teacher merchandise planner credit counselor athletic coach insurance agent sales representative massage therapist medical secretary child care provider bilingual education teacher professional volunteer

Looking over both of these lists, I was happy to see multiple teaching professions since that what I want to do with my life the most.  It was also interesting for me to see the athletic coach, physical therapist, and exercise physiologist careers on there since the two minors I'm working on and planning to get are a Nutrition minor and an Exercise Science and Coaching Teaching minor.

Like I mentioned before, I wasn't taking this aptitude test very seriously, but even though it's an over simplified version of a popular personality identifying instrument, it was still just slightly comforting to see that the interweb is currently backing up my chosen career path.  Thanks Internet!