by Lauren Langdon

People tell me not to worry, that I have time to work it out. Lot of other teenagers don’t know it either, so you are normal, they tell me. It’s not that big of a deal they say again.

What is it?

I am a whole 16 years-old and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life! This may cause adults to chuckle as they point out that most college students don’t know what they want to do, in fact nearly all of them change their major. But, I do not want to be like most teenagers; I want to know.

Like those childish activities some teacher make you do where you write down five adjectives that describe yourself, I do not know myself well enough to figure out my strengths or what defines me.

So, this obsession led me to silly online quizzes called, “Find Your Calling” and “What Job is Right For Me?” I took test after test. I am not sure what I was searching for, maybe flashing yellow words prophesying I should “BE A DOCTOR” or “BE A TEACHER.” Whatever I was searching for, I did not find the answer in misspelled quibblo quizzes.

The desire to “know” became greater. I started staying up late googling tests to learn more about myself. My “true color” is green. My Myers-Briggs profile is ENTP (Extraverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving). My spirit animal varies from site to site. I am a Ravenclaw. None of these things brought me any closer to learning what I major in.

It wasn’t until I sent a text (more like a novel) to one of my best friends at 12:40 a.m. that I realized the tests were pointless. How could a computerized test know me well enough to decide what I should do with my life after 15 questions? I mean, the quizzes often say they are providing a small list of occupations and many times people are happy doing exactly the opposite of what the questionnaire says they should do.

The problem with these quizzes is not their inaccuracy or lack of questions about actual aptitude for a particular field, but that the purpose of the quiz is to categorize the test taker into one of its little boxes. If you answer “c” for question two then you should be a lawyer. If you clicked “false” for number five then you are destined to be a physical therapist.

While categorizing things tends to be good, categorizing people is almost always bad. This process over simplifies human nature and by putting people into boxes we dehumanize them. By labeling people we take away their identity by only referring to them by the neat little box we put them in. When the online tests say someone has a “engineer” personality what does that mean? I understand the test might have had questions like, “Do you like math?” and “Does building things sound fun?” But, in the end, the answers to these quizzes have no weight on who you are.

No matter how much I wish I could fill out a simple quiz and it would tell me what job I should have and exactly where I should go to school, I know that it is impossible and that no one fits into a neat little box of what career they should consider. You know what? There is something beautiful and reassuring about that.