Don’t stress career assessments

College is an exciting time in any young person’s life. It’s a time to branch out and prepare yourself for the career of your dreams. However, for some young people, who have fewer well-formed dreams than some of their contemporaries, college can be stressful.

Because students here are encouraged to apply to particular majors, I’ve noticed a lot of people stuck in majors they know they don’t want, simply because they aren’t sure what they actually want to do. I know I had no idea what I wanted to do up until a few weeks ago and I’m in my fourth year.

In an attempt to discover my calling, I did a bit of research about different careers I might like and ended up on the N.C. State Career Center’s Web site looking at all of the career assessments. I took one called ÒchoicesÓ that was an hour long, foolishly thinking with all that information about me the test would surely spit out the perfect profession, or at least give me something good to think about.

I was hugely disappointed.

It told me my best match was to be an anesthesiologist, followed closely by every type of engineering I’ve ever heard of and some I haven’t. I could not think of things for which I am less suited. I am extremely uncomfortable with any sort of blood and/or guts and would never ever make it through medical school. I also hate math and would fail out of engineering. I was surprised how wrong they were about me so I spoke to a few friends to see if they had had similar experiences.

My friend is studying criminology with the hope of becoming a police officer, and the assessment he took told him to be a figure skating coach. He can’t skate. Also I feel like figure skating coaching isn’t something you just start doing. Another friend, who is in biochemistry, was told she should be a bricklayer. Really? I’m not trying to say that’s not an admirable profession, but I can’t imagine anyone going to college to study bricklaying, although this campus would be the ideal place to do it.

Something needs to be done to make assessments more useful — the ludicrous professions, such as ice skating coach, should be removed, and the assessments should give people more accurate answers that take into account both their preferences and abilities.

But in the meantime, the best thing for all of us would be to ignore assessments and stress less over what we should be doing. The more I talk to people who have moved on, the more I realize that your major isn’t terribly important and definitely isn’t the be all and end all of your life.

So take assessments if you want, but don’t let them get you down. You can still be whatever you want. Luckily, the world can always use more figure skating coaches.

Tell Kate your thoughts about career assessment tools at [email protected].