Since I've been at a total loss for what career to pursue, I decided to take the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation aptitude test (www.jocrf.org), which has a reputation for accurately revealing one's natural cognitive strengths and weaknesses and providing invaluable insight for educational and career decisions. The test took six hours over two days and cost almost $700.
Here are my results:
So the only area in which I excel is what they call "ideaphoria," or the ability to generate a rapid flow of ideas, which is supposedly valuable in careers such as writing, teaching, and sales. The ideaphoria test doesn't measure the originality, creativity, or value of one' ideas, just how fast he can come up with them. I scored substantially above the 99th percentile for this aptitude - wow.
I scored abysmally bad on the tests of clerical speed and accuracy (not surprising) and inductive reasoning, below average in arithmetic and spatial ability, average in vocabulary knowledge and memory, and somewhat above average, but not high in analytical reasoning ability.
My score of "subjective" on the word association test is typical of people who prefer to specialize and work independently as opposed to through others and need to have a deep personal connection to their work. This is a remarkably accurate description of my attitude toward career. I can't understand how most people (those who don't score subjective) can stand not to have a personal connection to their work.
These results pretty much explain why, at age 30, my only job is delivering newspapers, and I can't even do that right because with my lethal combination of high ideaphoria and low reasoning ability, my inner mental life is a never-ending torrent of stupid ideas and adolescent fantasies that impairs my ability to concentrate and causes me to fuck up almost everything I touch.
For a person with the high ideaphoria and subjective personality aptitude pattern, the foundation suggests a career path as a creative specialist in an area that stems from a personal passion or interest, such as writing about issues that interest me, teaching a subject that I'm passionate about to motivated students (as opposed to typical middle or high school students who spend all day sexting and just want class to be over) or selling something that I'm personallly invested in. Indeed, those recommendations cover just about everything that I've ever wanted to do. The problem is that such careers seem extremely impractical, almost unattainable, and that, even though I may have a strong flow of ideas, they aren't necessarily good ones, and I'm not necessarily that good at conveying them. I'm not Steve Jobs or Ayn Rand.
Looking at my other scores, it doesn't seem like I have the ability to do anything practical. I'd never make an engineer, accountant, or doctor. I couldn't look an employer in the eye and tell him I'd be a good administrative assistant. Teaching has always interested me, but I don't know what I'd teach or whom I'd teach it to, and judging from my other scores I may well be too dumb to pick up anything worth teaching. With my low inductive reasoning ability, you probably wouldn't want me troubleshooting your computer or fixing your car, and I wouldn't want to take the job anyway. Due to poor finger dexterity, I'm obviously not fit to handle shap objects, such as tools. It just seems like my aptitude pattern doesn't lend itself to anything realistic.
So the results are grim. How much weight do you think I should give this stuff?