Alright everybody, it turns out this newsletter was a waste. I’ve found the easy way out: take this survey. Boom. Done. Taste cultivated.
My top results?
Arts, Sales/Marketing, and Security…
“Wait, I’ll need to take this thing again.”
Here are my results from take two:
Health sciences is STEM, so that kind of checks out. I have always dreamed of running a bed and breakfast, so Hospitality and Tourism could make sense. But arts again? Does this survey know something I don’t?
Does it know that I’ve been taking a painting class? Does it know that improv was my favorite college class? Does it know that I tried out for my middle school play in 7th grade, didn’t get a part, and never tried again?
How could it know? Could it actually be onto something? And if it is, why do I find that so frustrating?
The frustrating bit is that it could decipher something about myself that I’ve just recently recognized. How did this survey figure it out in 10 questions?
Can you Trust a Survey?
Any survey comes with doubts. The survey’s website even has this disclaimer: “This survey does not make any claims of statistical reliability and has not been normed. It is intended for use as a guidance tool to generate discussion regarding careers and is valid for that purpose.”
The first time I took the survey I was in a therapy session. As I answered questions I kept getting stuck in thought loops like “do I actually like that? Or have I always felt like I am supposed to like that?” The less confident I was in my answer, the longer those loops lasted. Until finally, I reached a “fuck it” moment and just picked yes or no.
Those long thought loops show how little attention I’ve paid to myself as I do an activity. Instead, I’ve almost always paid more attention to the idea of doing the activity (e.g. social perception or monetary potential).
Despite my doubts about the survey, it has accomplished its goal of generating discussion regarding my career and hobby choices. I’ve been thinking about the results much more than I’d like to admit, and I’m still a bit bothered that my career field isn’t part of the top results (for more on career background, check out my backstory post). However, this is part of why I’m excited to talk about my next tentacle.
My next tentacle
My recent draw to more artistic/creative interests is what makes me excited about my next tentacle: web design/front end engineering. If you are a stickler, you may be mad at me for lumping them together (and as I learn more about them, I may change my mind and decide they should be separate), but they’re staying lumped for now.
The idea of creating great UX’s and cool UI’s feels like a path that will allow me to leverage my current programming/technical knowledge while also bringing me closer to more artistic and creative challenges.
However, I want to point out an important part of the paragraph above: “the idea of…” Like I mentioned earlier, “I’ve almost always paid more attention to the idea of doing the activity,” instead of the activity itself. This time, as I engage in new front end projects (like the skype a scientist match portal under the “Test Run” header) I intend to pay attention to which part of my projects I sincerely enjoy.
I also recently completed a technical challenge for the Tweetscape Founding Developer position, which required a figma mockup of a UI and a description of the back end logic. Learning figma was harder than I expected, and coming up with an acceptable UI was even harder. But, after a week of working on it, I built something I like (at least for a first pass) and enjoyed building. You can the figma mockup here. Overall, this was an enjoyable challenge. Although the first couple of days were a bit overwhelming, I felt proud of my work at the end.
Conclusion
As I continue cultivating my taste for different activities, I will keep those survey results and the thoughts they spurred in mind.
Even if I knew, for sure, that the stupid survey was 100% correct, I would have trouble committing to one of those fields right now. I have to fight against years of convincing myself that data science and software are the best focuses for my career. Plus, I don’t think I’ll ever regret learning to program. If anything, learning to program before starting to think about these things was a great coincidence, because I’d have a much harder time learning it now.
My next tentacle post will be longer post focused on web design and front end engineering and the work I have planned to evaluate my interest in them.
Thanks for Reading!
If any of this resonated with you, please leave a comment or @ me on twitter!