Bailey Reid

College students are always looking for ways to boost their grades and get more out of their classes, while simultaneously trying to find jobs and look forward to the future. Some studies show that if we want to better ourselves further, we should focus on our strengths. One way to discover our strengths is through personality tests.

Discovering how personality test results help people in the workplace is a topic that has been written about on many platforms, including an article about how ‘Personality Tests Are the Astrology of the Office’ in the New York Times. Many schools and workplaces use personality tests as a helpful tool, because the strengths they help us realize can be valuable to our work.  

To learn more about how personality tests can be used in our own work, I reached out to Kaitlin Wolfert, the Coordinator of the Center for Student Achievement on campus. “Any tool or experience that allows students to gain a better understanding of themselves can be helpful as they navigate college and careers,” she said when asked about personality tests. “Students can use these tests as both identifiers of strengths and opportunities for growth.”

Once you discover your strengths, it’s important to try and enhance them.  According to research detailed by Scientific American, when we decide that we can enhance our strengths further, “we might seek out different opportunities for self-growth that capitalize on our strengths.”

While we can use personality tests as a helpful tool, there are plenty of clubs, events, and classes on campus that can also help us capitalize on all of our strengths, which will lead us to the self-growth needed to thrive at college.

Even with all this considered, it’s important to remember that personality tests do not have the final say when we decide our life paths. Kaitlin Wolfert also explained that “there are many personality tests and none should be used exclusively to define a student’s personality or dictate a particular path someone takes in life.”