Emily Wesenick, youth and family program manager
My name is Emily Wesenick, I’m a type 2, ENFJ-T, Gemini sun, Taurus moon, and Pisces rising, and I love personality tests. From the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs to the ridiculous personality tests in Seventeen and Cosmo magazine, I have taken more personality tests over the years than I can count. As a teenager, I believed that personality tests were a window into my psyche, making everything feel like it had a purpose and that my own quirks were leading me to some sort of higher goal. Now, as an adult, I am deeply curious about how society uses personality tests to gather insights on who we are, what we are doing, and more importantly why we are doing it.
Although personality tests can seem frivolous, companies use their basic structure when developing career aptitude tests for students to explore potential career paths. While they won’t tell you how planetary alignment may impact your daily life, career aptitude tests do utilize assessments about participant’s interests, skills, and personality traits to find an occupation most suited for them. When I was in high school, many of my assessments indicated I would likely end up in a person-oriented field like health care or education, an eerily accurate depiction of what I decided to pursue for my career.
Last Friday, assistant educator and volunteer coordinator, Andy Jacksack and I participated in another form of career readiness, Careers on Wheels, at Franklin Elementary School. While there were no personality or aptitude tests, there were an abundance of organizations prepared to share what jobs were available in their industries. Students visiting the Museum’s booth investigated what a day in the life of a museum educator or curator looked like, even receiving a sneak peek of some of the photographs coming this summer in Double Exposure: Community Portraits!
While exploring some of the tools we use at the Woodson Art Museum to help educate school groups, students gained a better understanding of why we teach with an emphasis on hands-on interaction, utilizing tour props and multi-sensory experiences for discovery moments. From their astute understanding of art handling best practices to questions about the scale models used by curator of exhibitions Shannon Pueschner, these students were locked in for discussions about museum careers. As we were discussing why we shouldn’t directly interact with the artwork in the galleries, one student jumped in with “the oils on our hands can damage the artwork!” The educator with the group was so proud to see that the students were really holding on to the lessons they had learned both that day and on prior visits to the Museum.
One of my favorite parts of this job is being able to see the “a-ha” moments in real time, so witnessing them realize they could use their favorite school subjects to become curators or educators one day was a special treat.
