When I was in high school, we all took aptitude tests that were supposed to reveal what we were best suited to do in life and thus give us guidance for our paths after graduation. When the results came back, most students felt that they were on the right path in life on the way to becoming a doctor or a teacher or whatever they wanted to be. And we could see how the recommended careers matched the personality that we knew. Most results were along the same line, like “Jane Doe should be A) a Science Teacher or B) a Medical Technologist.”

As I answered the questions, I tried to be painfully honest, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in life and I was desperate for advice. The results of my aptitude test indicated that “Pamela should be A) a Forest Ranger or B) a Movie Director. I laughed out loud. How was this meant to be a form of guidance? It seemed more like a confirmation of multiple personality disorder.

Forest Ranger OR…

Movie Director REALLY?

I’d always loved the outdoors, so the Forest Ranger path seemed more appealing, but at the time, most women in the park service or forest service were clerks, not rangers, and at five feet tall, I’m not exactly a hefty backwoods type. I loved movies, too, but I was a high school kid in Oklahoma, which is not known for its thick forests or its movie industry. So I went on to college, to become many things: a geologic research technician, a freelance drafter, a translator, a technical writer, a multimedia editor, a private investigator, and an author. (Multiple personality disorder confirmed.)

But now that I’m a fiction author, I find these two recommended directions oddly prescient. The protagonist of my new Summer Westin mystery series feels more at home in the wilderness than in the big city. When I’m not sitting at my computer, I’m often hiking, kayaking, snowshoeing, or scuba diving. While working in multimedia, I studied screenwriting and that has greatly affected my novels. And being a fiction author is a LOT like being a director, isn’t it? We control the scenes and the dialog, and most of the time we can keep our actors in line.

Have you ever taken an aptitude test? Were the results accurate? How did they impact your life?