College is, for many students, a time of self-discovery and finding out who they are.
Astronomy professor Stephanie Douglas said that the answer isn’t written in the stars.
“It’s all very arbitrary,” Douglas said of astrology. “That’s part of why it breaks down.”
Astrology is the study of the movements and positions of celestial bodies, and how those factors can influence both humans and the natural world.
According to religious studies Professor Brett Hendrickson, the practice isn’t unique to aesthetic Instagram slideshows.
“Astrology is really, really old and pretty much universal across human cultures, going back thousands of years,” Hendrickson said.
“It’s looking at the night sky and different natural signs and using those indications empirically, really, which is the heart of scientific observation,” he added.
Douglas also mentioned how our categorization of astrology is different from its ancient roots.
“The path that the sun appears to take across our sky is going to depend on where exactly we are in our rotation,” she said. This process, called precession, means that the signs of the Zodiac actually occur at different times of the year than would have been initially charted.
Still, Douglas tries to empathize with students who are die-hard astrologers.
“I get wanting to make sense out of the world, and think that and feel that there’s a reason for things that can often feel quite random,” she said. Every semester, Douglas offers an introductory astronomy lab that allows students to participate in a star-focused lab session.
Soul-searchers who didn’t find their answers in astrology might have luck with the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, also known as MBTI.
“MBTI is actually an amazing measure,” psychology professor Chu Chu said. “It’s the popularization of it and how people use it and talk about it — it’s not always the way it’s intended.”
MBTI is a self-report questionnaire that seeks to analyze a person based on their personality traits, such as extroversion and intuition.
While Chu says she believes MBTI can be an excellent tool in assessing personality, it is not without its limitations.
“No matter how good your measure is, there is going to be some error that comes with it, and that is completely normal,” she said. “It could be depending on the day, depending on how you responded.”
She added that the “real issue” with these types of quizzes is that when a person is placed within a label, such as introvert or extrovert, “you don’t really care about the nuance, or maybe the spectrum of it.”
She suggested that students looking towards the MBTI to better understand their personality should save their money — the official online test can run over $100, as does the physical manual — and instead utilize free online scholarship or journals about personality psychology.
Both astrology and personality quizzes, no matter how pseudoscientific, can provide meaning for users.
“I think experimentation, thinking about what has meaning in life and how you’re going to be able to pursue your own dreams — those are things that all college students are interested in,” Hendrickson said. “There can be some overlap with these kinds of traditions, because they are about self-exploration and wellness, and being a better version of yourself.”
“In a way, you can say that’s what education and then going to college is all about,” he added.