Joseph O’Donohue
Management
The Passion Test Paper

Being a junior in college is an extremely bittersweet time. This is the year where it began to dawn on me that my college career is almost over; although it feels as if it just started. In one year I am going to be a senior on the verge of graduation and that scares me. During my junior year I registered for management, which I thought was going to be another normal core business course at Quinnipiac. I expected to get assigned a text book and have to read and memorize a ton of management vocabulary just so I can answer them on the test. However, this management class had more than I was expecting. We were assigned the book The Passion Test, The Effective Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose written by Janet and Chris Attwood. The ideas within this book were not terms I had to memorized, but life lessons to be learned. The Passion Test was written in order to help people all around the world discover their inner selves in order to figure out what it is exactly they want to do. The passion test makes you question your own personal interest, values and dreams and then compare them to each other. Reading this made me ask myself questions that I never have before. Before reading this book I was nervous about becoming a senior because I was not entirely sure what I wanted with my life. However, after reading The Passion Test I’ve come to see what is important to me in my life and now feel prepared to take the next few steps in that direction. There are twenty questions that help people start to realize there interest and values. The first question is, what type of books do you tend to read? Now, I am not the biggest reading advocate. I do not buy and read books often, I normally tend to just read factual straightforward pieces in the newspaper or online either about current events or sports. However, the few novels I have read in the past year or two are almost always in the genre of mystery. Every now and then I like to pick up a mystery novel, if it is the right one I just can’t seem to put it down. Second question, what are some moves that made you feel great after viewing them? While thinking about this question I realized that my favorite genre of books is also my favorite movie genre. I love that act of watching the movie and guessing what going to happen next the entire time. For movies like Shutter Island, sometimes the ending is so out there that I will just sit for a half hour after the movie finishes just thinking about the ending. I like to view the ending from every perspective possible, sometimes movies don’t give a direct answer to the end and the viewer must decide. These are the movies I love. Third question, how would your friends describe you? Honestly, I have no clue of how my friends would describe me. If I had to guess, I think they would say overall happy, calm, and unorthodox. They would say that my process of getting things done are different than the way other people do. However, they would also say that my strategy does normally work, even if it is a weird way to do it. Fourth question, how would family members describe you? My family would definitely describe me differently than my friends. With my friends I am cool, calm, and collective however, with my family it is different. They would describe me as talkative, outgoing, and weird. Being the youngest in the family I believe has made me this way. I was always the little kid trying to prove myself to the others. As a younger child, I believe that I thought I was the center of attention. Now as I’ve grown I have obviously realized I am not and do not act that way around friends. Fifth question, if you could do anything, all obstacles were removes, what would you be doing? My answer to this is going to be the same answer I said in kindergarten about what job I wanted, and that is astronaut. In more appropriate terms, I would love to work hands on with astronomy. Studying the universe and what is out there has always interested me. There is just something about the unknown that intrigues me. While answering this question I realized it is a lot like my answers to the movie and book question where I said I liked mysteries. Sixth question, what are your hobbies? My favorite hobbies has to be playing sports. I am involved in multiple teams in multiple sports. My favorite time of the year is the summer because it is when my softball league and flag football league begins. I also love just hanging out with my best friends, we could be doing nothing but as long as were all together in a group we always have a good time. Seventh question, when have you been the happiest in life? What were you doing and who were you with? Initial answer to this question was the summers of sixth, seventh, and eight grade. I loved these times because all I did was hang around with my friends and play sports which are my hobbies. However, I believe that right now, at this moment in my life I am just as happy. I am happy because I still do my hobbies but also have responsibilities which make hobbies just that much better when I get a chance to do them. Eight question, what have been your favorite classes? My favorite classes I have taken are some of the computer information systems classes. I enjoy them because each class teaches you a different tangible skill. At the end of the course I actually have a new skill that can be used such as programming. Classes like history are interesting to me, at the end I have much more knowledge on the subject but not a skill I can tangibly use. Ninth question, what activities do you tend to toward your free time? Basically, during my free time I do my hobbies, play sports and hang out with my friends. These activities allow me to escape from the stress and responsibilities that I have throughout the day. They allow me to take my mind of everything just for a little while. These are my forms of meditation. Tenth question, what is your earliest occupation daydream? As I mentioned before I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut. I would still love to but as I grew up that dream just became something I daydream about in class. Eleventh question, what activities did you enjoy as a child? Not sure if this is a good thing or not but what I enjoyed as a child is what I still enjoy to this day. That is playing sports and hanging with friends, I know I have said that multiple times already, but I guess that shows how much they truly mean to me. Twelfth question, what causes do you feel strongly about? There are three main causes that I care about and those are Alzheimer’s disease, protecting the environment, and animal protection. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease and it is just devastating, I believe a cure is not too far away either. I also feel very strongly about protecting the environment and animals. Thirteenth question, what TV programs do you watch and why do you enjoy them? Some shows that I watch are Game of Thrones, Bates Motel, House of Cards, and Shameless. I enjoy these shows because they are all original ideas and unique compare to the other shows on television. I respect the aspects the set them apart from other shows. Fourteenth question, what section of the newspaper do you enjoy the most? I obviously enjoy reading the sports section, but also the business, technology, and normal news section as well. I look through the paper and read whatever I see that interest me. Fifteenth question, what do you daydream about? My daydreams vary from one spectrum to the other. Sometimes I daydream about taking a nap and other times I daydream about skydiving. I daydream a lot and it truly depends on what mood I am in. Sixteenth question, if someone was awarding you a lifetime achievement award, what would you like them to say about you? I would want them to say that I was an overall good person who cared more about the greater good of the world than himself. Seventeenth question, when have you done a job or completed a project that you were especially proud of? I would have to say that completing four years of high school football made me proud. It was an extra four hours a day after school every day and during the summer. There were plenty of times I wish I didn’t have to go to practice but went anyway. Completing all four years made me feel proud of myself to have the work ethic I did. Eighteenth question, if you could take any classes in the course catalogue, which do you naturally gravitate towards? I tend to lean towards more math and formula based courses than towards English or philosophy classes. I’d rather sit down and analyze a problem and solve the problem than read and interpret a work of writing. Nineteenth question, when reading the Sunday classifieds, what jobs sound interesting? Business analysts always seems interesting to me, as well as anything related to the technology field. Twentieth question, what do other family members do for a profession? My father is senior vice president of metropolitan commercial bank, my mother is an education director of a head start program, my sister is a teacher, and my brother works for Pepsi in the IT department. After responding to these twenty question I have come to realize much more about myself. One thing I particularly noticed is my interest in the unknown, whether it be about the universe or the ending of a book, I find searching for the answers interesting. I believe this will relate to my career path of information security. In my career if there seems to be a problem I am going to have to search to find this problem and then figure out how to handle it. Much like how I search for the answers to everything else in life.