What is the unlikeliest career that someone you went to school with ended up doing?

[CatDogMonkeyPOW]

Shamelessly stolen from Reddit. Did anyone you went to school with end up with a surprising career.

Girl I did my a levels with was a county athletics champion and one of the smartest kids in school. She went on to be a singer in a mediocre girl band.

Really quiet brunette girl in my class. We weren't friends but got on,
When we went to collect our A level results 30 odd years ago (I'm old) she turned up looking completely different - blonde, boob job, very glamorous.
She Became a card turner on Play your cards right and married John Majors son!
She's somehow a couple of years younger than me now from what I can see from google, strange as we were in the same class.

Very privileged 'Spencer Matthews' type character became a long time aid worker in the Middle East

And v overweight loner personality lost a lot of weight, moved to Japan, and now is very popular with a beautiful Japanese girlfriend

This isn't unlikely as such, but there was a boy at school who was quite clearly autistic, and his special interest was buses. He had photos of them all over his locker, and when we went on school trips he would be wanting to talk to the driver non stop, and would ask could he see the engine when we were parked up.

He was 'that kid' that everyone laughed at and took the piss out of. Nobody thought he would amount to anything. He left at 16 without a single pass in his exams.

He is now the driver of our local premier league football team's team bus - and absolutely living his best life.

Out of everyone I went to school with, certainly from the people I know of and still hear about anyway, he's the only one who followed his dreams and actually managed to achieve them, and go beyond them.

Everyone at school, teachers and peers alike, completely wrote him off as a weirdo (political correctness really wasn't a thing then, we've come a very long way since).

No, sorry, having checked her wiki entry it appears I was misinformed and she was never CEO.

She was a founder member and trustee though, and got an MBE.

Table dancer at String fellows!

@namechangewhileitshot darn I never expected mike pence to be a fat child

I went to school with a boy who messed around in every lesson. Left at 16. By 19 he was a millionaire from some business enterprise. This was back in early 1980s when you could retire on a million and mews houses in Kensington cost less than £100K.

A boy in my primary school, who never did well at anything academic, became one of the most sought-after bespoke joiners in the area & is now a millionaire.

You definitely cannot become a GP after a one year conversion course. She would have had to do a medical degree (5 years undergrad or 4 years post grad), a year working as an intern and then a GP training course which takes another 3 years.

You can do a two year post grad to become a physician's associate. PAs can work in GP surgeries, but you would need an undergrad degree in a science discipline.

Jesus. Don't we know better than to refer to a child of 12 years old as 'sleeping around' and getting drunk/drug taking?

She wasn't 'sleeping around.' She was being abused. That poor child. Still being judged and labelled decades later. God knows what she had to face.

Horrible to read.

My brother. One of the smartest kids in school, really into sports and music. En route to a medical career. Dropped out of University to become a yoga teacher and influencer, involving a lot of weed (it's legal in my home country).

I think you may have misunderstood, @herbologist. There are 1 year conversion/access/foundation courses for students applying to med school who don't have science A levels. She would have still had to take a 5 year degree in medicine (or a 4 year accelerated graduate course if she already had a degree), complete 2 years of foundation training and 3 years of specialist training to qualify as a GP.

Mollie? Underrated song. Should have done
much better

As a parent of a teenage daughter who is horrendous at school, it’s fantastic but bittersweet to read about all the young people who were seen as badly behaved for whatever reason actually excelling once they left or in later life. I’m sure my daughters peers and their parents along with teachers have her down as someone “least likely to succeed”.

In reality my daughter has an excellent problem solving mind, has resilience in abundance, is calm under severe pressure and will make an excellent employee or employer in whatever field she desires.

Young people who don’t “follow the rules” or are seen as “rebellious” in some way, usually have something going on.

School isn’t “right” for everyone and doesn’t mean that person will be a failure.

My husbands relative left school at 14, no qualifications and left home at 15 to move in with a friend. Was sexually promiscuous and drank far too much for their age. By 18 something switched in their head and they turned their life around. Went to college and re-sat all their exams. Became a paramedic for five years. They have 4 commendations for bravery and they are now Chief Inspector of their local Police force. This person grew up in an abusive household.

I would have been pegged as likely to do well in something science-y.

Currently I'm a violin teacher. Sure I did extra-curricular music at school but I never actually took it as a subject ...

That’s really interesting!!! I always wonder about that. What accent did she have before?

The quiet, shy academic girl who became a professional wingwalker.

A girl who bullied her way through the school and trampled on everyone else to push her way ahead, often manipulating teachers with tears, has done very well for herself and is very regularly on television and in newspapers talking about her speciality.

And another girl who spent her school years from age 4 to about 10, hitting and nipping others is now a prosecution barrister.

The guy that used to deal drugs at my school ended up as a… drug dealer. Not really all that surprising, to be honest.

I love stories like this.

DH was at village primary school with a boy who always said he'd become an astronaut. DH bumped into him thirty years later. He was an astronaut!

A friend of mine (since infants school) now lives in Sumatra and runs an eco-lodge guesthouse. She has a masters degree in primate conservation, and runs all sorts of programmes and initiatives around conservation.
All the employees are locals, they source just about everything locally, her husband is Sumatran, and they do lots of educational things for the local children too.
It is the most beautiful place, her social media and web site have me green with envy!

Guy from my year who was a bully and generally unpleasant piece of shit is now running some artisan bakery. Never would have put him down for that!

I was at school with someone who now works for the BBC behind-the-scenes. His wife is a news reader and her scent in real life is very different.
(Especially when she's "tired and emotional" 😆)