What did you tell the careers' advisor you wanted to be?

[Carouselfish]

Just having amusing conversation with yesterday and thought it'd be a good one for chat!
Me - a romance novelist or private investigator...(as I am very noticeable at 6ft and have major trouble with facial recognition, the latter was clearly not for me...)
My mum - an astronaut or spy (this being a person who if you try to communicate something subtly to her, says 'why are you kicking me under the table?!' in a loud voice.)

I said I wanted to be a hotelier in Turkey ..... I had a Turkish boyfriend at the time and thought it would be perfect. it didn't last but we are still friends 35years on. Careers advisor told me to get a nice, secure job in a bank (I didn't)

I probably said I wanted to be an author. I know that aged approx 14 I did a lengthy careers test On A Computer which went off to be analysed by Careers People, at the end of which I was told I should be a tree surgeon. I'm pretty sure that's what got me this moderating job to be honest... 🤔"She looks capable of felling a large oak safely. She can probably be trusted with taking the occasional thread down, too."

Journalist. Careers advisor told me I was too quiet and shy so I abandoned the idea.

At secondary school I said I wanted to be a Careers Advisor and I was being legit. They asked me to leave the room and stand in the hallway!

Most recently - I phoned National.Careers Service for advice on switching my career from Marketing and Web Design and they suggested Digital Marketing. I laughed so much and had to explain it was basically the same job. They didn't believe me 😂

At various times - a librarian and a housing officer. I am neither of those.

A beautician.. also a groom! Neither happened. I went into retail. Careers advice hasn't progressed. None of my kids had good advice. They've made their own way, & currently retail, hypnotherapy, banking, retail.

I failed to show up to a single careers lesson

No, I went to the first one where the teacher tried to put us all off doing a levels (we were top set in a sought after school and I was always one of a handful getting top marks every time) and decided he was not going to have anything useful for me.

So my friend and I bunked off and went for a nice walk every careers lesson. Lovely memories !

@SirenSays @Planesmistakenforstars ROFL. That sounds very similar to my sort of exeperience.

I said I would like to be a barrister. I was told I might make a good gravestone engraver

I am neither a barrister nor a gravestone engraver. I am a therapist. I don’t know which is closest to my actual career choice.

In addition to my last post can I add: we had psychometric testing to try & determine what jobs might suit us in adulthood. This was the early 90s and I Was 14/15. Mine came out as Telegraph Pole maintenance. How random! All bollox of course. There was still a lot of sexism towards girls doing "manly" jobs in my rural town school so the girls were directed more to female jobs in the caring & retail sectors. I fell for that, and ended up at nursing school, which I flunked.

I worked in a London department store for a bit. It was crap money, despite the prestige. Then I went for a job at London Underground/TfL & I'm now a station supervisor. I never thought I'd en up there (22 years service, the benefits are too good to leave).

I have a 16 year old doing her GCSEs and I've said to her, it might take several goes at different things before you find the thing you really want to do and that suits you. Life isn't linear, and I don't think your career path is really.

A professional rugby player, she suggested binman. Within a year I was a professional rugby player, I’ve had lots of jobs, binman still isn’t one of them. Ours was one of the receptionists, so the poor sod had probably been given zero training or resources.

I had no idea but they told me to be an air traffic control officer. I thought it was too scary of a job to pursue though I wouldn't have minded.

As I said upthread I had zero careers advice apart from that weird computerized test (that I never recieved the results of) so I am really curious about some of the randomness of suggestions people got.
Did the careers advisor ask questions about your interests, hobbies, what school subjects you liked, which ones you disliked etc?
How on earth did they come up with such random suggestions?
I am really curious.