to ask whether anybody else has wasted all their potential?

[wastedpotential]

I'm 36 and career-wise, my life has gone nowhere. I don't see an immediate way of changing that, so it's not answers I'm after - but it would make me feel better if I knew I wasn't the only one because I don't know anybody in RL who has messed up like me.

I had a promising start. Passed the 11 plus, did very well at GCSE and A Level, went on to get a 2:1 in English from a Russell Group uni. And that's where it ended.

I've never had a graduate job or used my degree. A combination of immaturity, lack of direction but most of all a massive lack of self confidence meant that I never even attempted to apply for anything or pursue any kind of career. I fell into soul destroying call centre work which I did until I had my DD 3 years ago.

I'm now back at work part-time. It's not in a call centre - it's a far more pleasant job - but it is on minimum wage & I don't see a huge amount of progression in either salary nor responsibility. I do feel grateful to have the job, especially as it was the first one I applied for since having DD, but I can't help thinking that I'm worth more than minimum wage (I earnt significantly more previously but took time out to be a SAHM, and wouldn't have wanted to go back to a call centre anyway.)

Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, I look back on my life and think that in theory, I could have done anything. I am so full of regret. I'd love to retrain in something, but we can't afford fees & for me not to be working. Unless we come into some money or DH gets a significant payrise, I'm stuck. I've got a good 30 years of working left and it's a depressing prospect.

Thank you if you got to the end of this - can anybody relate to how I feel?

I changed career in my late forties and after retraining qualified in a completely different area in my mid fifties. 3 years on and I've just secured a new job, gone part time at the original job, am self employed and still studying for other qualifications. I paid for it all myself with the exception of my current course which my employer is funding. The downside is that I had to do it on credit and I'm still paying it off.
Part of my job involves career counselling and it's never too late to look at changes.

no. not really. I am a sahm, so the career has had a long break. I was not fussed about climbing the ladder anyway. potential is about more than career. raising/teaching my children at home is just as valid as teaching other people's children in school.

there is still time to do other stuff.

however, if you feel like you want to do more then go for it. You need to be happy with what you have done.

Yes, I'm doing it now.

I'm very good at my work , absolutely love it. Was arranged for me to go down the tutoring route for me to train other in my field. That's all been put on hold now while I be a SAHM.

In honesty, I don't think I'll ever do it as it's not deemed as 'important' as dp work. We can't afford the child care - so I got the shitty end of the stick.

It makes me feel very down sometimes as I know I would have been fantastic at it.

I worked really hard to get to this point too.

Please apply for graduate jobs and higher apprenticeships. They have paid training and professional qualifications from prestigious firms, are offered all over the country and are not just for school leavers and recent graduates.

They are well paid and will give you a career. You may need to do some industry related work experience and some voluntary work to help make you more attractive because competition is fierce, but if you are going from minimum wage jobs they are going to get you ahead in a careering faster and without the costs of an OU course or another degree. Salaries start at about £15k for out of London higher apprenticeships and £20k for graduate jobs. Add on £3-8k for London weighting.

You will find most of these schemes open in September but you can apply to some all year round and it is worth having a look at the application process.

Read the "Should I become a solicitor" threads on here and at least change your fantasy job!

Thanks for asking Beast (and apologies to OP if I'm hijacking a bit ...)

If I could afford to I would love to do the law conversion course. However, I have to be realistic and recognise that a great deal of hard work and money could quite possibly be wasted as I very much doubt I'd ever get any sort of trainee position in my early 50s (which I would be by then).

I still hanker after fulfilling - or trying to fulfil the ambition I had at uni (as a mature student) to get post grad qualifications and break into either an academic career or speech therapy. Probably the former appeals most. Again though I have to be realistic and ask myself just how much opportunity there is for someone considered so (relatively) "old" to start from scratch in a completely different field ? When so many qualified people are struggling to find work, as well as tons of recent graduates, would there really be any possibility of changing path so late in life ?

That feeds into what Chunderella said about closed paths and accepting that you can't do everything. Problem is, if you're not at all happy generally with your "lot" it is very hard to find acceptance - it must be easier to come to terms with, for example, never having had the career you'd hoped for, if most other aspects of your life are okay. If that's not the case though I think perhaps that not fulfilling what you imagine could have been your "potential" is one of the hardest things to accept as it has such a huge affect for most people .... we spend so much time working, it has a huge impact on our quality of life and security, and is increasingly important these days I think as many of us have little choice but to work for much longer than we once anticipated. I sometimes wistfully think about a couple of really nice men I turned down (because of my dreadful lack of self esteem) when they asked me out back in the day - and what might have been - but you know, silly daydreams like that just don't compare at all to the reality of living here and now with a shitty job and no real prospect of "getting out" one way or another however much you wish you could.

If you would really like to become a solicitor then could you not try to find your part time work in a solicitors office? Legal admin?
Then you would be getting good exposure to the work you aspire to and, you never know, you may be able to find a more senior role there and train with them. They may give you day release or support your studies if you prove yourself to be very good.

Don't postpone it because of lack of money, you could still be working towards it now.
What area of the country are you in?

I did graduate jobs after my degree for a few years - very long hours to build career and DH in another part of the country building his career.

It seems like a waste now as having the DC and taking time out has massively impacted what I can do now.

Doesn't help everyone round me goes on about how my career is no longer important or I'll never restart it and should be happy with minor skilled jobs that fit round everyone else - not DH he just doesn't have any input or enthusiasm and it's all up to me though he'll have to take more childcare on and IME that fine till it clashes with his work.

Having said that I do know people in RL who took time out or changed direction later in life and achieved a lot including fulfilment and happiness they just tend to be less vocal on the subject.

I think I just need to find a direction and focus to work towards but money for re-training is an issue with so many other demands on our cash. I just don't know where to head so at minute does fell like all the previous hard work was a waste.

So the academic career would be in a field related to speech therapy? I think it depends so much on where you look. For every shiny high profile job with twenty dewy-eyed fresh grads chasing the posts, there is another job in a different kind of institution. If I look at the ppl who teach my daughter in her childcare NVQ at her local FE college, these are not bright young things who went straight into it. They are properly complex, mature ppl who have done all sorts, including home-making and working from home. There's movement between the FE college and the local post-92 University in the vocational areas.

You might want to think about public health, which kind of combines academic and practitioner skills: reviewing the local NHS Trust's policy and funding for a specific area of health.

As for law conversion- there is work in quiet back offices in the public sector, where salaries are lower and they find it hard to keep high-flyers. Training on the job as a paralegal might be a much more pragmatic choice than a law conversion course.

The trick I think has to be to find a path where you can rely on being employed at the end of it where you live. In your situation, on-the-job training has to be a bonus as you need a salary while you train. It does exist.

I do think law is a particularly hard profession to get into.

Have a relative with law degree who couldn't get the placement after degree needed to progress - did legal sectary/admin for a while but got more money in call centre job but they have progressed into management.

nah, hobbet there's a world of difference between "the DC and the home are my priority for maybe the next ten years" and "I am never going back". Don't take any shit about never going back, if you want to.

Finding somewhere to head is the key thing. Maybe if all you do in these early years is work that out, and maybe fit in a bit of volunteering when the DC are at school, that's good enogh.

Have a relative with law degree who couldn't get the placement after degree needed to progress - did legal sectary/admin for a while but got more money in call centre job but they have progressed into management.

I bet the legal training is what got her into management. I agree, going into a professional, client facing job as a solicitor is a very hard call. but legal or accounting training opens doors in lots of ways other than the obvious.

I did by getting married at 18 and becoming a housewife. I was very clever at school and on track for great things according to my English teacher but it wasnt to be. I met my husband at 16, married him at 18, and came to live a life in the Middle East at 19. A year later I had the first of our 5 children.

On my 56th birthday a few days ago I opened the doors of my new business to the very big and scary world. I've done it the hard way and didn't take a penny from my husband towards it - if I'd asked he would have just written a cheque. I'm working split shifts and leaving home at 6.20 am every morning and by the time I get home about 8.30 pm I'll have had a couple of hours at home in the day with my youngest who's severely disabled.

Im quite a shy person but this job is very people orientated and Ive shocked myself by what I'm capable of. My friend called in yesterday, saw me in action and kept giving me a cuddle every time a family had left.

I dont know if this will make sense but its as if my eyesight has improved. I look in the mirror and see myself, I can see what I look like, I can see me. I haven't seen me for a very long time.

Count me in on the unrealised potential - I'll be 49 at the end of the month, was a high achiever at school. Got a 2:1 degree from UCL in 1987. Never used it. Some of it was bad decision making - living in a rural area and having children early. I thought I'd be able to catch up when they were all at secondary school - didn't plan for the death of their father and a series of stress breakdowns for me. I've tried - and am still trying - the self employed route but am stymied by lack of cash. Currently living off less than 350.00/month and trying to put a brave face on it.

I bet the legal training is what got her into management.

Could be though she paid her dues at ground level in call centre first then applied for promotion. The legal admin work prior to that was supposed to led to on the job training in legal stuff when it didn't she switched to call centre as hours vs money it was better and at that point in her life with young DC it mattered.

nah, hobbet there's a world of difference between "the DC and the home are my priority for maybe the next ten years" and "I am never going back". Don't take any shit about never going back, if you want to.

Thanks I do need to here that.

I did get very down for a while and did talk about it was then I found that in RL I knew several people who taken time out, or changed direction and were now happy. I just need to find a direction.

I found the book "What colour is your parachute?" helpful many years ago. They bring out a new edition every year.

Once you have worked out what you might want to do you may be able to retrain via part time distance learning.

Feel similar to everyone here. Have a degree and a PhD a did have an academic career at a former poly( mostly teaching notnenough research) til I had my family 8/9 years ago. Since then both my kids have got additional needs and we've moved. Some of the people I did my PhD with are professors now. Am late 40s. I had know plan and drifted into my former career. It's now very dog eat dog in academia and I know I don't have the time and energy to devote to getting back on the career ladder.

I'm 28. I shall be retraining. Or in fact, training. I did very well at school, started studying medicine then gave up. I've got a good grounding in maths from school and from a couple of teeny OU courses so I would be accepted into second year at a bricks and mortar uni. I hope to do this once the DCs are at school. Then a post grad in teaching so I can teach maths.

well guys when I was running a University disability support unit I employed a woman in her late 50s who had brought up 5 DC and was ready to return to work. I wanted her life experience and ability to tell it like it is to teenagers, which my shiny young graduates were not good at. She was a great success, and stayed with us through to retirement.

She did a shit interview though, as she had no self-esteem and it was her first job in god knows how long.

Academic success does not equal rewarding high powered well thought of career. That's so true. I can't tell you the number of people I know who have failed to convert their brilliant academic starts into brilliant careers. With my youngest dc about to start secondary school I'm thinking of dipping my toe back in the water - I used to have a better job than DH - but with various moves abroad for his job I made a conscious decision to put my career on the back-burner. I suppose I could look at where I am career-wise now and feel a failure and wonder what if, but the truth is I know that if I'd been truly driven I wouldn't have let everything fall by the wayside and in any case if I had my time again I wouldn't do anything differently. At the end of the day OP you are only 36 - still time to retrain or pick up the threads of your old qualifications. Only you know whether you have the drive and determination to do that - it is hard to be single-minded when you have a dh and dc/s to think about. An excellent subject for a thread, by the way, it has really got me thinking.

Yay caitlin! that is inspiring stuff.

Yeah, me.

I did really well at school, always known as one of the "brainy" ones. I have a 2:1 from a RG uni too. I went into Publishing when I graduated. Not exactly well paid but I loved it. However, after I had DS, I wanted to work part time so promotion opportunities were limited. Then I was made redundant and there are no publishing jobs within an easy commute so I'm currently doing a crappy admin job for a big, professional firm. Oh, and two years ago my partner left me (after we had a conversation agreeing that my career would take a back seat for a bit to enable him to concentrate on his job...)

So, now as a single parent in my late 30s, it's even harder to re-train. And I don't even know what I'd want to do if I could re-train! Teaching definitely does not appeal. I can't progress at my current employer without taking on more hours, which I'm just not willing to do to DS at the moment.

I wish I'd chosen a different degree (did Sociology, which I loved but it's not exactly vocational) and been a bit more canny with my choice of career. I look at the professionals I work with...the young graduates who are already on 3, 4 times as much as I earn and think "I could have done that if I'd made different choices when I was 18". If I had qualifications and a proper career, instead of just a job, then I'd have far more choices open to me.

Similar story here. Straight As at school (very poorly performing comp), a science degree from top uni, but became a single parent whilst studying and never got into the workplace. I haven't worked at all since my dd was born, and I'm mid-30s now. Most of my peers are childless and racing ahead in their careers (very unusual to have dc before 35 in this area) and I feel disconnected from them.

I'm studying part-time now, albeit on a completely different degree that I chose for my own interests and doesn't have secure job prospects (but to me is far more interesting than a course that is directly linked to a career). I enjoy it but I don't think I'm likely to pursue work in this subject. Financially we don't need me to have a salary though and I'm likely to switch subjects again and spend another decade aimlessly at university.

It is far better to do something you love, if you can. You should not feel pressured to have a high flying career just because you have a degree.
I never got a degree - I left school at 16 but apparently I had loads of potential -but I had no idea what I wanted to do.
I HAD to get a job so I ended up doing office work I hated - and then went back to that after my children were older - because it was all I knew.
I felt I couldn't commit to re training for a career because of the pressures of having young children.
With me - it has always been lack of determination and lack of confidence.
I have friends who have worked really hard to re train into careers they really love.
I STILL don't know what I want to do! I am fed up of feeling I should know! I only blame myself though - because I think most of it is down to procrastination and apathy. I have even been criticised for not going further in office work. I have been told so many times I could have progressed so much further. Truth is - I was not interested enough to bother trying. Sometimes, I wish I could go back in time and start again!

56 and about to start over. 36? a mere child. find what you want and do it.