Wanna tell me about your life?

[purpleduck]

Hi!
I am doing a paper for my careers guidance course....

Do you lot mind telling me about your employment/ career path?

Are you doing something you love doing?

How did you decide when making big career decisions? Did you make the right decisions?

And last but not least, do you feel you received adequate careers advice?

Obviously you don't have to answer all these questions, but I would reallly appreciate hearing your stories.

Thanks!

Purpleduck

GCSEs and A levels at local comp.
Excellent medical school for 5 years.
Started work as a doctor, almost random selection of chosen specialty.
Postgrad exams and teaching qualification.
currently a Specialist Registrar with 2.5years to becoming a consultant.

Love my job, the patients and the vast majority of my colleagues, hate the shifts.

Somettimes feel that I have compromised myself in my choice of sub-specialty but hoping that it will pay off with a less stressful life in the end.

Went to university with the intention of becoming a solicitor, studying law and economics.

During that time did a lot of summer work in the accounts department of a large company and thought that I might like to become an accountant instead so didn't take the required courses in my law degree to be eligible for the professional stage of legal training. Big mistake - I have wished I could go back and start again but I would have to do the equivilent of another law degree before I could do the training and I can't face it. I would have been better at it than accountancy thats for sure, assuming I stayed well away from commercial work!

Got a job as a trainee accountant but really didn't like it. However, for the first two years I passed the exams and couldn't afford to give it up. Finally got made redundant and then failed a set of exams and that was that as far as chartered accountancy went.

Got a job in a bank in their accounts department and took 2 exams to qualify for AAT, just to have something to show for my years of training. Worked there for 8 years before leaving to have children in 2000.

In 1997 I started the post grad conversion in psychology with the OU. Finished that when DS1 was a year old but then moved house, renovated that and had DS2, before moving again so studying got put on the back burner for a few years.

Started an MSc in psychology with the OU in 2006 and still have a couple of years to go on that. I am not doing it with any purpose in mind as it is not a vocational course but I do want to keep studying so that when DS2 starts school in September I can think about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I don't have the time, money or experience to do any vocational training until then.

Most careers advice I have had has been pretty useless. University careers advice was OK for interview technique and preparing CV's but guidance in which job to get was non-existent apart from a computer aptitude test.

The last careers advice was with the OU but they didn't really tell me anything about training to be a psychologist other than what I had already found out by my own research. I don't need to know what the minimum entry requirements are, I want to know what you actually need on your CV to get an interview and I want to know how you get the relevant work experience. Better still would have been if they could have arranged some work experience which other university psychology courses can do.

Did another aptitude test which was useless. I was very honest as I don't see the point in faking the results to get the answers you think you want but the top 3 were aromatherapist (couldn't stand the stink), herbalist (not convinced herbal medicines even work) and political researcher (not that interested in politics). So not much help all in all.

This is amazing stuff.
I didn't get any careers advice either. As a matter of fact, I think our Guidance counsellor's sole purpose was to pull the honor roll students out to talk to them about university applications. (I wasn't one of them )

I have a degree in history
Went travelling for a few years
came back and started working in a Health food store (in Canada) where I got tons of training, loved it, began a Holistic Diploma thingy.

Met dh and 7 months later got married and moved over to UK

Had dc's

Did a hypnotherapy diploma. Practiced for a bit,LOVED IT but felt driven to train in something more....practical.

Saw a help wanted ad for a Careers Advisor, and decided that was what I wanted to do.

I finish in a month, and I am not sure I made the right choice. Not sure if my course has much relevance to "the real world".

Anyways, I love hearing your stories. Don't you think real people's stories are WAY more interesting than famous peoples'?

Comprehensive school.

Went to university and did degree in history, which I had always loved since reading Jean Plaidy novels.

On careers service advice, applied for job as trainee manager at wine merchants.

Got job.
Hated job.
Left after 8 months.

Back to university to do MA in Medieval Drama (making me really employable)

Worked as an archives assistant as a year.
Met DH in the archives.

Moved on our marriage and then had to find a new career,

Bookseller
Secretary at publishers
Editorial assistant
Editor
Senior Editor.

Lecturer in Publishing

Now lecture in publishing and media studies and give other people careers advice, which they sometimes take.

I'm a lecturer.

Did a degree. Went to careers service to ask for advice about applying for postgraduate courses (applied for PhD but also MA in Translation Studies, as back-up) and they told me I should be a bilingual secretary (this was in the late 80s, btw, not the 1950s...).

Did PhD anyway (encouraged by lecturers) and have worked as a lecturer since 1992.

I love my job.

I have never advised any of my students to go to the careers service, which is probably a shame, as they are almost certainly not sexist arses any more.

Carers Guidance? What's that?!

• Terrible secondary - terrible GCSE's

• College - secretarial course, quit 1/2 way to have

• Baby

• A-levels - rubbish results

• Univeristy - 2:1 Hons

• Univeristy - Masters in social work nearly completed but

• Baby

• 3 essays to go...

I'd like to point out that my son is now 16 and his career guidance has been appalling.

Will this be my final fling with University?

I meant careers!

Home-educated. GCSEs and A-Levels.
Went to college and trained as a nursery nurse, as a back-up career. Also started Open Uni degree in Childcare and Development in spare time.
Went back to college and trained as an actor.
Didn't really have any career advice except from tutor at college - I have found the most effective career advice has come from fellow actors.
I love my job, and my career decisions now are based on my family. I don't take long tours, and I take ds to work wherever possible. I do want to progress and succeed, but I have accepted that since having a child, that progress will have to be at a slightly slower pace.

Comprehensive school
Sent on girls "experience engineering" day age 13
Looked into engineering books in careers library and fancied civil or aeronautical engineering.
Went on "insight" engineering residential week age 16 at Salford uni
Science A levels
Gap year worked for engineering company
Civil Engineering degree Cambridge
Job in engineering and became Chartered Engineer
Did MSc in specialist field aged about 32

Now on maternity leave hoping to grasp career back at some point.

I do love what I do and it suits me. I don't remember having any useful careers guidance directly from school but the two "women into engineering" experiences were bang on target. I think they initially targeted all the girls who were in top stream for physics.

It was a big decision to do MSc which effectively limited me to a specialist field, but there is shortage of skills so hopefully I will be employable still.

Crap comp until GCSEs. Couldn't bear to stay there for sixth form so left and did the International Baccalaureate at the first state school in Wales to offer the IB.

Went to university to study Politics. This would have been law had my school work experience not put me off for life. I spent 2 weeks photocopying files and twiddling my thumbs.

Dropped out of university after the 2nd year and transferred to another university for my final year. Studied for my finals whilst running a pub with my ex. Missed a first by a narrow margin.

Carried on running the pub while I wondered what to do with my life. Up until now, the only careers guidance consisted of something called a JIGCAL which was some sort of questionnaire that told me to be a librarian.

Wanted to teach primary but was told I had the wrong subjects. Dabbled with a post 16 PGCE but realised I wouldn't get a job.

Read an ad in Cosmo one day highlighting HR as a career. As I'd been a ski instructor and liked the training side of things I decided to be a trainer, so started a postgrad cert in Human Resource Management.

Somewhere along the line I completed an MA in Employment Law.

I did various HR roles but am now a specialist and work as a Consultant in Organisational Development. I like it, find it challenging but often wonder what could have been had I enjoyed the work experience. Would I be a solicitor? I don't know.

I think OD suits me though. I think it plays to my strengths. In the future I can see myself running my own business and undertaking a counselling course. AM also looking at NLP.

Comprehensive school
GSCE,1 O'LEVEL (year early)
Bsc
PCGE
Bog standard nurse
Did some lecturing pre dcs
Thats it.
Feel totally inadequate most times.
Life out of control
DP very poorly and dc sn all happened in last year.
Drowning....
Thats it.

Loving this thread.

The biggest influence on my career choices, positive and negative, has always been my mum.
Girls' grammar school; reasonable O-levels; chucked sciences at this point as I hated and despised physics and chemistry; but in fact I was good at biology and wish very much I'd done biology A-level then. However, you had to dissect stuff at that time and I couldn't handle the little rats pinned out on boards.
Arts a-levels
History at Cambridge because I thought it would all be about jewels, d'Artagnan and Georgette Heyer - found that on my course it was much more about mortality rates and/or philosophy of kingship but loved it anyway
First job on edges of magazine industry - loathed it
took job in healthcare - wasn't right job but loved health field and have stayed ever since
now retraining as speech and language therapist - absolutely amazing and i love it but could never have done it aged 18

my mum is very very very very bright but has downplayed it all her life; she has always said she just drifted into her jobs in life but the fact is that it's a lot easier to 'drift' into things when you have first class science degrees coming out of your ears

school careers advice was OK but told most of us to go into hotel and catering work
university careers was OK - lots of resources but very bored adviser could not restrain disgust at my lack of ideas
professional careers advisers quite helpful but expensive
best professional careers advice was via Connexions

but the only person who ever gets it right for me is my mum

Such a good survey.

Big post-direct-grant-on-way-to-being-independent (but in the meantime, nicely socially mixed) Scottish school: OK qualif's, enough for Oxbridge. Never quite knew whether I was doing well (by my lights) or not.

Shock fab result in first yr uni exams, sent me off down path of trying to get a First (missed it by microns, by trying Too Hard I think); then grad school in States ... without realising you are meant to want to seriously contribute to the sum of academic endeavour (aka have Fire in Belly) if you are trying to be an academic. Did not finish PhD.

Law school, City law firm, still there after nearly 15 years - without realising you should only do that job if you've got a dynamic individual business plan starring yourself (aka Fire in Belly - again), and not if (like me) you are kind of content being a functionary.

Basically - while looking weirdly good on paper, I have gone down blind alley after blind alley. I wonder if any careers adviser could have headed that off? If only.

Should have been a teacher.

Comprehensive, leaving with O levels.
One year FE - secretarial course.

Junior secretary - small firm
temporary clerical position - polytechnic.
part-time clerical position within the CJS, moving about the organisation until I got my current position - admin officer - almost four years ago.

I enjoy what I do, mostly. Have no ambition to do different work.

Don't think I've ever made big career decisions. First job offer came through college, I went for two jobs - was offered one and a second interview at the other, so played it safe and accepted the first one offered. Made redundant 14 months later, managed to get temporary work until I got the part-time post. Took a full-time position when one came up. Have moved within the organisation, but none were major moves. Applied for current position, which was a minor promotion and the post I held was then upgraded in a major job review.

I am happy with the (lack of) choices I've made over the years.

I had a mother who didn't want me to go on to further education - she couldn't see the point when I'd only end up working on the pots (I never did apart from a weekend/summer job and the pottery industry has all but disappeared), and a father who would have loved for me to go to university (but I went to FE college rather than 6th form).

Only careers advice I remember receiving was when I said I wanted to be an air hostess, I was too intelligent 9they didn't say that, but that was the implication) and to work in a travel agents instead.

Now I've read everyone else's.

The ref to "high-flyers" struck a chord: when you get told you can "go far" or "do anything" (brains-wise) there is a whole separate issue of whether you have the right personality. Tricky, though, because who wants to tell a 16 year old that they may never set the world on fire?

PS all I can remember of careers counselling was a session with a visiting adviser who gradually gradually brought the chat round to .. the Army. Everyone in my class had the same chat. We thought it might actually have been a MOD thing?

My parents were teachers and the first in their famiies to do anything academic. So I drifted into teaching as well, after an MA in medieval music - like Bink, didn't have the heart/real desire to do the PhD and did a PGCE. After 6 years I realised what it was I really wanted to do, resigned and by virtue of supply teaching, volunteering and part-time jobs, and finally being in the right place at the right time, got into fully fledged second career. This was all pre-kids by a long way.

No sensible careers advice at any stage from anyone. I wish I'd had more imagination in the first place and not had to wait to realise that there more things you could do with a music degree than teach. (Which I didn't hate, but I didn't love it either.)

On the other hand, people now do several different jobs over the course of their careers so I suppose it's not unusual. It's just that I'd have got further with it before I got married and had children. I work full-time, and have a good work-life balance, but to push really hard for promotion would tip that balance unfavourably I think, in my situation.

a levels
good university
year off (voluntary work, crap paid work, bit of travel)
MPhil in Middle East Studies
jourrnalist on specialist Middle East mag
Middle East researcher for a big NGO
policy adviser for same NGO
Masters in international law
manager for same NGO
independent consultant

biggest regret re careers advice? not being told, when I was 16 and clueless, to do languages - I was ok at them, but thought only bilingual secretaries and translators needed them. no-one pointed out how bloody useful they could be - whatever I ended up doing. And I now work in an environment where speaking one language only is highly unusual, most people speak at least 2, plenty speak 3, and I can think of a couple who speak 4 and 5.

How interesting. My career (and subsequent lack of it) has mainly been driven by a winning combination of fear and inertia.

Girls' direct grant secondary school, now one of top girls' private schools. Swotty type. Careers advice was limited to which Oxbridge college would be best.
Languages degree at Cambridge. Realised, despite Glittering Prizes, that I didn't want to stay in academia as I had no burning desire to spend three years looking at the role of the spider in Dostoyevsky. Did one of those quizzes at the university careers service which said I should be an academic.

Left looking vaguely for job in which to use my Russian. Nearly recruited by MI5 but bottled out. Joined wonderful small company that made up brand names. Had an absolute blast and the funniest times of my life with other very similar people for 6 years or so. Stayed with company despite takeovers and mergers for 12 years in total, working 3 days a week after DS1 and DS2.

DH's job took us abroad when the boys were 4 and 1, so I stopped work, initially for 2 years, and never started again.

Now jointly run own business with DH, but I do books and admin and a little consultancy whereas he does most client work. School governor and part-time writer.

There are hundreds of things I would like to do but I am too inert to do any of them.

I did one of those quizzes. It said I should be a vicar. I wouldn't have been allowed to be a vicar in 1990. on account of having a fanjo and all. not believing in God would possibly have counted against me as well.

My atheist best friend was told she should be a vicar too! This was in 1988, so only a bit earlier than you.

(btw blithedance don't suppose your initials were RH by any chance?)

Girls grammar school
Good O and A levels
Medical School
Consultant Psychiatrist

Whilst my job is great - basically talk to people all day, I really really wish I had done a degree in French instead. Not sure what I would have done with it though, maybe just gone to live in Paris.
At no point did I have any constructive kind of careers advice. Those questionaires that we filled in when we were 16 told me I should have been a forest ranger. Cool!

Scottish primary and secondary.
Did best at English and Art Higher level (like A-levels) ok - mediocre at other subjects.
Was part of a group which had new careers guidance computerised (ooooh, it was a new thing in those days!) questionaire tested on us. It said I could be a landscape gardener, architect, art teacher, etc etc.

Had always wanted to go to art college but didn't get in so studied Photography full-time for a year at polytechnic.

Did front of house photos (the photos of the shows you see in theatre foyers) and actors mug-shots for a year. (Was going out with actor).

Went to be an au-pair in Peru for a year.
Left au-pair job after 3 months and started teaching English at a language school.
Met DP.
Travelled in Peru and Chile.
Returned to Scotland after a year in Peru.
DP joined me a year later.

Meanwhile I was doing Highers in Spanish and Media Studies hoping to get into uni. Also did TEFL certficate in London.

Didn't get grades for uni.

Moved to Spain with DP for 'a year or two'.
Still here after 18 years.

First of all taught English for a couple of years, then took on a shop with plan to do photos of tourists dressed up in old fashioned local/historical costumes.
Ended up continuing shop as it was - souvenirs/crafts.
Have been doing that for 14 years.

Started a distance learning course in Interior Design 7 years ago but despite getting excellent marks I couldn't keep it up due to no discipine when it came to putting aside time to do the course work.

Bought a house 5.5 years ago which we are finally finishing renovation of now.

Had DD1 4.6 years ago and DD2 1.6 years ago.

Hoping to move whole family back to Scotland and find the perfect job for me next year.

Are you doing something you love doing? - No, I was bored of it after 6 months.

How did you decide when making big career decisions? I just sort of trusted my instinct and hoped it would work out. It usually did, financially at least.
Did you make the right decisions? Nobody knows...

Purple duck - I've just started reading 'What colour is your parachute?' - why arent you asking us about what we love doing outside of work?
My real passions are doing floorplans of houses and redesigning the layout and reorganising the spaces. Arts and crafts projects in general and writing. Am practical and creative. Also enjoy solving creative, practical and design problems.

What job should I be doing?????????

Went to a 'good' school so did the exam conveyor belt. The school aimed to get you to Uni - once I had achieved this ambition I had no idea what to do next.
Decided that (1) I was good with numbers (2) wanted a recession-proof job so the answer was accountancy (more exams).
Still doing accountancy, nearly 30 years later, so it must have been the correct choice. Occasionally dream of doing something else (typical mid-life crisis) but don't fancy the drop in salary. I don't dislike my job although it is a bit boring sometimes (can't really complain: have purposely chosen non-demanding work since DC).
Never had any good careers advice. I remember there was a small box of index cards at school: the suggestion of egg-packer sticks in my memory for some reason!
Currently looking at careers for DD and the advice is a little better these days (or I am a more clued-up parent than mine were). The computer packages can be useful but they do tend to point you towards being a teacher.
There was no work-experience in my day.