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

Sorry not read answers but to OP.

I think that good work experience placements would be EXCELLENT. I worked in a shop no relavance at all.

With decnet placements available people could actually get a feel for whether that career was for them or not. I think identifying early good ideas and giving a chance to see the practise is a good thing.

relevance

Went to a crap comprehensive. flew through GCSEs on good to average marks (A, B and Cs)

Recieved no careers advice.

Left at 16. Failed Army fitness test.

bummed around doing oddjobs until I fell into care aged 19.

Decided that caring for other people is Something I can Do.

And will end up eventually doing social care work - currently a volunteer youth worker.

I wish I had been given some proper advice and had the information to give my dad who merely said "YOu don't want to be a social worker, they're all idiots and it's a horrible job"

I wish I had had some decent work experience.

I wish I had not had the option of leaving school at 16, as I did it mainly to piss my parents off. I was NOT mature enough for the outside world.

If I tell you too much I will out myself - which I'd prefer not to do - but here's the edited version

Boarding school - not much emphasis on academics at all - it was pretty hot at rugby though. Was a swot and got lots of o and a levels

Year out - spent travelling and idling

University - English - couldn't imagine doing anything else - was v passionate about it

Post university - clueless - another year out

Two more years back converting etc to law

Various jobs - all of them immensely hard work because of lack of natural talent - but I do enjoy it

Careers advice - zero

Name change due to current employment.

Comprehensive education, left at 16 with no real qualifications-was bullied so couldn't wait to leave. Careers advice was shite.
Mum said I either got to work or on the dole and I couldn't dream of being on the dole, so...Ended up in retail, went from Saturday job to work full time(small family run type business)...loved it until I was made redundant. Retail again(big chain store), still loved it, but crap pay, so went to work for LRT as a clerk(friend that'd left same retail got me to apply), enjoyed the job, but could not pay the bills on the money when I split with partner. Went on to become a bus driver(Exh gave me the confidence to do it) which I loved until I had to drive different places/garages...passengers changed and then I hated the stress.
Became a Prison Officer 12 years ago and loved the job passionately, but the job has changed beyond recognition and now it just pays the bills. Exh got me to apply and tbh, if someone had said to me that I'd be doing this job the year before I applied, I'd never have believed them...didn't think I had it in me. My decisions are made in a strange way really. I believe that if I'm meant to get the job, I'll get it and won't if I'm not! worked for me so far!
Long winded answers-sorry!

I do regret not staying in education actually...could have made much more of myself, but I am proud that I've achieved what I have so far!

I have enjoyed reading about everybody's lives and I agree that they are much more interesting than those of famous people!

What I think stands out, apart from the random nature of most career paths, is the effect of meeting partners and having children. I feel sure a male version of this thread would not show the same thing.

As we are all looking for the ideal balance in our lives, perhaps considering which careers enable this best is not such a silly thing to do, although I admit it was not my priority at 16.

singersgirl - just read yours properly. I had an encounter with MI6! on account of my middle eastern studies I assume. It was a very bizarre experience. Whilst flattered, in a sense, I decided it was not the life for me.

No choosy, it's not me.

Just thought of something else. Was encouraged to apply to Cambridge because brainy, but actually was completely out-classed there and only scraped a 2.2. Loved all the punting and college balls and stuff, but hopeless at study.

My degree was largely irrelevant to engineering, far too theoretical, but having Oxbridge on your CV opens so many doors it probablly makes up for it. May well have been better at Imperial College which is v. well known for science and engineering, but was too frightened of moving to London. When I did my Masters there it was fantastic, the icing on the cake.

Interesting looking at Shitemum's post. My DH loves doing floorplans too, from childhood, (he is a self-made businessman, no uni or anything). He's just designed a fantastic extension to our house.

high school, 9 good gcses (as and bs)
college a levels
dropped out after a year, got an as level in chemistry,
slept around
drank alot
got kicked out of home at 17
had to get a job obviously at an engineering firm in the office
got married
got pregnant
got pregnant again
started doing a foundation degree at uni
got pregnant again
finished first year
work part time in retail

I think this is a list of how not to do things

Comprehensive. Lots of careers advice especially of the women-in-engineering, women-into-business, women-in-science variety.
Uni (Oxford) to read philosophy and psychology. Subjects the school had never suggested and had no idea about.
Lots of travelling and working abroad. TEFL course.
PhD in pschology/linguistics.
Lots more travelling and TEFLing and working abroad.
Research jobs in social sciences in universities for the last 11 years.

none of the careers advice at school covered anything I have done. They tended to suggest things like Science teacher, Language Teacher, Medicine or Law.

Thanks everyone.

I wonder what would have happen if every teenager were to read all these posts. All through schooling we are conditioned to believe that we will be "something" when we grow up. Maybe students should be taught that they will be LOTS of things when/ if they grow up.

So many people (myself included) carry so many negative feelings about themself, as they feel their career hasn't worked out they way it "should".

What they hell is "should"?

Shitemum
When I start practicing properly, I WILL be asking people about their passion.

oh, meant to add that I did a diagnostic test, and apparently I should be a fridge repairman

I am totally NOT technically minded!

Was thinking about this more last night - on lines of "what career advice would I give my children?"

And decided: I would tell them to have a portfolio of skills. Skills to include - this is just what I've thought of so far. Suggestions for more VERY welcome:

• at least one additional language, fluently. My French (which cost me three teenage summers, but what on earth else would I have been doing with them) has been an endless benefit in all kind of ways, inc. ones I wouldn't have anticipated

• ICT type skills: continually updated - short course twice a year on what's actually being used

• doing something in a team, so you know how you, personally operate in a team situation. This shouldn't be too onerous - you should be able to make mistakes & redo it until you have a sense of you vis-a-vis a group project

• doing something (anything) where the buck stops with you - so you know how, again, you personally, deal with pressure and urgency and accountability

• "financial literacy" - really knowing how to manage money, run a budget, how to prioritise when you don't have enough

(This is probably me reinventing the wheel of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme - but I haven't looked at that since I did Pet Care for my bronze award in 1066.)

My careers advice would be to keep your options open (not dropping sciences or languages too soon), and to remember that there are more types of careers and jobs than the few which children and their teachers naturally think of.

Bink, if you think you should have been a teacher, do you consider moving onto that? It seems to be one of the careers you can switch to fairly easily.

Bink, that is brilliant!
Can I incorporate some of that into my paper? I love the bit about financial literacy

Oo, thank you PD.
I was just mulling further (by the way, I think that's my "passion" - mulling ...) and realising that my careers advice approach is exactly equivalent to my great-grandmother's advice to my grandmother on finding a husband: which was (imagine this delivered in a tone of majesterial insistence):

"KNOW PLENTY"

Fennel - am backed into that stupid corner of current-salary-dependence, so can't consider retraining altogether. (But am considering things as sidelines.)

(Was that too cryptic? Great-grandmother meant "Know plenty of men, so you can make a wise & realistic choice given the actual options out there. And don't be naive")

And I darned well meant "magisterial" didn't I, not that other impostor of a word

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere today, but a lot of this article by Camilla Cavendish in today's Times rang true with me.

Bink: I love your great-grandmother's advice!

You ideas are fine but are, I'm afraid, re-inventing the wheel. Six key skills.

Those are all great ideas bink and none of them properly covered in mainstream secondary education, not even the MFL these days
Interesting thread
State church primary, passed 11 plus
Inner-city girls grammar school, 11 O levels, 3 A levels, 1 S level (remember those oldsters? )
Was recommended to try Oxbridge but dug toes in, wanted a specific Russell Group university with a then fairly radical approach to MFL degrees
Went there, studying French and Drama, came away with 2.1 and fluent in French.
Applied for graduate trainee librarianship programme at local poly on a whim. Liked what I saw, did a good interview, got the job.
Found my niche at 22. How lucky was that?
Year on masters' course at university, back into academic/voluntary sector/public library work, where I have been all my life.
I would advise my children to forget about money and focus on personal happiness and a sense of fulfilment - emphatically. I know hardly anyone who genuinely still loves their work as much as dh and I still do. We don't earn a lot considering how highly qualified and educated we are, I guess, and how hard we work, but it's still a great profession.
So I am an old liberal arts dinosaur who would not mind in the slightest if my two wanted to go and study something "uncommercial" like classics or archaeology.
Also believe in the advantages of study/living abroad so would encourage them to take full advantage of Socrates/Erasmus schemes if they went into higher education.

LOL Bink!!
Your great grandmother rocks!

Definatelynot
I'm sorry, but what is MFL? is it modern foreign languages?
Interesting how, even though you are doing what you love, you feel that it has been luck that got you there. Not sure what point i'm making, but i just find that interesting!

modern foreign languages purpleduck
At no point was information work recommended to me at university
It was all Milk Round, Milk Round, Milk Round (ugh) or teaching, which I am now exploring as a sideline, rather like bink
I would have been an atrocious teacher at 22 though