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

't's all fascinating reading. I agree that the effect of marriage/children is striking for many of us.

I did do a few of those Milk Round interviews but hated all of them. Everyone was looking for 'good all-rounders' and I am emphatically not a good all-rounder - an excellent 90 degree-er, but nowhere near the full circle.

The languages have been useful, again in ways I wouldn't have expected.

All I knew when I left college was that I wanted to do something with words, not numbers. A lot of my friends fell back on accountancy as a reasonably well-paid, safe option. Almost all of them left - two to law college, one to conference management, one to consultancy.

No one of course ever suggests making up brand names for a living, and in terms of my contribution to human development, I score rather poorly - but it was a great time and I met not only my husband but some of my other dearest friends doing it.

I think having fun is vastly underrated.

It's, of course, rather than some strange not-quite-Shakespearean contraction.

Bink - I think your portfolio of skills is spot on - children need to be prepared for a future which none of us yet know and they need a solid base of transferable and upgradable skills as a foundation for whatever the future holds.

As an addition to your list - I am a great believer in a grounding in economics. I read far too many posts on MN where the poster believes a state school teacher or NHS nurse or doctor is giving more to society than a City lawyer or banker. No understanding that without the big money jobs and the taxable income they generate, society would not be able to afford the luxury of teachers, nurses or doctors.

Grammar school, A-Levels (rubbish grades first time as nightclubs were discovered, top grades when I repeated)
Good university but chose completely the wrong degree for me - archaeology (well it's nearly the same as history isn't it?)
A year in a building society earning cash
MA Museum Studies
2 curator jobs, both high status, boring and stressful
Temping in mental health admin whilst pregnant
SAHM for last 2 years and am pregnant with No 2 so will be for at least another 3/4 years

We had a print out thingy at school that said I should be in law (mainly because I engineered the answers as I thought I wanted to do law at the time). No other careers advice except that I should apply to crap polytechnics as my A-level results would be so bad.

I am rubbish at making big decisions about things like this. I wish there was somewhere I could go to get decent careers advice that suited me, ie not related to working in admin jobs in banks or sales. I definitely won't go back to museums as it is so badly paid and competitive.

church primary
all girls secondary
college - art and design, art (painting and drawing), french
uni - communication studies
designer for a toy company

i think interests as well as career path is important...

would have liked engineering...

the careers advice was crap, because i wanted to do two years of the arts and two years of sciences, as i'm passionate about both, failed dramtically at the math side, so ended up taking graphics.

bink's list is good - but they also need to know something. I'm going to sound like a right old grumpy old woman but how can people in half-way serious jobs get into their 30s without knowing what "kosher" means and that lobster costs more than a fiver? general knowledge is really quite important in the real world. if only to stop yourself looking like a twat. I'll tell my children that reading newspapers is a must.

specialist knowledge goes a long way too. but you do need to work out what you want that to be in - and often that doesn;t hapeen til much later - and often it's not the same as your degree subject

Crap comprehensive school to 16, FE college at parents' insistence but left on day I turned 18 so didn't sit A-levels!

Lots of 'jobs' - auxiliary nurse, shop, etc.
Government run computer course - became programmer then systems analyst, very boring.
Secretarial college, then secretary.
Then stage manager for 3 or 4 years.
Then administration for 3 or 4 years.
Then self-employed doing pretty well anything inc. admin, secretarial, stage management type stuff.
Then Uni - BSc. Psychology.
Taught autistic kids.
Got place to do Masters at IoP (neuroscience), couldn't take it up because of infant and illness. Not really worked since due to long term illness/disability. Have done one science-based OU course and am just starting a short course on genes. Am considering my options for the future (can't go back to anything I have experience in!) but think I might be happy if I could just sit in a lab counting cells or something very low down the scale!!
Careeers advisor at school suggested playing violin in the army!?????!!!!!!!!!
My boss when I started in Stage Management was the most influential person as he told and showed me I could believe in myself and was actually very competent, hardworking and intelligent, rather than a lazy waste of space which is what I had been told I was at school.

Lol at 'fridge repair man' Purpleduck

What are you going to do when you qualify? If you had a web-based consultancy I could certainly do with some advice!

Perhaps we could get a 'careers advice' topic on here one day.

I forgot to say is that probably the most useful thing I have learnt at school/college was how to touch type. It has made every job I have ever had so much easier.

I may be the only person in the world to actually be in the career that came up as number one in my computer-based career diagnostics test! And the first time I had heard about this career was when I got my results back.

And I love it - it was definitely the right area for me.

So I am a careers guidance success story!

I so agree about touch-typing. for many jobs it's not a particularly marketable skill but hell it's useful

Bink

I like the idea of key skills - fantastic - but I think that cooking and nutrition is one of them.

Neicie
I am still not sure...
I mentioned above that I have trained as a hypnotherapist as well.
I think I may like to combine the two along the lines of gaining confidence in the workplace, or finding the courage to nudge yourself out of your comfort zone to go for what you want...

I am going to do my MA as well though... mostly because I have always wanted to get one

All this has REALLY fired me up. For the last year and a half that I have been doing this course, I have been feeling progressively more disillusioned. Reading everyones stories has put me back on track of why I was drawn to this in the first place.

purpleduck, i love the idea of hypnotizing teenagers during career advice sessions!

I must say hat and others, I learned to type at evening classes (my school didn't teach it) as my mother said I would always be able to earn a living. I think she thought I was a lazy c*w who might easily not have much direction - who, me? It's been great and I have earned a lot of money typing; but I have more than one friend who didnt' learn to type specifically because if you can type, there's a big risk that you will end up TYPING. And that's true too - for me, I was always kind of keen to go and get a full-time typing job because I can do it and I get lots of positive feedback. But it's disastrously boring longterm, obviously.

I think the problem with a lot of careers advisors is that they give the advice and never see the results and the impact of their advice - they don't live in the real world. Reading all these stories must give you a huge advantage over other careers advisors Purpleduck. No wonder you are all fired up again!

This thread is really interesting too because it just goes to show that education isn't just one shot and you're out. So many of us are doing or trying to do second careers or studying later in life. Finishing school at 16, 18 or 21 doesn't mean the end of all your education forever. If children knew this it would take some of the pressure off exam time, for some of them anyway.

Quattro - oh yes, cooking as a life skill, agree. (Serendipitously, I learnt mine along with my French. My French-exchange-girl - who was not, herself, wholly inspiring - had the most darling maman, and I have such fond memories of sous-chef-ing for her.)

crappy comprehensive
BA in english/film/tv studies
moved to london to work as tv researcher
left to go travelling for 2 years
returned to london but hated the desperation/contract work associated with tv production
went for a job interview for a job in tv i had no idea was about. started that job no better informed.
still in said job 8 years later but further up career ladder. accidentally found my forte, love it and don't see myself doing any other kind of job.

career advice at school sucked, too short sighted, they assumed i'd want to work at the local printers. no career advice at uni.

Convent school. Good A levels (big swot.)
Read English at Oxford, and, like thousands of others...
Went into the City. LOATHED IT. WRONG job for me, even though it was well paid.
Switched to marketing and PR.
Started writing fiction because one colleagueyears agotold me she didn't think I'd ever be much of a writer and I wanted to prove her wrong. (Proving people wrong a bit of a theme in my life...)
Wrote and wrote for five plus years.
Two agents-no sales.
Got first novel published in June last year.
Still do some writing/editing for people I used to work for as a PR to help cashflow because authors aren't paid regularly--or much!

Great comprehensive, ploughed through GCSEs and A levels despite traumatic bereavement as it was what everyone expected of me
BA Hons English and partying at northern uni
Moved home post-graduation still with absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, how to find out or how to go about doing it even if I could find out; also pressing money issues meant I drifted into a shit going-nowhere admin job and stayed there for 5 years
Moved out of London and got another shitty admin job, sank into career-related depression
Moved cities again and worked as a medical secretary
Changed jobs to what I'm doing now, potentially interesting/fulfilling but sadly suffered another traumatic bereavement 6 months later which fucked things right up for me
Went part time and started an English MA last year
Now expecting first child and can't wait to go on maternity leave...in fact I never want to come back!

The only career guidance I ever received was half an hour with a complete stranger at my secondary school; he asked me some desultory questions, offered no guidance and made the usual two suggestions that everyone makes to kids who like studying literature (teacher/journalist). There was no opportunity for anyone to try and tease out my thoughts on the subject, which I appreciate would have been difficult since I was a 16 year old hormone bomb in a deep, defensive depression. Family issues mean I've never had any worthwhile career guidance or opportunities from that direction either - my dad and nan's precarious hand to mouth existence when they were younger has left such a mark on them that they just think you should get a job, any job, and hang on to it with both hands no matter how shite it is.

For someone who is frequently told how intelligent, articulate, capable and resourceful they are, I am remarkably clueless and useless when it comes to actually managing my working life. It remains a source of frustration to this day (in case you couldn't tell ). I've never had a job I loved, nor even any idea of what one might look like, apart from writing fiction for a living. Which is about the least practical choice a person can make. So yes, some good guidance opportunities during my school or undergraduate years would have been welcomed!

Failed 11+, girls secondary modern, 8 O'Levels (just prove the buggers wrong about failing the 11+), Fe College - 3 modest A-Levels, Poly/Uni Good science degree, years voluntary work for environmental charity, PGCE, 18mths as an education officer for a charity, 3 years as a project officer for another environmental charity - for last 9 years have worked full/part time in local gov in education. Careers Guidance???? - I remember doing some computer test that said I should be a beauty therapist - which for a girl that was into geology/outdoors and lived in jeans and boots was a complete joke - would have loved some decent advice!!!!!

purpleduck - what course are you currently doing re. careers advice. My collaegue has now done her Level 4 in IAG and is considering adding a careers ed qualification to her list of (numerous!) accreditations on her CV. Part of our current job may very well soon include elements of career ed (for resettlement) in a bigger way than it currently does.

Hi Hula
I am doing a Careers Guidance PGD, which can then lead on to an MA (with the dissertation).
My course is very heavy on theory, which I detest and find a bit interesting, but all so...theoretical . I have learned alot, but still feel like I would like a bit more meat on it.

Have you done the IAG as well? Are you guys working with the MOD?

No, not working with MOD.

I am doing an NVQ Level 4 in IAG at the moment. Been doing it ages as we only get a day a month to do it from work, and I missed 4 months due t a couple of ops last year. I just finished the thoery questions this morning - waiting for final ones to be assessed now. Now have to finish the observations and case studies - that is te bit I hate!

My collaegue has finished it already. She loves doing courses in her spare time! theory one sounds up her street to be honest. I must let her know about it next week at work.

Have to say with the NVQ I don't feel I have learn anything new at al; just writing about things I already do and already know. A lot of work, on top f my normal day's work, for no benefits - I am having to do the course as work have decided, 2 years after appointigng me, that all IAG workers now need this L4 course! Grrr. No benefit at all to me as all the other IAG posts within the service are on a lower pay scale than I am with far less holidays.

this is where I am studying Hula