I've had cause to remind myself that my academic pathway wasn't exactly smooth. Because I didn't enjoy any of it, really, despite being labelled "very able" (haha). I went (as previously mentioned many a time) to a very academic boarding school to do A levels, hated it on every level possible, got very good A level results, school invited me back to do what was then called "7th term Oxbridge entrance", and I declined, resisting HUGE pressure from every quarter.
My df was extremely disappointed and never got over the fact that I opted to go to what he termed a "jumped-up polytechnic" rather than even try to get in to Oxbridge. Aside from any other considerations, I knew that the kinds of traditional degrees offered in Mod Langs at that time were not for me, and I wanted to go to either Bath or Herriott Watt to do Mod Langs instead. I had offers from Exeter and UCL and can't remember where else, but Bath was my preferred choice, despite epic moaning and dissing from the school and my family. However, when I got there, I realised I fecking hated academic study of all kinds. Did the bare minimum of work for the first year. Didn't even set foot on campus for 4 months before exams in the second year, because I was too busy having a good time working at the theatre. Did badly in exams, but not badly enough to be chucked out, but that was only because I had a very lovely personal tutor who argued with me and with other lecturers about what exactly was going on. Went off on year abroad where I did no work except for my dissertation, but came back fluent in German thanks to my sleeping dictionary. Decided to actually do what I was supposed to in the final year and got firsts in enough stuff to balance out the appalling marks from the rest of it to bring grades up to get an acceptable degree. And then left university still not knowing what I wanted to do, as the milk round left me cold, so went back to Germany to live with the sleeping dictionary again and pretend to be a student for another year, while actually working for cash-in-hand. Don't actually feel like the degree was much of an achievement. In fact, it would be a fraudulent claim if I said it was.
A few years later, I applied to Oxford to do my PGCE and was accepted, but a few weeks later I was offered a place in an NHS specialist treatment centre for eating disorders. I chose the psych ward over Oxford. 
But apparently they take "any old person" at Oxford for post-grad stuff - as I was informed by someone with 2 Oxbridge undergrad degrees (and dodgy social skills).
Ironically, my df desperately wanted me to do the kind of job MrsS does. At which I would have been vvvvvvvv bad. Would not have even got as far as the interview for an entrance level job, I am sure.