Serendipity or Focussed Determination: Did you choose your work or did it choose you?

[zippitippitoes]

I've been pondering this for a while and prompted by some of the other threads around at the moment and having young adult/teen children, I wondered how far your job/career/work was carefully chosen and planned and how much was good fortune, knowing the right people, right place right time, fate or

are you just very clever at making the right choices?

And what abpout your partner, have either of you had to make a sacrifice to further the other's career?

Did your education and parents have a bearing on your choice...

completely fate and good timing.

had i not had my house repossesed and moved into a council house i would not have recieved a newsletter offering a job of project assistant to the porposed stock transer of the houses to HA stock.

i applied as it was part time and i was at uni. i got it and then found myself doing more and more resident involvement work.

my job then morphed into a community worker
then the funding ran out and we moved down south and i am working in a similar role.

its one of those jobs that has a meaning a soul job i call it. i hate the organisation but the work is ok.

A bit of both for me. I have given up several jobs that I loved as dh is in the RAF and we have moved around the country a lot.

I chose to do the sciences, and was in reasearch for many years. I was fortunate enopugh to get jobs when we moved, but I did have the qualifications as well.

When we moved South a friend pointed out a job advertised in the pharmaceutical industry near to where we would be working. I was qualified, but had no experience in the field. I got the job and they trained me up. When we moved the next time I saw a job in the same field in the area I was moving to live in (3 hour round trip commute though) I went for the job and got it.

When we moved the next time I was pg but worked as a consultant for the old company for about a year. Was then a SAHM for 2 years.

Moved again and was taken up as a consultant to work at home round dds nursery hours (she was about 3.5 at this stage and in nursery mornings only)

Lost the job and gave birth at about same time!

Was a SAHM withj number 2 for a while. Realised that I didn't want to do long communtes etc, trained as a teacher (part time while being sahm), dh away lots of the time. The school where I did my training offered me the job.

So a mix of being in the right place at the right time, a bit of organisation, a lot of hard work on times, luck, and picking things that I enjoyed doing, having had a good education (luck and hard work in that one) all played a part.

For me it was luck and analy precise forward planning!
We both concentrated on our careers as we courted and grew up into adult individuals.
My parents had no education to speak of, we were skint all the time as kids.
I just knew that with grit and determination and allot of bloody hard work, i could do well for myself.
Like a jigsaw everything fell into place for us.
I consider us to be phenomonally lucky individuals for this. Spookily so in many ways.
Things always happen for a reason IMHO, i dont know why we have had things happen the way that we have, pure luck i think.

Now i still have career aspirations but am planning them for over the next 5/10 years.

I love my job most of the time. 90% it was focussed determination that got me here.

I didn't decide what I wanted to do till I was 25 years old. I had a history degree, but didn't know what I was going to do with it. Once I decided I wanted to be an advertising copywriter, I nagged and nagged a college to let me go on their one year course in advertising writing. I phoned up every few weeks. I was told I got my place through sheer determination. After college I had to survive lots of knock backs before I got my first copywriting job. It took over 100 'go sees', interviews and 10 job attachement to land it. After 15 or so years of copywriting, I knew I wanted to work in communications in the public sector. I started applying for jobs and was turned down till I got my present one.
But as with all job offers, there was a final element of luck and being in the right place at the right time.

I'm finding your replies really interesting, I'm glad I asked...

I hope lots more people answer

And while I'm here is anyone an events manager?

No but that sounds good, is it like organising concerts and things?

yes, I work in events - I am now an events and information officer (comms work) for large london council.

I was just curious as I thought it might be something dd might be interested in, and wondered how you got into it (though I was thinking along the lines of in the hospitality industry)

any more work histories?

Message withdrawn

I work as an Inspector for the Health and Safety Executive.
How I got the job is, I think, pretty 'fated' for want of a better word especially as I had absolutely no knowledge of what I do before I started it and hand't even heard of HSE.
I was sent on a computer course with my previous job out of the blue, didn't know anyone else on the course so at lunchtime I went out for a job. Ended up going into a shop and bought the Daily Telegraph, a paper I have never bought before or since. Saw the job advert, thought "That looks interesting. I could do that". Phoned up for an application form, waited and waited and waited till I'd almost forgotten about it. Got it about two days before the closing date by which time ds (then aged 2) was ill with chickenpox. Almost ripped the form up but decided not to. Filled it in without a great deal of though at about 2 in the morning. Sent it off.....and after tests, interviews, etc etc and much to my surprise got the job.
Really enjoy it and think that somehow 'it was fated to happen'

That should say, went out for a walk at lunchtime not out for a job. Doh!

Both, really. Always wanted to be a writer but spent years trying to do something else for a living - started off studying law, dropped out and worked in a variety of industries, had an epiphany when I realised that I did actually want to be a journalist just like my mum, (doh!) and also wanted to get a degree. Worked very, very hard and was very, very lucky to get to the right places at the right time. Once I'd got into journalism I ended up in my current area by luck really - had a grand career plan but discovered didn't really want to go that way at all. Fell into this area because the opportunity came up. And then more opportunities followed.

Funny thing is, my mother had an astrologer do my birth chart when I was a teenager. She never showed me because she didn't want it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But found it a few years ago and this women had predicted exactly what I do for a living - a very, very specific field. If I'd read it when I was 17 I'd have thought she was barking!

weird about the star chart edam!

It seems that fate does play a part

Interesting thread... i worked as a secretary when i left uni minus the degree (whoops) but with future husband (yay) and hated the work. Found living in london too expensive so decided to move back to home village, at time felt it was a real step backwards. BUT.....thought oh well id better make some money somehow. walked into a hospital as a healthcare assistant and left that day knowing id never do anything else work wise for the rest of my life. Did my trainng and never looked back.

Complete and utter blind luck

I never planned anything really. The onl time I knew what I wanted to do was when I was about 18 and I wanted to be a pattern cutter - eg cutting patterns for clothes. I went for a year off and worked in Paris for a bit, came back and went to college to do a course. Had a saturday job in a shop (clothes) HATED COLLEGE, realised pattern cutting was REALLY dull

Decided to leave and work in retail management - posh word for shop assistant (at this point my dear dad told me I'd never amount to ANYTHING without a degree )

Worked for Laura Ashley - got fired
Worked for Oasis - got fired
Worked for Thomas Pink - got fired

Do we see a theme here

Looked for a job in the evening standard as I had to pay rent, found one selling restaurant cards door-to-door (top that anyone )

Managed to do that for 2 YEARS!!! - in a way it was great fun living in a shared house, kinda like student life, but earning rubbish money.

Met a girl on a train - we both commuted the same way everyday and sat opposite each other!!

She sold advertsing space and suggested I tried that.

Worked for a commission only travel trade company, realsied I could make money, got introduced to a Media sales recruitment bloke - he got me a job - I shagged him

Found myself working on You and Your Wedding magazine

Got Fired

Found another job on a film title

Got Fired

Strangly same theme again

Went to wor for EMAP - massive publishers - had a baby, went back after Maternity leave. Changed from a men's fashion mag to Mother & Baby, and Pregnancy & Birth magazines

They paid me to leave - not technically fired

Found a job in the local paper, 10 mins from home, 3 years later I have been Ad manager for Your Home magazine, REAL magazine and now Commercial Manager for TVHITS (teen music mag)

I love my job, I work 10 mins from home, earn enough to be main breadwinner, do high powered sales meetings with people like MD of Estee Lauder and bring absolutely NOTHING to the world

In contrast DH wanted to be an actor from the time he left school, aside from a tiny detour in teh Army (family stuff) he is now a working actor - on stage tonight, soon to be at teh Barbican

Scuse the huge long post

Never had the faintest idea what I wanted to do and to a degree, I still don't (sniffing 38 now ).

Went to drama college on a whim (and to horror of family) then astonishingly worked successfully as actor for 12 years. But my heart was never entirely in it (and my liver couldn't take it) so I gradually got more and more into writing. Now writing full time. I like it. I can suit myself. I can be my own boss (to a degree). It beats traffic enumerating which I did for a while

Now I've cracked the writing lark I'm wondering what to do with the next ten years of my career. Really fancy doing a history degree but not sure I can start all over in another profession for the THIRD time. I have to face it - career wise I'm a flibberty jibbet!