I chose my career, once I knew the existence of it.
Step 1 was I was perusing the jobs board in the financial aid office at school and a woman walked up to me and asked if I knew anything about computers (this is 1988) and I said “No”. I messed around with a word processor my senior year but that was about it. She then asked “are you afraid of computers?” to which I said “No”. We chatted, later I went to her office for a short interview and a dummy test to see if I could follow simple instructions and I was hired. I was kind of like a tech/data entry/research assistant for a psych lab and I enjoyed it. Work before then had been labor jobs.
Step 2 was I dropped out of school (I already had a BA in Music and was in an education program. Didn’t have the calling to teach it turned out) and came to NYC to go to a drum school. I stayed with my sister and she suggested I get temp work at the cancer research center where she worked. I did that and after a couple of months a job opened up in their clinical trials office and I parlayed my psych research experience into a job supporting clinical trials that the center was participating in.
Step 3 was when I was at the cancer center I met a clinical data manager from one of the biotech companies we were doing a study with (I don’t know why he was there because data managers never go to study sites) and when I got done talking to him I thought ‘that’s what I want to do’. I eventually quit my job at the center but I could still log in to their network from home and use their SAS system (this is back in the olden days – 1996 maybe). So I taught myself a wee bit of SAS then answered an ad in the paper for a consulting company looking for pharmaceutical industry data managers and I got hired. My boss said the thing that impressed her was that I taught myself SAS, even if it was just a barely scratching the surface amount. So here I am (same line of work, different place).
Definitely knew what I wanted to be since I was 14, a mechanical engineer; in fact I wanted to be an engineer even before I knew what an engineer was. Designing and building things; making something out of nothing but raw parts; that was my passion. I pursued it despite having a very high amplitude for mathematics, computer programing and 3D visualization skills. My college professors begged me to go into computer science or electrical engineering back in the early 80’s and I could have made a boatload more money if I had done so. Still I don’t regret it, much more satisfying doing what I wanted to do than something that would have made me feel like I sold out.
Now I am a Engineering Manager, because that’s where successful engineers end up. But I still have access to 3D CAD data; in fact I am reviewing some now. My management just let’s me keep doing it becasue it always pays off to put in front of CAD station, no matter what my actual title is.
Not even close. I was working in an art store when the husband of another one of the employees, out of the blue, handed me an application and told me to fill it out and return it. Now I’ve been working as a scientist for over thirty years now. Weird.
Another IT Consultant here. Growing up I wanted to be an artist, or if that didn’t work out, something much more practical…an actor. Pursued an acting career, and worked in a bank for survival. Since I happen to be somewhat intelligent, and hard working, I rather stood out at the bank…advancement occurred. Eventually, PCs arrived (giving away my age here), and I found I have a knack for computers. Eventually I end up handling a system implementation…which led to 20 years of consulting. Hooray for me!
Years ago…before I was in consulting…my company had an intern program where the youngsters would get to run around and interview managers about their jobs, or pick up pearls of wisdom, etc. One intern came to me and asked, “I’m interested in getting to a job like yours some day, how do I get there?” Well…
Yes. I was an English major in the teacher-ed program planning to be an English teacher and hoping to be the drama club advisor or something like that so I could stay in touch with my interest in theater.
Summer between sophomore and junior years, I worked in a sheet-metal shop.
Summer between junior and senior years, I made gorram certain that I did not work in a sheet-metal shop again, and wound up getting hired as a summer worker in the public library. It took.
I majored in Media Communications and minored in Economics.
I wanted to be in radio or TV, preferably news. My first job out of college was assistant to the new director of a local radio station. I worked in radio for a while then decided I wanted to do something more stable. I went to work for E*Trade in their very early days. I had always had an interest in the stock market and economics, but it was secondary to wanting to be in media. So that was my second career.
Yes, I always dreamed of being a librarian. As a child the library was this wonderful, magical place where I could read all the books I wanted for free! I wanted to stay there forever.
Totally not. My originally plan was to be a physicist, probably a professor in a university somewhere. I kind of gave up on that idea sometime in graduate school (althought I did manage to eke out my Ph.D.)
But somehow I lucked into my fantastic career doing software for navigation systems, which combines my tech capabilities with my love of geography. So in the end I don’t regret anything.
I cannot. It was always almost self-evident. There were no teachers in those early years that I particularly admired, nor are there many teachers in my family (a aunt, but my mom is one of 12; I have a lot more aunts/uncles who are scientists and engineers than teachers). It was just always very obvious to me that I wanted to spend my life explaining things to people. It’s worked out well.
I studied electronics technology in college. I believe it’s equivalent to an associate degree in the US, although it was a three year course here.
Somehow I ended up in Quality Management and ISO9000 management systems in electronics manufacturing after about 7 years into my career. I broadened my horizons into semiconductor manufacturing for a while.
After the 2009 meltdown I am now employed in the nuclear industry. My previous quality and auditing skills have allowed me to transition into this unique industry with not much effort. So I now perform compliance and performance based audits in a nuclear facility in Canada.
No way. I started out as an archaeologist. Then I put myself through grad school as an office manager, working part time as a seamstress and model (I modeled wedding gowns for the lady who owned the shop where I did bead work and helped create the gowns). Then I was a smut-peddler (erotica author) and freelance writer. Now I work in product management to implement health reform and Medicare. I have no idea how the hell I got where I am. I like it fairly well, though, and I can say I’ve gotten to have the dream jobs I wanted to have when I was a kid.
I am, just not privately anymore. I jumped ship from private practice and took a job as a prosecutor in a different city a couple of years ago, much to the surprise of myself and everyone who knows me.
It is always accidental to some extent. I always wanted to be an engineer or scientist, and I got into MIT in mechanical engineering. But I got into a computer class my senior year of high school (back before PCs when we programmed in pure machine language) and loved it, and switched majors the day I got there.
Then I discovered microprogramming my senior year of college, and managed to be able to work on it in grad school. When I was finished, I deduced that the field was dying (I was right) and found my current field which I’ve been in happily ever since.
My daughter just got a PhD in a field she loved also. If you know what you want to do, and have the ability, you can often do what you want.
Grew up in small country town, local high school. Did good at sciences and maths, applied to a couple of uni’s after finishing high school for subjects in those areas but deferred for 12 months to bum around and never ended up going.
Instead got a job in a public sector company in Melbourne. Good job security so I left home moved to Melbourne and started work as a staff clerk in training.
Sort of gravitated from there. Discovered I had a knack for logical thinking and problem solving and a knack for, as several people told be “Being able to explain bullshit in plain english”. So I moved through Personnel into management roles, then into Human Resources as a Manager and Snr HR Advisor. Left the company after 20+ years and spent 12 months working out where and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Made the call that Laboring work was poor money and not intellectually satisfying so I made the decision to go back into HR and haven’t looked back.
I don’t consider myself to be anything special as a manager, but I’ve had a number of people tell me I was the best manager they ever had.
I’ve had Lawyers tell me I would have been a good lawyer, IT people tell me I should work in IT but I’m pretty happy with what I do and the skills I’ve acquired over the journey.
So now I’m a HR Director. I do some generalist stuff but also manage a payroll department and some other areas and generally enjoy what I do. I’ve had a good run so far but now way could I say it was planned.
I’m a nurse and I don’t think I’m particularly suited to it. I’m good at my job and conscientious but I’m not by nature a ‘people person’. I sort of fell into nursing because I needed a job which had accommodation.
Nope.
I wanted to be a biologist, preferably freshwater. With my own lab where I’d run experiments all the time. And I would be a best-selling author on the side too of course
I did part of a Biology degree, then drifted off backpacking, became a travel agent. Hated that, so went back to uni studying Environmental Science, while I worked IT helpdesk to pay the bills. No job at the end of that unless I moved waaaaay outback, which for various reasons I decided against. Ended up in a job using GIS (GIS is used a lot in environmental science so that’s how I got my foot in the door, but it has none of the bits that attracted me to environmental science). I then ended up doing some post-grad work in GIS to up my employability somewhat.
So, no. I stumbled into this job while aiming elsewhere. I did make a conscious decision to not pursue the career I wanted and just have ‘jobs’ though, and I usually focus on the good side that comes with that rather than dwell on the ‘career I wish I had’ve had’.
Yes. Finally. I spent a few decades doing graphics in NYC, mostly in typography, publishing and advertising. When I relocated here to help take care of my parents, I decided that what I really wanted to be was an artist. Both parents were artists, and I knew I had a natural talent. What really made me decide was going to galleries and seeing what absolute shit was being sold for unbelievable prices. I remember saying to myself “The only difference between these guys and me, is that they did the work and followed through, and I haven’t.” So at the age of 50, I started doing art work that nobody else was doing, because what I do is so difficult that no sane person would choose to do it.
This is absolutely the dilemma. I have seen, working with a reasonable variety of clients in several countries, that there’s really no end to constant grind of chasing down more work. I’ve also worked with several IT departments (someone has to build the servers, that’s not my job) and yes, the general lack of professionalism in “industry” shocked me at first, but then I’ve come to expect it and just be resigned. I also feel that consultancy has forced me to keep learning things to keep in touch with technology trends, and while it’s true that once you specialise in something you tend to ignore other subject areas, I still hear about them by association. I can see how working a job that allows you to walk away at 5, and where you don’t have to keep your clients happy to pay the bills, wouldn’t foster the same sort of dedication.
Hah. That’s what you think. The CEO’s secretary actually logs in once a month and the big cheese will be livid if you remove her oh-so-precious financial reports. MUST HAVE DATA!
Oh, definitely. I do like the moving on to different projects and different clients in different areas of business; I think consultancy has the potential to be all of that, but there’s always the problem of having to take on long work that isn’t really interesting to keep the cash register alive. I work for a small-ish consultancy firm at the moment, but have often wondered what it would be like to go solo, where the risk of all of this becomes much greater.
(Random aside: I had assumed, for some reason, that you were a woman.) Hah. That’s great. I feel my parents, having been teachers all their lives, wouldn’t really have the experience or knowledge of other careers to really give me any useful advice on what I could pursue, even knowing my inclinations and likes.
Useful, eh? I did a similar test online just out of curiosity, and got similar results. On the other hand, if it says “You are uniquely well-suited to have a career as a racing snail breeder”, or something less facetious but just as specific, would you really have dropped everything to chase down that career? I think this is the dilemma; being told that you are apparently good at something doesn’t mean you want to do it - and how do you know until you try, anyway? - but no advice at all is just blundering about in confusion.
I’m with you on the jealousy… and then again I’m not. I wonder if those people who make that decision early in life just shut themselves out of a lot of other possibilities, or whether they just know their own minds and have wonderful clarity and happiness in their chosen career.
I have to ask… what does a barn manager to? I mean specifically, not just “manage barns, duh”.
I dabble in PM; it’s an inevitable side effect of consultancy, specially in the IT sector, and while I’m not terribly talented at it, it does seem to bring in the cash to some extent. Assuming you won just enough money on the lottery to quit working but not enough to stop working for life, what would the potential options be?
This is intriguing, because of my friends who are teachers, a lot of them seem to have been influenced by either a parents or a teacher. My parents certainly would like me to follow in their footsteps as teachers, and so far I’ve managed to resist the (good-natured and affectionate) pressure. I’m glad it worked out well for you, though!
I jumped ship from private practice and took a job as a prosecutor in a different city a couple of years ago, much to the surprise of myself and everyone who knows me.
