Thank you what a lovely thing to say…but i’ll let you in on a secret-i dont really have hippos in my garden.
What do you absolutely love doing? What are you good at but still challenges you and keeps you interested? Can you figure out a way to survive doing that? (With most things you can figure out a way if you think about it for a while.)
Do that thing, or something related to that. Everything else is a hobby. Also, you’ll change your mind a lot, and it’s hard to tell when you really mean it and when you’re just momentarily irritated. Learn to pay attention to your desire for change when you really mean it.
I just saw a Lewis Black special, when he talks about growing up near D.C. He says this about growing up around politics: “It’s constantly barraging you, and everyday I would see something that would just fuckin’ piss me off! I would jump on the bus and go down to the White House or Congress and find whoever it was who had bothered me and run at ‘em screamin’ ‘Fuck you!’ And then I said, well, man, this is no way to live. I can’t make a living doing this…”
I was worried about what I wanted to do, too, worried I picked the wrong major by just a smidgen, and worried that I’d just keep bouncing from job to job never figuring anything out. Then I calmed down and realized that I had far more flexibility and useful skills than I’d really realized while I was in school. You do, too. You’ll figure it out.
I still don’t know and I’m almost 46. I have been a short order cook, a SAHM, a nurse in critical care/stepdown/same day surgery/home health, and now am graduating with my master’s in library and information science.
I have yet to find a job that excites me and makes me want to go to work. There are things I like about every one of the above jobs and things I loathe. I just have never found my niche. I doubt library science is It for me. I just don’t know.
Guess I’m not much help.
Hmm, well, things i love doing…
horse riding- have ridden since i was small and i still love it just as much.
keeping fit-and i mean really fit. i go to the gym everyday, and swim, do yoga and go running (10kms everyday)
Reading-especially on holiday
travelling to extremely remote places…next on my list are the philippines
doing slightly crazy things like skydiving and paragliding and zorb balling.
Driving- i love love love driving fast on a summers day listening to music
using my brain and learning-im intelligent (5 Agrade Alevels) but have no common sense whatsoever.
scuba diving.
working with children-i feel like i can be myself more.
reading medical/psychology journals and finding out about bizarre illnesses or new radical cures.
I love people-accents, opinions, laughter, crying- we are so strangely interesting.
Doing things for charity-sponsored this and that.
of course there are loads of other things but it would just get boring.
I have been in intensive care 6 times in the past year which i guess has given me a new perspective on things-and made me slightly sick of the health services which is putting me off working in them too.
I doubt I’ll ever grow up. Which is fine by me; wide-eyed wonder and rampant enthusiasm are traits I’m proud of.
I never found anyone willing to pay for my photographic exploits, so I settled for a job with a major telecom company (twice). They pay me well for a job that doesn’t totally suck. It’s better than taking portraits for Olan Mills, so I really can’t complain.
You may never find a way of paying the bills that you love and can live 24/7. As long as your job gives you enough freedom to do the things you REALLY love, I would consider that a fair exchange.
I wanted to do something related to science ever since my mother bought me little dinosaurs as a reward for getting shots for allergy tests pre-K. I kind of wandered into being interested in mechanical engineering until I took the computer class in senior year of high school. Machine language, and I fell in love. Now I’m an expert I can code stuff that I want. I also know several subject matter fields related to computer design, which keeps it fun.
I am another that fell into it.
I started out with cosmetology in high school but after two years it no longer appealed to me and I also do not have a creative bone in my body so although I passed and graduated I never pursued it.
I worked at gas stations, convenience stores and then a deli in a grocery store. My mother told me of a job opening from a friend of hers. It was in an office which I always told myself I did not want to work in but it was more money, $5 and hour, and I had two children to support. I called and got an interview on my lunch hour and was hired that day. It was an entry level position batching paper prescription claims for keypunch.
I am still there. It will be sixteen years in June. The company has been sold several times and with that I changed positions several times and my job title changed several times. I have watched the industry change a lot over the years.
Just recently my knowledge base has become very important when the company let a person go and moved her responsibilities to our team. It was a very easy transition as I already have been there and done that. My boss relies on my knowledge quite a bit.
I never would have seen myself were I am now 16 years ago.
I sort of feel left out when I hear people talk about their college years and the training they have. I only have a high school education and I got all my training on the job.
wow so many of you fell into your jobs.
I decided this morning im going to carry on with my job-a completely different decision to yesterday so its a good thing i didnt hand in my notice yesterday.
I dont think i have ever been so indecisive over something.
That has stuck in my mind a lot.
Correct me if im wrong (for those of you that know) but i feel that psychology, and being a psychologist, is something that you have to live and breathe, especially when you are still training. It is a lot of hard work and very time consuming-or at least it has been so far for me. I am definitely someone who wants to have a family, be a mum, grow vegetables and keep horses and goats. I dont want my career to be my life. That is why im wondering if nursing will be more suited to me in the long run.
But maybe like many of you have said i need to stop thinking about the future so much and not worry. Today i am a researcher and have a good life and thats fine- i dont need to worry about what i will be doing next year or in ten years time.
I remember quite clearly when I decided to go for the writing career. I was 21, had taken some random classes at University, worked in a bookstore, didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Then I discovered the prospect of taking a full-time course in creative writing, and it was seriously like a light bulb turning on over my head. This was what I really wanted to do. So I dropped everything else, took a loan to go to that school, and that year got me started on the craft.
I guess it’s a bit different with the kind of career where it’s fully possible you won’t ever be able to give up your day job. It means I’ve had to look for jobs that would leave me with enough energy to go home to my real job at the end of the workday, not just zone out in the sofa. It’s a bumpy road with bouts of being broke, or too much day work, or lack of self-discipline. But it’s all worth it.
I liked chemistry at school and wanted to go into the pharmaceutical industry. I naively thought I could sit in a lab all day, mixing up chemicals, making small explosions and noxious fumes, and perhaps stumble upon the cure for Aids into the bargain.
I went to university and took a four-year chemistry course, the third year of which was spent working in the industry. I soon realised that in the pharmaceutical industry I would be an extremely small cog in a vast and bureaucratic machine. I spent an enjoyable year in the lab, but there were people there who had been in the same lab for 25 years and were doing pretty much the same tasks as I was doing as a student trainee. Clearly this was not for me.
Fortunately, the previous year, I had begun writing for the student newspaper and then got involved in launching a rival newspaper on this exciting new thing called the web. (This was about 1995.) I enjoyed writing and figured I was pretty good at it, plus I’d always been a stickler for grammar and spelling*. Straight out of university I managed to get a job on a chemistry magazine as a reporter/subeditor, and after two years I applied for a job on a national newspaper, exaggerated my experience a bit, and got a job on the subs’ desk. That’s pretty much where I am today, although I’ve had about a dozen travel articles published too.
- Go to it, Gaudere!
for a minute there I thought you were Harrison Ford.
Ha! My mom still hasn’t grown up.
I thought I wanted to do animal training until I worked with animals and realized how much I disliked cleaning up after them and preparing food for them (they were predators. Killing the rabbits didn’t bother me as much as defrosting frozen chicks)
Or I thought I’d be a writer. Fortunately, I knew I’d need a job that paid the bills and I kinda stumbled into graphic design.
Now, I’m a graphic designer and working on getting my BA so I can get a better job. I don’t know if I’ll end up staying in design exactly. I’m tempted to try to get into comics. We’ll see what happens.