On High School career guidance recommendations. .

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This thread brought me down memory lane for a bit, evoking a memory of some poor, vague guidance on career recommendations in high school.

Back in my HS, in '94-'95, we were required to use an ancient “system” that looked like the result of Lawrence Welk’s harpsichord having an unholy, drunken night with a dot-matrix printer, in the pre-Web days. Despite my guidance counselor knowing (and mildly approving) of my budding career inclinations, she shepherded me to this machine. Following it’s instructions, users input their hobbies, interests, achievements (all canned, pre-selected statements from a hardcopy ‘menu’) and chose from a few vague possible career choices. Being adamant on going military, I played this little check-the-box game:

My inputs:

Interests: hiking, camping, outdoors, plumbing, electrical, ice hockey, Scouting, 
working with my hands;
GPA: 3.75;
Favorite subjects:  history, physics, math, political science;
Careers: military, pilot, Air Force, Marines;

The wondrous Wurlitzer did some buzzing, and responded with it’s characteristic dot-matix-zappy, ozone-smelling printout:

Recommended career path: Forestry, tailor, chef, mechanic.

This, in a whole, constituted my entire career guidance, under my counselor’s approval. I am still at a loss on how it “calculated” ‘tailor’ or ‘chef,’ but I’m sure glad I did not follow it’s vague, nebulous, crap-tastic advice.

What career guidance did you get in high school? Did you follow it, or not?

Tripler
Tailor? No. I hate needles.

2

The computerized system my school had (in 1977) claimed it could spot musical talent (or in my case, the lack of it) from the way we did arithmetic problems.

Two years later it said the same thing about my younger brother, who went on to a career as a professional musician. The careers they recommended for him included ‘signaling’–directing traffic during road construction. To this day, when we’re in a car together and see road crews, I rib him about missing his true calling.

3

My wife, who scored the highest grade in her (large) high school in physics, was told by the guidance counsellor that she should consider a career as a secretary.

I did one of those computerized things referenced above, and was confidently told that my career path was “farmer”. We were in a city of over 1,000,000, and at that time, the “farmers” in the area were all large agri-corps.

I’m just surprised that the choice did not come out as “indentured serf”.

4

On Married with Children, the careers recommended by Kelly Bundy’s guidance counselor were “lumber camp toy” and “the other woman”.

5

Our HS guidance counsellor was remarkable only for her ability to steer any post graduation discussion toward enrolling at the local vocational college. I has a 3.8 GPA, she was certain I’d make a hell of a riveter down at the Boeing factory. My GF had even better grades than I did, and she was told to not even bother applying to college. After I graduated college I managed to convince her to quit her warehouse job that she found after HS and apply. She completed 2 Bachelors programs in 3 years and was accepted into a masters program.

6

I remember taking a similar test in high school. Everyone else got a piece of paper with recommended careers like “fireman,” or “podiatrist,” or whatever. On mine, the recommended career section was blank, except for a note from the guidance counsellor that said, “See me.”

7

and then what happened? :fearful:

8

I don’t remember ever having dealings with a “guidance counselor” type in high school – although I probably did but forgot all about it – but the above posts reinforce my belief that the value of such creatures tends to vary between “useless” and “worse than useless”.

I do, however, remember one aspect of the results of an online personality-to-career matchup test that I did once for fun. I think it quite accurately depicted the worst possible job for my personality type: entertainment director on a cruise ship! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

9

Nothing. I ignored the note, which IIRC was the entire extent of my interaction with my high school’s guidance counsellors.

In hindsight, I think the problem was that I took the quiz literally when it talked about what I consider “ideal” attributes in a job, and my ideal job is, sensibly, one that requires absolutely no work, and pays gobs and gobs of money. I was aware that jobs like that don’t really exist - or at least, don’t exist for anyone whose dad doesn’t own their own company - but the quiz didn’t say anything about realistic expectations, just ideal ones.

10

In high school thirty years ago, the guidance counselor noted that I was good at math so he suggested I get a degree in agriculture and focus on the exciting area of agricultural statistics. I did not follow his advice.

Twenty years ago, I was unsure about my current career so I went to a career counselor (paid for by my employer) and took a career aptitude test. The result was something along the lines of “the inputs you provided did not produce a result, please try again”. Say what?

11

It could be worse. I have a student who has no interests. None. His career aspirations don’t even include the usual unrealistic “rapper” or “NFL star” or the like. I don’t envy the counselors tasked with giving him a recommendation.

12

I graduated in '78 and even way back then, there were these tests. It told me to set my sights on being a beautician, a term that was already falling out of use. The counsellor suggested that I try community college when I said I love to read, but warned me that libraries don’t pay much. Did I mention that I wanted to be a librarian? (That said, librarians are the coolest people I know).

I tried community college, but it was too much like high school. I then went to tech college which was better. There, I discovered that I didn’t want to manage a supermarket but become a clever copywriter. I continued on to get a BA in Journalism. “Beautician” hmmph, that test never saw me try to cut a straight line with scissors.

13

We had a part-time guidance counselor at my high school (a small Catholic school), but I think that I talked to her exactly once, and it wasn’t particularly useful.

When I took one of the college entrance exams (I think it was the ACT), there was a section that asked about interests, and correlated that with the test scores to suggest some career choices. The result was, “you could excel in any field you choose.” Again, not useful. :wink:

14

I’m 52 years out of high school. I had one session with the guidance counselor. I was not a motivated student, my only motivation being free of the hellhole that was high school. I told her I wanted to be a radio announcer. She misinterpreted this as aspirations to be a journalist. I had no interest in that. I wanted to play rock & roll music on the radio. She proceeded to tell me about colleges that had Journalism programs, colleges I would never have qualified for academically nor could my parents have afforded even if I had. (My parents laughed when I told them this.) And anyone who expressed any interest in attending community college was quickly shown the door. The old bat was useless.

Funny story about her. We had a young teacher who four years before had graduated from the same high school. The old bat refused to talk to her. Shunned her completely. Why? Because she had chosen another college from the one the old bat had recommended to her, and she never forgave her for it.

15

At my high school ('99-'03) it seemed like the only advice we got was “go to college.” I had to take some classes where we practiced for the PSAT and later on the SAT. The school’s guidance counselor mostly tried to shepherd the students to small, private colleges in the region and seemed to hold public universities in disdain.

Sometimes representatives from the US military would make an appearance and encourage students to take the ASVAB and pursue a military career. This kicked up a notch after the 9/11 attacks.

For my part I ended up graduating with a 3.92 or something like that and went to a public university on scholarship. I flunked out pretty quickly since I didn’t take my studies seriously.

16

I just had a flashback to our high school guidance counselor, a woman with all the warmth of a toad (and some of the physical attributes).

She kept candy on a dish in her office but few were ever lured in.

17

Oh, you had Mr. D! He never once even talked to students (except for standing outside his office “toasting” the student with his coffee cup as they rushed past, okay, I guess he did some good).

So I was very surprised when my parents said they got a call to come in and have a “career Interview with Mr. D and your son.” I guess the school had decided he needed to do something.

So, bright and early the next day, before first hour, we all met in his office. Now, keep in mind that I’m about to graduate, and have already been accepted into a Pre-Med program at an excellent college. Which any guidance counselor should have known (and, might have known it was a wee bit too late for vocational advice).

So as he leaned forward and asked me if I’d given any thought to my future, I very sincerely replied “Thank you for asking, Mr. D___ . I’ve considered many careers, including finance, like my father. But I’ve decided that what I’d really like to do professionally, is to be…
… a shepherd.”

Poor Mr. D. Not even a doofus should have to look from me to my mother to my father and back to my mother with the kind of confusion and panic he was juggling. He asked my mom “Does he really, I mean to say…” And she sweetly looked at him and said… nothing. Just stared.

18

My HS had a useless guidance counselor. I didn’t get wrong advice, I got nothing at all. A proper counselor could have helped me get a scholarship or into a “top” school. I could have done things I never even thought of. I did everything by myself.

It’s not like my education and career was bad, but who knows what I missed out on.

19

there’s an old expression:

Those who can, do.
Those who cannot, teach.

And those who can’t teach, become high school guidance counselors.

20

My entire batch of high school guidance counselors could have been replaced by a recording of “You know, university isn’t for everyone – there are plenty of very good jobs in the skilled trades” on a loop. Allegedly some people somewhere thought that everyone should go to university, but I certainly never heard from those people. I assume now that the local trade school was just giving them kickbacks.