I’m a pilot. It’s a good job for a lazy bum like me; no college required and low hours with pretty good pay. The barriers to enter the industry are high though so it’s not the sort of career you can be successful in if you only have a casual interest. (I also gather that the conditions for US pilots are quite poor.)
I have a similar job/career path to WordMan’s. Although I would rather stay in consulting than work as management in “industry”.
A lot of people pursue WordMan’s path where they work for a few years at a place like Accenture, Deloitte or McKinsey and then take a management position in some specific industry. Others like the variety and challenges of working for a consulting firm and either stay at a firm until they make partner or switch firms every couple of years.
The problem with consulting is that it does require a lot of luck. You need to be in a good group at a good firm where the partners and directors have a steady pipeline of quality projects to work on. And quite frankly, in my experience a lot of management consultants are pompous assholes who aren’t half as smart as they think they are. There is a lot of politics, management tends not to care about their people and it can suck if you are working for a weak director who is only able to sell small bullshit engagements where you not only can’t bill a lot of hours, you don’t really learn anything either.
I’m a defense contractor. What I do exactly I can’t say (but it’s way less exciting than that makes it sound).
I index books.
Right now I’m a student (and like you I have no clue whatsoever with what I want to do with my life. In fact, I started a thread about it a few days ago).
Before school I was a helicopter door gunner in the military.
So far, I prefer the latter job.
I’m a librarian.
All true - so that must mean that you are in with a good crowd within your firm, or you like consulting despite the negative stuff you describe above (and which I agree with)…that is certainly a big reason why I moved on, along with wanting to feel that the buck stopped with me.
I have a job, not a career. And I push paper around. Fairly literally, as I work in an office with files that weigh more than most dogs.
I work in educational publishing on books and tech products having something to do with teaching or learning Language Arts (reading and writing). I have done some writing, but more copyediting (loosely defined as fixing only outright mistakes in other people’s writing and in stages of book production) and editing (loosely defined as helping improve other people’s writing), project management, and training. Mostly project management for the last five years. Loosely defined, that’s figuring out what needs to be done for a given project and then either doing it myself or finding someone else to do it. I used to do this for a large corporation, but they laid me off a year ago, and now I freelance. I’m lucky to have a contract right now working with a company I really like. Pay is mediocre, but the work is interesting, creative, and rewarding, plus I’m able to do it mostly from home. I won’t need to send my 5-month old kid to day care for a while yet.
My degree is a BFA in acting and theater and has almost nothing to do with what I do for a living now. Which is really what I came in here to say: I think it’s actually unusual nowadays to determine exactly what you want to do, then go to college to study it, then go get the job you envisioned. Not least because there are so many jobs you’ve never heard of and because jobs, job categories, job descriptions, and so on change faster in the modern world than you can get in and out of college.
I’m a merchandiser at a supermarket.
I’m not an employee of the supermarket, I work for the supplier to get their goods on the shelf.
It’s a good job, but the concrete floors are killing me & the pay is low (was quite competitive when I started.) So I’m now studying proofreading.
And the common-law Canadian provinces do, but not really. For instance, techinically, I’m both a barrister and a solicitor, as are all other lawyers in this province (I assume it’s the same in the other common law provinces). Doesn’t make any difference in practice.
In Quebec, there are avocats and notaires. Avocats are similar to lawyers in other jurisdictions, doing deals, going to court. Notaires are a separate branch and there are certain functions which only they can do in relation to drafting up documents.
If you ever make a phone call and hear the phrase, “This call may be monitored for Quality Assurance purposes,” think of me. I am the sole QA rep in a 55 seat call center. I listen to 15 calls per month per rep, which equals anywhere between 650-725 calls a month, depending on how staffed we are. We have never been fully staffed, so I’ve never had to do 825 calls in any given month. I actually love my job. I get to do a lot more than just QA, and I still learn something new every single day. And the company I work for is really good to me.
My kids think I’m a spy, because I listen to people’s conversations all day. They think my job is super cool. I like that.
I work in inventory management. I do basic forensic inventory accounting to determine the cause of inventory issues for a fairly large company. I also write ISO process for areas of my department.
Before this, I spent the better part of twenty years in quality management. Many of the same skills were required. In the companies that I’ve worked for, neither of these jobs required a degree (I’m a college dropout) but both jobs have required attention to detail, the ability to see the big picture and decent writing skills.
I currently have 2 part time jobs:
Registered Nurse in Same Day Surgery in an acute care hospital
Medical Librarian at a different acute care hospital
I’ve been an RN for 25 years, working mostly in ICU and Step Down, with a very short stint in Home Health. Same Day doesn’t challenge my skills at all, but it does provide a nice paycheck with relatively less stress than critical care (and no holidays).
The Medical Library is where my heart lies. I’m still very new at it, but I learn every day. If it were full time, I’d quit the RN job immediately. Basically, as a ML, I teach Residents and nurses how to conduct database searches, assist (or just do) searches for Attending Physicians and other staff, ensure that the Library has current and comprehensive print and online resources available, and lend out material to other area Medical Libraries (as they do to me).
In college, I suggest you take classes that enhance your ability to communicate clearly, think critically and engage your interest. There is much to be said for choosing a major and being on a specific “track”, but no matter the state of the economy in the future, the world will always need strong communicators and critical thinkers; the interest part is for you-who wants to live their life doing something they hate? Many no longer have a choice, but you have an opportunity to keep your options open.
That is a really cool job! I bet it’s tiring and sometimes bizarre, though. (and I always thought that spiel was complete BS, added as a tactic to stop verbally abusive customers and/or crap employees. Kind of like a house that has a "this house protected by X alarm system, with no actual alarm system…)
I’m retired. What I do to keep living is to make life easier for other people and play. Knowing how to keep my bucket full enough so that I have energy sufficient to do these two things was my (true) life’s work.
I do applied research for a major university. I’ve been at it for almost 30 years now. I majored in CS.
Broadly, I’m a theatrical lighting technician and lighting designer. When wearing my “electrician” hat, my job is to take the designer’s plans and ideas and actually hang and focus the lights, run the cable, and do maintenance on the whole system, as well as actually programming the lighting console during rehearsals. When wearing my “lighting designer” hat, I’m responsible for talking to the director and other designers to help tell the story through lighting, as well as talking to the Technical Director and electricians to see what can practically be done and how to do it. Depending on the specific job and the scale of the theatre company, I may actually assist the electricians here, or I may never actually touch any equipment at all.
Right now I’m the electrician on a very small national tour. My job is to help offload the lighting equipment and set it up before the show every morning, run it during the show, and tear it down and pack it up at the end. It’s fun work and if things go wrong, I have to troubleshoot and find creative solutions very quickly, which I enjoy a lot. The company that I work for is pretty lousy, though, so I’m looking for other work. I’d like to keep touring, but I may give that up in order to be nearer my girlfriend.
You hiring? 
Thanks Northern Piper!
Yes, Elendil’s Heir I know. And in getting a law degree here, I had to make sure I wasn’t ever moving back to the US. (Expat in Australia.) Both are common law countries but in reading some US law (particularly in contracts) the US veered off mightily along the way.
But I’m really thinking very hard about just doing my reading year and becoming a barrister. I did very well in Criminal Law, and Torts is really doing it for me, too.
I have three years yet, ask me again then. 
Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party, In Australia, there are no SC (which replaced the QC designation) solicitors, but solicitors can argue cases - it’s just mostly Not Done, although some do and do it very well (says the barrister who taught me criminal law.)
I am the general manager of a small car wash company in the Cincinnati area with two locations. My passions align with the high-end part of the fine dining industry, an arena I served in as a waiter, bartender, half-assed sommelier, retail wine salesman and country club bar manager for many years before my current gig. I now have a family and all I can say about my car wash career is that I now get to spend time with my family in the evenings rather than working every damn night. I still work every weekend though. Tuesdays are my Saturdays!
Now I find myself equal parts plumber, electrician, general maintenance guy, customer service rep, payroll facilitator and lots of other things associated with running a business in general and this type of business specifically.
I have a BA in English from Northern Kentucky University. I have not followed a career path associated with that degree, at all. And I’m still paying off my student loans due to youthful indiscretion in my early to mid twenties. I can’t wait to get that $50,000 monkey off my back.