When and How Did You "Find Your Way"?

Find your way.

I mean choose a career path, your major of study… figure out what you want to do, for the most part.

How’d you figure that out?

What age were you?

Did anything get in your way?

How many times have you changed your career path, major of study, etc?

Any regrets?

Crap. Was I supposed to do that at some point?

I hated the idea of doing everything else more than I hate what I’ve been doing for the past 25+ years. On rare days, I almost kinda like it.

Wait. Other people aren’t doing this either?

I closed a business to hike the Appalachian trail to figure that out, turns out AT life is more instructive then anything else. Chose a path to the destination, one step at a time, one day at a time, no need to look past your next resupply point, trust the path is true and the way is sure.

To that I have no idea of how to get there yet, but have experienced much more wonderful stuff in my life since I adopted that philosophy with (somehow) the same standard of living. Better closer friends, more wonderful places and life experiences. So overall things are improved, so I must be doing something right.

I quit high school at 17 and didn’t get my shit together until I was 25. I’m proud to say that I am now literally living the life I daydreamed about when I was a kid. (No kids, good career, decent paycheque, ability to travel.)

How’d you figure that out? When I went back to school to get my Grade 12 at an Adult Learning Centre and took an Intro to Computers course. I fell in love with spreadsheets and databases.

What age were you? 25

Did anything get in your way? No. When I decided to go to college it was my second chance and I was going to succeed. The only real difficulties were lack of money, I didn’t drive so transportation was a challenge, and clinical depression.

How many times have you changed your career path, major of study, etc? One - went from dead-end minimum-wage retail jobs to decent paying office work that I enjoy.

Any regrets? Only that I didn’t do it sooner. I wasted an entire decade (age 15-25) by having no ambition.

And we’re supposed to have a five-year plan. That we can talk about.

I know exactly how I chose it and it was serendipity all the way.

As a kid, I had a chemistry set and I was sure I would study chemistry. When I got to college, I had a job working in a biochem lab and discovered that I really wasn’t cut out for lab work. (There must be a gene for it since my daughter went so far as to get a master’s in biochem before making the same discovery.) One night I came across a couple of students in the lab discussing some strange math. It turned out that one of them had gone to Harvard for one year studying physics and taken this course called modern algebra. Then he had left Harvard to come back to Penn and talked this other student into taking a course at Penn called modern algebra. The second one was having trouble with a certain exercise (I still remember what the exercise was!) and the first one was helping him. That was the discussion I had wandered into. It looked fascinating, so I read more about it and took the same course the following year. And that got me hooked and I have never looked back.

Before that experience, I had always done well in math without having to put any effort into it, but it never interested me at all. Once I discovered modern algebra, my entire career was spent there. Although I now appreciate calculus and math analysis a bit more than I did then.

I work in market research / consumer insights. I’ve spent my entire career (26 years so far) in this field.

I discovered the field as a freshman in college (age 18). I had gone to college with the intent to be a business major, though I didn’t have any specific plans beyond that. My work-study job had me doing “grunt work” in market research – coding survey results. I became fascinated by the patterns in the data, and seeing insights in those patterns. When I looked into the field, I discovered that it just so happened that the school I was attending (University of Wisconsin-Madison) offered a Masters-level program in market research. Got my Bachelors in marketing, then my Masters in market research.

About the only “changes of plans” in my career have centered on where I worked, and thus, where my particular focus within research / insight have been. I worked “client side” (i.e., at big companies that made consumer products) for ten years. I discovered that I was a little too “out there” for Corporate America, and didn’t feel like I fit in (though I loved the work itself), so I moved over to an advertising agency. I’ve been in the ad business for the past 16 years, save for a short stint at a research supplier. I don’t do survey research so much anymore; my focus is more on developing insights and implications from the data, but knowing where the data come from is still an important part of my job.

I don’t think I’ve ever run into things that “got in my way”, per se, and I’ve never had any regrets – I found a career that lets me do things I enjoy (and am good at), and that pays pretty well.

I knew I wanted to be a history teacher probably in 7th or 8th grade…because I loved history and reading and had a couple of truly excellent teachers in that field.

about 14 or so. I pursued that through college with a B.S. in Education (Social Studies).

Well, yes. Lots of graduates and not that many jobs. And when, after three years of subsitute teaching, I did get a full-time job, I wasn’t very good at it. And probably never would have been, to tell the truth.

Once I determined I wasn’t going to make it as a teacher (I lost my position after one year…cutbacks, they said) and I was considering the Navy for a career…this was 1981 and Reagan was just gearing up and they needed warm bodies. But someone mentioned a Government career test, I did well on it, got hired on my first interview…and 35 years later am still a faceless bureaucrat…

Regrets? I’ve had a few…but then, too few to mention…

Seriously, it probably worked out for the best, albeit not to any vast and csomic plan (hey, two song references in the same post! Yeah me!). Life is funny that way.

I never did and now its too late.

I’ve always wanted to be a ballerina, astronaut, or a helicopter pilot.
But I’m on the path to earn a degree in Gerontology.

Why the f did I pick that

Wtf am I doing.
Get out there and dance.

I always wanted to be a science fiction writer. I was 28 before I started submitting anything seriously to magazines and eventually started selling.

As for my day job, I had no idea what to do until PCs became common in the late 80s. I did technical writing and computer graphics and developed a knack for solving computer problems. When I was 45, I got my first job doing computer support.

In college, I did a little web design because it was the 90’s and people would pay for anything even if it wasn’t very good and didn’t suit their needs. By the end of the 90’s, continuing in web design meant either getting really serious about the graphic design end of it or the database end of it.

But in working for myself, I had done my own bookkeeping and taxes. I was more successful than many web designers because I knew my P&L and planned for taxes. My clients knew I did it all and many of them starting asking me questions about QuickBooks.

That’s when I realized that I should have been in accounting all along. It was about six years before I fully divested all the non-accounting services and another two before I had my CPA license, but that was just following through on the realization.

My father encouraged me to pursue engineering because you could get a good paying job with a 4 year degree. Made sense to me and I’m glad I got my EE degree. Didn’t care for my first job, but the one after that was great. When I was in my late 20s I was more interested in business so I got my employer to pay for my MBA. I’m very glad I did that.

No. Hardly anyone I know has ever done that. That’s not to say that they didn’t eventually become successful and happy with their careers, but even those whose careers required advanced study and went on to become academics and research scientists more or less stumbled into whatever they ended up doing, sometimes changing fields of study or even serendipitously leveraging their knowledge into unique specialties. ISTM that the folks who did have firm long-term plans – I want to be “x” when I grow up – and by golly they studied and worked and became exactly what they wanted to be – are among the least interesting people I know. Kind of like Jim Anderson on “Father Knows Best” – devoted father, career insurance broker, and dull as a stick. :wink:

I started college as a psychology major. Freshman year I discovered the college radio station, and by the start of sophomore year I was a communications major with a minor in radio broadcasting (False Career Start #1). When I graduated I had a part-time job at a major-market station, but I needed to make enough money to move out of my mom’s house and when I couldn’t find any paying full-time radio jobs I started temping as an admin. (Shortly after graduation the station cut back on their weekend programming and I was let go; I haven’t worked in radio since.)

I could always write and I’m good with people, and while temping I finagled my way into the public relations office of a state agency. For a while I thought PR was going to be my career (False Career Start #2), but a year and two bad decisions later I was back temping as an admin. At one assignment I wound up helping with a computer system installation, and after creating a local user guide I learned about technical writing. Five years after graduating from college I took my first tech writing job with a company that did federal contracting, and that became my career. I was 26, and spent the next 13 years as a technical writer and editor (Career #1). While I was a tech writer I went to grad school and got a master’s in English: my program was Professional Writing and Editing.

I really liked that work, and became senior/expert in my field, but eventually I found myself nearly topped out in terms of both salary and opportunities for professional growth. Through a total fluke I got an offer from a former boss to join his company’s business development team, and I started transitioning to proposal work.

While a lot of people assume that a senior technical writer could immediately become a senior proposal writer, they’re actually quite different beasts: my writing experience gave me a leg up on some of the other newbies, but it really was a career change. Business development and proposals are nothing like the customer work I’d been doing: I was in a new environment and needed to learn a new vocabulary, new processes, etc. It felt a little weird to be starting over at 39, but I knew it was the right thing to do and I just hoped that I’d catch on quickly.

Luckily, I did. :slight_smile: Almost five years (and two companies) later, I’m still doing proposal work (Career #2) – and I’m lucky/crazy enough to love it. I’m a senior writer again, working toward becoming a proposal manager.

Wait, what??

(I’ve never had so much as a five-day plan…)

Find my way? More like noticing it was “found” when I looked back along the road I’d followed (if that makes any sense). All I did was work hard and try to find something better at each stop along the way.

The short version:
Age 16-17: Worked for landscaping crew mowing lawns; Met folks who were doing contract work for the town.

17-18: Used savings (from above) to buy old city truck at auction; Got a contract with the town (see folks above) for small water line and pipeline repair. Met lots of drivers and such while working on city lines.

18-21: Got hired at freight company (see drivers above) to unload and wash trucks at night. Eventually moved up from loader to sorter to full time truck driver. Delivered to lots of interesting places like oil fields. Visited with highly paid workers there and learned about jobs in that industry.

22-26: Finally got hired in the oilfields, using info and connections(see above). Worked up thru various jobs, welder’s helper, deckhand, and eventually offshore crane operator. I’m now approaching the 6-figure income range, but met scientists/petro-engineers/geologist raking in dough like I’d never heard of. Saved most of the money made during these years and enrolled in a southern university’s geology program. Very crowded geo courses and difficult to get the required classes. Took Comp Sci courses to fill the time (thought it would be a good minor).

Age 27: Still trying to get in junior level Geo courses; but somehow I’ve finished all the compsci, and have moved into circuit design, OS theory, and have even completed a couple of UI and database systems for college library. Also teaching flying in the college aviation program by now. Finally wised up and took the CompSci degree (had all the hours anyway) and started interviewing with big aero companies.

Age 27-36: Have a few years under my belt with a big manufacturer, and hung out my own shingle. Worked as individual contractor doing software for most of the majors (Lockheed, General Dynamics, Sperry, McD, Honeywell, Boeing). Lots of times I got to write the software and test it in their simulators (I’ve got over 1000 hours of F-16 sim time, and a few hundred in various airliners) :slight_smile:

Age 36: Decide we’ve moved enough, accepted a permanent offer from one of my contracts and finally settled down. I guess I actually had my real grown up job and career at this point.

I’m almost 60 now and contemplating retirement. I guess I finally “found my way”, but I wasn’t aware of it until I stopped and looked back.

At age about 23, on a whim, I bought a ticket to India and stayed there for three months. I realized that all I wanted to do was travel, and that the only way to do that was to get paid for it.

A couple years later I joined the Peace Corps, and there I met enough people in that world to figure out how to actually make that dream a reality. Once I had the goal and understood the path, it was easy to make it happen.

I was VP of a company but wanted a change. My husband died, which wasn’t the change I was looking for, but I realized there was nothing preventing me from shaking up the rest of my life too. Quit my job, went back to school, got remarried, and at 44 got started on my dream career.

My life is awesome. :slight_smile: