Career or job

[Stigmorgan]

This post seems to have run away by itself, which is probably my fault, I was only really curious about what people do for a living, how they got to that point and if they do it because they like it or because it's what they have to do, not complaining though as it's interesting to see everyone else perspective on things, as long as 8t all stays civil and polite

 

[D_W]

I'm an applied mathematician now.

Just be glad you don't live near me!

I'm currently trying to bash my way through a book on cosmology and galaxies and the maths is a right b*gger, so I'd be knocking on your door all the time, saying, "Ey up mate. Have you got a minute to explain to me what this means?"

You'd soon lose your interest in maths or you'd get very good at pretending not to be at home. :mrgreen:

That's the stuff that sent me to applied math. I'd have no trouble getting rid of you. "I have no idea about any of that stuff"

Once you get into the private world with applied math, you practice a very tiny little slice, and fortunately or unfortunately, work is partly about the math, but very much about how it fits within law and less well defined problems (lots of writing, communicating and documenting).

I'd never survive in a PhD level math or physics curriculum. I became aware of that in college part of the way through. You can see the people who are good at it - they appear at the outset or materialize. My progression in that stuff would've been well described by a small boat with a giant anchor.

 

[Roland]

I am past the end of my career and spent most of it in IT as a programmer, analyst, manager project manager and programme manager.

yes, I followed that career too. I don’t regret doing so. I enjoyed the work, travelled a lot, and could afford to retire at 60.

What do I do now? Make and mend things: about 10 guitars so far, countless bowls, a dolls house, that type of thing. Play guitar, today I’ve been transcribing and scoring music. When there’s time I garden, and visit the family.

 

[RogerS]

It's fascinating how things turn out. I have no idea what it's like now as a late-teens school attendee. Whether or not they have more or less choice that we did in my time. More stress, I'm sure. I digress. I never had a vocation to be this or that. I never had a father who was an eminent judge or surgeon. So perhaps lucky in not being expected to follow in the same shoes. But we did have to decide at school. My interests were towards the sciences. Then you get on the fast-track at grammar school.

You take your chemistry and physics and maths at 'O' level when you're 14 or 15. And your maths. You still haven't any idea what you want to do for a living. You do your additional level maths. You get told by the maths master that perhaps maths is not for you. The deputy head says that you should get a good job when you leave school ..ie no uni. You're still in the science stream. You reach the sixth form...maths is out. So what's left ? The biological sciences...the UCCA form looms. What are you going to fill in FFS ? There are really only three options then....Doctor ? Nah...all that studying ? Nah..I'm too interested in girls and hi-fi. Not that I was successful that much with the former.

Dentist ? Nah.....peering down someones mouth for the rest of your life ? Bore me to tears.

Vet ? Now, there's a thought. Apply to Bristol...THE uni for veterinary science then. Conditional offer. Two B's and a C ? BBC...BBC?....sod that....I applied to join.

Now ? If I knew about something like Air Crash Investigator then...appealing to my love of flying and engineering and mental diagnostics....I'd have tried harder.

You pays yer money ....

PS Note to Deputy Head. True - never did go to uni to do a first degree. Got a Masters in Computer Science though.

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Ok so I probably could have chosen better words than job and career, I know the definition of career is "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress." But for me although there is no position above site manager/ caretaker within the school, there are educational/ training opportunities that can result in pay rises, we have a new appraisal system that is being called professional growth and development, this allows us to prove we have been doing our job to a high standard and to identify training opportunities, as long as we meet our goals each year we get a performance related pay increase, it's not much, around 500 a year but it's noticeable when we get paid.

Either way I feel like I've finally found the occupation that my life has trained me to do and even though I live on site in the school grounds going to work doesn't feel like work.

Glad to hear that - hope it stays that way for a very long time. I've kipped a few times in a caretaker's house. It's usually blissfully peaceful and quiet after dark! Just keep the staffroom stocked up with cake and biscuits and they'll be happy!!

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Regarding Roger's post re university, there is now an economic balance to be made: earn money now, and avoid university,or get training to get a "better" job, but lose three or more years' earnings, and be saddled with student debt for eternity. The US model of borrowing half a million to get a degree is insane, but what isn't in the US?

Then you get to ask, "what is a university, anyway?", and discover that they are mostly gatekeepers providing certification in return for money - in other words, you can't get a career without their closed-shop, members-only system.

"What is the purpose of a university?" It would appear to be to employ, and continue to employ, administrators. There are up to two administrators for every faculty member at most universities, which rather boggles the mind.

Finally, Harvard university, which is the possibly the most expensive university on the planet, has enough cash in endowments to fund free education for all its students, for ever. They no longer have any need to charge fees, and yet the do. Apparently you won't value their education if you don't go into debt for gazillions. Whilst universities may do some research (get government or industry funds which will be used to employ more administrators, and throw a few crumbs to the faculty to do their oddball, eccentric experimentation), their main focus is on administration.

So perhaps the moral of all of this is to get a degree in university administration?

 

[Andy Kev.]

Ref. what TN and RogerS said about university: first the practical then the theoretical.

Practical: university means debt unless your parents can pick up the bills for you. So you have to ask yourself if the study is worth the debt. Everything should follow from the answer to that question. I was lucky enough to go to uni in the days when we had grants, so it was not a factor for me. However, once the irrational political decision to put half of kids through uni was taken, fees simply had to come in.

Theory: as TN asks, what are universities for? IMO the answer is twofold. Firstly they are there for subjects which require study at a high level in order to prepare expert practitioners or researchers in fields like electronics, biochemistry, mechanical engineering etc. etc. There is perhaps no other way of giving people the necessary specialised knowledge as efficiently. They can subsequently go on to apply that knowledge. Also only the state is in a position to fund these highly technical and specialised subjects, although I'm sure that the relevant industries could chip in.

The humanities studies e.g. history, literature, sociology (Gawd 'elp us!), PPE and meejah studdiz are so prevalent because they are cheap for the universities to provide. You don't need a lab with high speed centrifuges, just pen and paper. And they're a great vehicle for getting masses of thick kids through tertiary education which keeps the politicians happy. (Not everybody doing humanities at university is thick but nearly everybody in a university who is thick is doing humanities.) The final thing to say about humanities is that if you have an interest in any of them you can get yourself up to around degree level just by reading readily available books, history being perhaps the most obvious example.

So what to do? IMO we should slash the size of tertiary education to about 5 - 10% of school leavers. Sciences should be prioritised and selection for all subjects should be rigourous i.e. you end up with only the gifted who have an academic bent being at uni. That would be affordable and grants could be reintroduced.

And as we're talking about ourselves, here goes. Careers interview with the Deputy Head:

DH: What do you want to do?

Me: Army, I reckon. I quite fancy the idea of driving a tank through some foreigner's house. (I was only 18 and we did have the soviet threat at the time.)

DH: Don't be so stupid! You're going to university! What subject?

Me: OK sir. Biology.

Then I more or less spent three years wasting the opportunity to learn lots but got my degree, worked in a timber yard for a while and then - wait for it! - joined the Army, although I didn't end up messing about in a tank.

And now, with hindsight, what should I have done? Answer: six years Army then go to uni (in the Army I would have acquired the self-discipline to study seriously), then to decide whether or not to go back green clothes or to do something as a civvy.

On the whole though, I have no regrets, just a bit more wisdom.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

IMO we should slash the size of tertiary education to about 5 - 10% of school leavers

You mean have a system whereby the most capable go to learn , and the remainder don't? That's elitist, that is! Possibly racist, too! Think of all those poor, unemployed ex-university administrators. Oh! The inhumanity of it all!

When I was deciding not to go to university, there were places for, I believe, 5% of the total school leavers. How things have changed, and so much for the better! (Debt = increased money supply = increased GDP = pat on back for politician. Student loans are a secret, and pernicious, form of quantitative easing).

Me? Cynical?
Moi?

 

[Bm101]

University worked for me.
I remember going for an interview for a dream position of work.
He asked me to explain a four year break in my employment record.
I went to Yale I said.
His smile said it all. Welcome to the company he beamed.
Brilliant I said. I really need a Yob.

 

[Keith 66]

Interesting comments re education! I have some experience as i am a D&T technician, I started part time at a local college 18 years ago & 6 years ago started in a secondary school, I have seen the curriculum change & d&t become so academic to the point that the kids could not hope to gain any practical skills with tools at all. It seemed that the people writing the syllabus had forgotten about teaching the basics.
We get a wide cross section of kids, some horrible, some okay & some that are great. Ask 99% what they want to do after school & they have not got the foggiest idea. Some will say "I want to be famous", or "I want to be a footballer" very few have any ambition beyond their phone & xbox. One lad who left last year told me he wanted to become an aerospace engineer, i have no doubt he is capable of this as he was absolutely driven.
We have changed to an art based 3d design course & the difference is huge, now the workshop is busy all the time with far more practical stuff going on, We have a new Hod & he encourages kids to come in whenever we are there, It means they get some time to actually make stuff. Hopefully some will get an idea of getting into careers & callings not just jobs!

 

[MikeG.]

.......So what to do? IMO we should slash the size of tertiary education to about 5 - 10% of school leavers. Sciences should be prioritised and selection for all subjects should be rigourous i.e. you end up with only the gifted who have an academic bent being at uni. That would be affordable and grants could be reintroduced..........

I agree with the sentiment, if not the numbers.

I remember that Blair set a target of 50% of youngsters getting 5 good GCEs, and, at another time, 50% of all kids going to university. I could never quite reconcile the two. What was the point of university if kids who squeaked 5 C's at GCSE ended up studying for a degree? All it could do was devalue degrees.........and of course, that has happened. Jobs which used to take degree-level entrants now need Masters. Careers formerly open to Masters graduates now need PhDs.

I'll take issue with the focus on science you suggest (and that's as a holder of a science degree). I wouldn't value one academic degree above any other, and would want to see as broad as possible a spectrum offered. Learning for learning's sake is a thing, whatever the subject. My second degree, architecture, was a classic example of the modern "churn-'em-out" philosophy. I learnt absolutely nothing whatsoever from the taught course, other than from a wonderful series of lectures on architectural history, and that the studio tutors were complete prats. I didn't attend university once in my last year other than the compulsory "pin up" days, yet came away with a first. It was perfectly possible to get through both degree and part 2 (Masters equivalent) level without designing a single building...not even a garden shed. Treat university as a DIY learning opportunity and you've got a chance. The reading list is the most valuable document you'll receive in the whole 3 or 4 years.

 

[MikeG.]

University worked for me.
I remember going for an interview for a dream position of work.
He asked me to explain a four year break in my employment record.
I went to Yale I said.
His smile said it all. Welcome to the company he beamed.
Brilliant I said. I really need a Yob.

Brilliant! =D> =D> =D>

 

[Andy Kev.]

.......So what to do? IMO we should slash the size of tertiary education to about 5 - 10% of school leavers. Sciences should be prioritised and selection for all subjects should be rigourous i.e. you end up with only the gifted who have an academic bent being at uni. That would be affordable and grants could be reintroduced..........

I agree with the sentiment, if not the numbers.

I remember that Blair set a target of 50% of youngsters getting 5 good GCEs, and, at another time, 50% of all kids going to university. I could never quite reconcile the two. What was the point of university if kids who squeaked 5 C's at GCSE ended up studying for a degree? All it could do was devalue degrees.........and of course, that has happened. Jobs which used to take degree-level entrants now need Masters. Careers formerly open to Masters graduates now need PhDs.

I'll take issue with the focus on science you suggest (and that's as a holder of a science degree). I wouldn't value one academic degree above any other, and would want to see as broad as possible a spectrum offered. Learning for learning's sake is a thing, whatever the subject. My second degree, architecture, was a classic example of the modern "churn-'em-out" philosophy. I learnt absolutely nothing whatsoever from the taught course, other than from a wonderful series of lectures on architectural history, and that the studio tutors were complete prats. I didn't attend university once in my last year other than the compulsory "pin up" days, yet came away with a first. It was perfectly possible to get through both degree and part 2 (Masters equivalent) level without designing a single building...not even a garden shed. Treat university as a DIY learning opportunity and you've got a chance. The reading list is the most valuable document you'll receive in the whole 3 or 4 years.

I wouldn't be so sceptical of humanities subjects if what actually happened in university was uniformly of a high standard. For instance, I believe that Oxbridge humanities undergraduates have to do an essay a week and that to a high standard, yet in other places you can graduate with having done much less work and so be correspondingly much less well educated. This is, I suppose, another consequence of academia having been made an industry by the Blair reforms. The Oxbridge graduates are given a rigourous intellectual training and will be of use.

I did an MA in Applied Linguistics about 10 years ago and it was fairly demanding. What was wrong though was that there were a couple of no-hopers on the course who should have been gently binned after the first few months. However, the university had to generate income in the form of fees and so they were allowed to stay until the end and of course they finished with no qualification. I found that to be morally unacceptable.

Learning for learning's sake is a fine thing. I have no need to interest myself in history but it's fun to do it. It seems to me though that society can prioritise because it spends taxpayers' money on education. "Wanna do a degree in Origami and Dance son? Fair enough but be prepared to stump up the dosh for it."

 

[doctor Bob]

My son at 16 just blurted out one day that he wanted to be a scaffolder.
Took him to a friends yard to do a day, he loved it.
Got a job / apprenticship with another company, finished his A levels, and started the day after.
Loves it.
He never even went and collected his A level results, made me think he'd f.... ed em up, but eventually they posted results out, he got 2 B's and a C, so he could have gone to Uni if he fancied it.

He's 19, get's up every day at 5am and works 12hr days sometimes 7 day weeks, rerckons it's a right laugh and works all over south of England. Very proud of him and his work ethic.

He and I both know that if he went to Uni, he'd have the time of his life and be kicked out after 1 year for doing no work.................. maybe in the future if he wants to.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My friend's s.i.l. told him he preferred to employ people who held doctorates, as at least he could presume they were literate. By the bye ...
I invigilated exams in a sixth form college for a few years. I worked with a chemistry lecturer, a lady in her seventies who still did Duke of Edinburgh award hikes. She was one smart lady. I spoke to her about university education and she said she would advise anyone not to bother unless they were entering a profession that demanded a degree. She said if a person wants to get on in other spheres, the best way to get a degree is to get a job in a company that would get you the qualifications - by the time you're in your mid twenties you've professional qualifications, a few years work experience others haven't got and no debts. My daughter's friend is a chartered accountant, following this route after I showed her newspaper article years ago - she left school and got a job with KPMG.

 

[Deadeye]

Ok. I'll play. Nostalgia and catharsis!

My career was as much verb as noun.

It started by mistake: I left university as a virologist; ICI wanted a pathologist...I went to interviews, got offered and turned up. I met my boss and, as we walked across site, asked "what are all the greenhouses for?". Light dawned simultaneously upon us that they wanted a plant pathologist and I was a human one; but nobody asks basic questions like that when recruiting university students.

So I got moved on to a commercial role; went overseas; changed company after 8 years; joined a pharma company; spent 8 years there; ran a quoted plc; went into venture capital.

Then I spent a year as carer and support for my dad as he died... and had a bit of an epiphany. I was tired of everything being all about money, so I went to work for the NHS. Stayed there over 10 years.

Then I had cancer diagnosed, which isn't going to end well unfortunately. So some reprioritisation; and I now do some mentoring, some volunteering, and quite a lot of just pleasing myself. Which is how I come to be a newbie woodworker.

Essentially I want to make things (I used to be quite an adept potter/ceramicist). Both for the creativity (working with my hands rather than running meetings) and to leave a little something behind with friends that's made with the two most precious commodities of all: love and time.

 

[Deadeye]

Oh, and one addendum, if I'm allowed that.

I think my "career" sorted itself out by me following what interested me; no master plan.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think I enjoy both the logical and creative worlds...but my working life has focused mostly on the scientific/logical, and so I missed the creative.
I wonder if I could have fulfilled both drives, perhaps in something like architecture.

 

[sawdust1]

My lad finished 6th form in 2018 with some good grades, with plans to have a year
off, then go to uni. A year and a half later he’s still home just pottering about the house not knowing what to do.
He was going to do civil engineering, why when he’s got no interest in the subject, cos the computer said with his grades that’s what he could do. Got a place at uni, but in the end decided it was best to get an apprenticeship and learn while you earn.
Having no idea what and with mum finding him many jobs on the indeed website (as she’s getting fed up with home home all the time, ) he’s still here.
We have given up trying now, which is a shame as he’s a smart lad.
Only good thing is I get a free labourer in the meantime and if he moans about not
Getting payed I say your earning your keep lad !

 

[sammy.se]

Degree apprenticeships are excellent. Both my current and former employer ran them. You get paid to get a degree and work at the same time. If he gets an offer for that, he should jump at the chance!!

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

 

[Andy Kev.]

My lad finished 6th form in 2018 with some good grades, with plans to have a year
off, then go to uni. A year and a half later he’s still home just pottering about the house not knowing what to do.
He was going to do civil engineering, why when he’s got no interest in the subject, cos the computer said with his grades that’s what he could do. Got a place at uni, but in the end decided it was best to get an apprenticeship and learn while you earn.
Having no idea what and with mum finding him many jobs on the indeed website (as she’s getting fed up with home home all the time, ) he’s still here.
We have given up trying now, which is a shame as he’s a smart lad.
Only good thing is I get a free labourer in the meantime and if he moans about not
Getting payed I say your earning your keep lad !

As an ex-Army bloke I wonder if signing up for six or so years might do him some good. He'd be earning, learning new things, be focussed (whether he wants to be or not) and would almost certainly work out what he wants to do in the long run. The big advantage for him would be that he would learn that in life there is more than just your own small world. He'd also acquire self-discipline. In other words, he'd grow up and do that perhaps more quickly than he would by just loafing around.