How did you get into your field of work/ study?

[Silverstar]

I had a vague plan to become a lawyer, so went off to uni to do my undergrad in law. I loved it, but came out at the end fairly convinced that I didn't have the personality or temperament to be anything other than a pretty crappy lawyer. 

So looked around for other ideas and someone (possibly my mum?) suggested looking into archive work as I've always loved history and stories. It looked interesting, so I did a work placement and then went off to do my masters in the subject. Been doing that ever since in various different places, some tiny museums, some huge world famous companies.

I've been at the place I am currently for seven and a half years, after joining to just work on a short five month project and ending up staying. I work in the field of human rights, which I love, and I'm kind of more interested in that than the archive side now. I love helping to try to make the world that bit better every day. I'm also currently on secondment to our audiovisual team for a year, so I'm learning a ton about photography and video production and editing, and the media. It's a lot of fun. 

[Jeor]

6 hours ago, Mr. X said:

I teach high school math.

Woohoo, so do I!

I majored in maths. I had no idea what I wanted to do, so figured I'd go for something where I thought I had a little aptitude and that was going to be in demand.

After graduating, I worked as a supply chain analyst for 8 months but became dead bored. At the suggestion of a friend, I enrolled in a teaching degree and have now been teaching for almost a decade.

Best decision I ever made (although my immigrant parents don't always think so). Love the job, although these days I don't do as much teaching; now a deputy principal where funnily enough training as a diplomat, lawyer and/or actor would have been much more beneficial.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I have nepotism and a penchant towards fermented spirits (think Tyrion) to blame for the course of events that were put into place, when as a twenty-ish Sophomore, I accepted my first pact (job) with the Christian Devil himself (family). And looking back now, I realize I was tricked into the whole thing. I had a fine career planned as a beachcomber and amatuer skier!

[Filippa Eilhart]

Mine's boring.

I was good with languages and at an early age decided I want to be a translator (seriously, I still have an English assignment from when I was 12 stating my goal). So I went on to study English and became a translator.

[baxus]

When I was thinking about what college I should enrol, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. What I did know however, was what I didn't want to do with my life. Economics and law were the first ones to go since I had absolutely no desire to do that, quickly followed by all forms of medicine and pharmacy since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a good fit for those areas. One by one, I cut the list down to three colleges - architecture, civil engineering and electrical engineering. Funny enough, those three colleges of Belgrade University are all in the same building. Went with the third one and after freshman year we had to choose one of several areas of electrical engineering to major in. When I started college, I wanted to major in communications or electronics, but after seeing what is taught in those courses, I went after computer sciences and software development. After graduating, I immediately got a job in mobile apps development and have been doing it for close to 5 years now.

There you go, my professional life story. It's not much but if I went for a better one it would be a lie.  

[flying mosquito]

I'm a telecom engineer just because choosing career at 18 means that you are choosing you future job in the peak of stupidity and lack of knowledge of what the job really is. I was just thinking I would get a good pay. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong in any possible way. 

After that came the job as EHS, wich is more satisfying if you like to make sure people go back home from work every day with all fingers and toes in place. I do. I did that for several companies until the last one imploded and we all got fired. 

After that I'm trying to push forward my own little business that has absolutely nothing to do with my previous career -it seems that I'm a great artisan and a shitty seller- while I'm working in EHS in another company. This time, let's hope, without anxiety attacks. Cross fingers that my humble artisan business will serve its double purpose: get some money and save my sanity. 

Still buying lottery every week. 

[Raja]

14 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

THIS IS AN OBJECTIVELY TERRIBLE REASON TO GO TO LAW SCHOOL.  

It's better than mine! I had to drop one my science subjects ( Physics, Chemistry or Biology) for the 11/12th grade IB diploma - During the summer between 10th and 11th grade - I had my mind made up. I was pretty good at physics - so I thought I'd take Physics and Chemistry. Before heading off to vacation that summer, I bought the physics textbook. After reading it for half a day, I decided it wasn't for me - I couldn't stand how boring it seemed and how thick that textbook was - I decided to drop Physics and took Biology & Chemistry instead. 

I went through the 11th and 12th grade with pretty decent grades - I don't even know why/ when I decided I'd go into Medicine, I think it might have been a product of having Biology and chemistry as my subjects. It just seemed like the only choice I could make at the time, but making those decisions as an 18 year old with ZERO idea of the medical field was probably not the best decision. The good thing is that I like my job, however, now I have to figure out what sub- specialty I want to get into and that decision seems infinitely harder! 

Sometimes I think Medicine as a Post graduate course make a lot more sense as opposed to an undergraduate course, especially for people like me. Then again, it's a lot of money to spend if it's an PG course. 

[Chaldanya]

I did a degree in Physics with the aim of working in that field but research etc. was not for me so I came away not really knowing what I wanted to do.  Got a bunch of jobs doing admin-y stuff. Eventually became a PA and event producer for a small company before moving on to be an Office Manager and Training Video Producer for another small company.  The 2008 recession hit, I got made redundant so I took the first thing that I could and ended up as an EA.  The more I worked through these jobs the more I wanted to be a Project Manager so everything has been geared towards that.  I got my PRINCE 2 practitioner qualification last year and am  now an actual PM for IT projects.  I'm actually quite good at it.  A weird little meandering progression, but I don't think I'd be as good a PM as I am without having the solid admin/organising experience I got over the last 15 years of being in the work force.

[aceluby]

I always was very good at math, so in my sophomore year of HS my friend took a computer science class and said he thought I'd enjoy it.  I took it as an elective the next year (and now think it should be required, but I digress) and finished two semesters of work in a single semester.  Continued on and got all the way through teaching myself C++ my senior year.  Went to college and double majored in Math and Computer science.

After college my brother was working for an insurance company in technology and said he could get me a job.  Being poor and wanting to work as soon as college ended (I started the Monday after the Saturday graduation) I took the job as a 'Carrier Feed Technician'.  It was boring as all hell, but I got promoted quickly to Business Systems Analyst and used a lot of my coding skills to get some of the more remedial jobs completed really quickly.  Did that job for about 2 1/2 years.

From there I went to become a Quality Assurance analyst.  I wrote super complex SQL statements to test files with millions of records on them.  The files had to be 100% correct, so it was a job that really honed my attention to detail.  Was promoted quickly to Sr. SQA Analyst and then to Sr. SQA Engineer where I developed automated tests for our web applications.  Stayed at that job for about 5 years.

Now I work as an Engineer as a full stack developer.  I write SQL, I write Java middle tier, I write front-end AngularJs, I came up with a sophisticated logging, monitoring, and alerting solution for all our apps, and most recently I've been supporting my team's DevOps in Jenkins, Chef, and Openstack; writing lots and lots of scripts to automate everything.  I was promoted quickly to Sr. Engineer, and now sit as Lead Engineer on my team.  I absolutely LOVE my job and see myself staying here for a while.  I'm paid extraordinarily well, I have an amazing team, and I'm really enjoying what I'm doing.

[Raja]

19 hours ago, Tears of Lys said:

I became a court reporter

Out of curiosity, how do you train to become a court reporter? 

[Sis Who Swears]

I didn't have a clue what to do out of high school. I was expected to go to college/university. I went with Bachelor of Arts because... I really have no idea why. Was so bored with it that halfway through I dropped out. Worked retail and drank like a fish for a couple more years. My mother showed me an ad for a professional dog grooming school. I loved dogs and was interested. The rest is history. Thanks Mom!

[StefCurry]

When i was 2 year kid, i used to watch football, basketball. tennis. F1 on tv. My dream was to become F1 driver, but now i'm just writing sports articles in internet =)

[Datepalm]

On 7/20/2016 at 7:53 AM, sologdin said:

as far back as i can remember, i always wanted to be a revolutionary.  so i made the oblique approach thereto by assimilating to the status quo as an attorney WTFZOMGBBQ

Pretty much. I was an activist as a teenager, which led to a three year stretchy as a commune-dwelling radical anarcho-marxist community youth worker after I graduated HS (with an 18 month stint as a combat soldier stuck in the middle. Draft.) I got burned out and frustrated when I was 21-22, (more socially and intellectually than ideologically, to be honest.) Travelled some (organic farm in Germany, English school in China, Bedouin tours in Jordan), found it to be duller than expected, went home, worked as a security/medic on hiking trips for a while and started volunteering as a labour organizer. Planned to to do a tour guide license, signed up and everything - and then the course got cancelled on short notice.

Meanwhile I'd signed up for the university entrance exams a month or so down the line (mostly to appease my parents or something - I had no concrete plans) so I couldn't really go travelling again. My (three years younger) sister was a semester into college that year and that led me to stopping by the university and toying with the idea of just taking some classes for the hell of it. As it turned out, that wasn't that simple, but a few departments did allow enrollement for the spring semester - Musicology and Geography, to be precise, and I'm really, really tone deaf. So I found myself doing a BA in Geography (seriously, I didn't realize I had actually signed up for the degree and not for just a couple classes for months,) and really enjoying it, except for various depressive episodes, a tendency not to show up to classes and a comically obvious (looking back) self-sabotaging habit of forgetting when my final exam were. (that dragged the degree out into an extra 2 years) I also had a bunch of NGOish and community work related jobs in parallel, kept volunteering with a number of social-justice type groups, and said fuck it all after a bad wave of violence in summer 2014 and went off to Burundi to do a development fellowship 2 credits shy of graduating. 

That was harsh and frustrating and we were hopelessly out of depth for it. I had some kind of shit-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life breakdown, got back to Israel, slept on people's couches for a while, went back to university and started an MA in urban planning, got a planning-for-social-justice job in the West Bank, got fired from it two months later, got a job at a consultancy doing transport planning in the Congo, got fired from that ten months later, and now I'm doing an internship in India (planning for slum development. They can't fire me, I'm temporary. I hope,) and looking at the idea of a PhD in the planning/transport/development/labour rights field. Which is a thing. So either it will all add up...or not. 

[Maya Mia]

I was 18, had a job as a switchboard operator in a university.  My stepmother worked for a large chemical company, and they were accepting applications for entry level lab techs in a coatings lab.  I submitted an application, and according to the HR lady, who was very unhappy with me, I got the job because I was the only "girl" who applied for it.  Corporate had noticed the labs were full of men and had made her hire me. At least that is what she told me.  

Turned out my supervisor was very good, and taught me a lot.  Ended up doing that for a while, and went to school at night for chemistry.  As I advanced in the labs, I found that I really enjoyed working directly with our customers, so when a sales job opened, I applied for it and was moved into that job.  After a few years, in 08, during the downturn I took a VSP, and moved to the beach in Florida.  When one of my previous distributors were looking to hire a sales rep in Florida, they called me, and here I am.

 

[Theda Baratheon]

I've always loved history and after having a couple of really great Classical civilisations lecturers I decided to go and do a Ancient History BA. I loved the subject but didn't really enjoy my time at University due to various mental health issues and other stuff. But I still loved history. Graduated over a year ago now, and started volunteering (and have some paid word coming up) in a well known county Museum not far from me and it really inspired me and made me realise I do still absolutely love history and want to study again but now I've decided to shift my focus a bit and am doing a MA in Celtic Studies starting in October. I'm going to stay working and volunteering for the museum whilst working on my MA and I'd love to have the opportunity to research more and work in museums. 

 

I have a big interest in Mythology, folklore, folklife and the place of women in history and that has always been at the forefront of all my independent pieces of work and it's exactly what I'd like to delve into except this time focusing on Ancient British and Celtic history (where I have a personal interest in learning more about ''my roots'' if you will) rather than the Ancient Greece and Rome of my BA degree, which I still loved but I feel like there are quite a few people studying that and not enough studying Celtic history. 

[Mexal]

I ended up in strategy consulting which I really like. I was doing change management in the UK and I had a friend who referred me to my current company and they had a pretty good group who did it. So I got in and then from there, maneuvered my way into strategy which is where I wanted to go all along. Since then, I've focused on Insurance and really enjoy thinking through the problems these companies are facing now and in the future and how they can go about tackling them. Suits my personality well.

[KiDisaster]

I went to college to study history and needed a part time job, so I got one in the warehouse here for a non-profit charity. As time went on my job changed from standard manual labor to a weird combination of fixing computers, working in the warehouse or the mail room, delivering stuff to people, making phone calls and, at one point, cataloging everything in the goddamn building for the new inventory system. Basically just wherever people needed extra help or had something that needed to get done that no one else wanted to do, I'd end up doing it. 

The upside to this was I learned multiple roles across multiple departments and got to know a lot of the people in management and admin, and they got to know me as someone reliable. I also saved the company a bunch of money on a couple different occasions. So when I (finally) finished college, realized I had no interest in going to grad school and I sat down with the director of HR to tell her I was interested in a full time position, they went out of their way to find one for me. 

Started as an assistant in purchasing. Now I'm a "procurement agent" which is a needlessly fancy way of saying I buy stuff with other people's money all day.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I went to law school and discovered that I enjoyed law school but hated being a lawyer. I always liked being a student, so I thought the next logical step was to be a teacher. I went back to school and got my teaching certificate. I was certified to teach history but didn't have the knowledge to coach a sport, so finding a job was difficult. Then, I heard finding jobs teaching ESL was easy in China. I got my passport, and the next day I was on a plane to Shanghai. That was the summer of 2005, and I have been teaching English in China ever since.

[Buckwheat]

I am glad to see people saying they more or less stumbled into their profession or changed after they studied. The career advisor at my uni seems to think we should all have a detailed plan ahead of us right now ... and I get very worried because I, well, don't.

I cannot say I have any "career" to talk about yet. I am finishing my MA in languages and literatures, and all work I have done till now was some proofreading and some teaching, and I am starting an internship in tourism in autumn. I want to either translate literature (which is almost impossible to live off) or research/do academicky stuff (which, in the field of literature ... not such a prosperous idea either). So I guess I am going to end up mostly proofreading and occasionally teaching privately or in language schools (I am not qualified to teach in public schools and have no interest in going through half of the MA again to become so).

On 20. 7. 2016 at 11:39 AM, Filippa Eilhart said:

Mine's boring.

I was good with languages and at an early age decided I want to be a translator (seriously, I still have an English assignment from when I was 12 stating my goal). So I went on to study English and became a translator.

Hey, translating is not boring! May I ask what you usually translate? I want to translate literature, but I know most translators do completely non-fictional texts.

[Raja]

17 hours ago, Mexal said:

I ended up in strategy consulting 

I know we talked about this when we met - but I still don't have a good grasp of what you do! What does your normal work day look like?