At what age did you finally decide on your chosen career?

Reading through some of the job threads, it sounds like a lot of people just kinda stumble into their chosen job and find they like it and stick with it. Whereas for me, when I 30 I had a mental jolt in that I need to sort out my future and find the job I'm suited for.

hahahahahaha

sorry

I am 39 (and holding, forever)

This is not my chosen career. This is just something I started doing to pay the bills in the meantime. Still. 15 years after I first started doing it.

I suspect high correlation between this topic and the 'when did you decide to give up on your dreams' topic.

100!

I am 39 (and holding, forever)

Hi there! That said I started working in libraries when I was in high school so arguably it's just where I feel most comfortable. The only real interruption was during grad school when I was a TA.

I'm 36. Decided on my primary chosen career age 6. Still working on getting to it. Decided on my secondary chosen career age 16. Ducked out on that between 18 and 28, AKA a decade of wasted time. Lesson (paraphrasing George Melly's father): do what you want, I nearly didn't.

My main concern at being 31 and thinking like this is how long will I have to spend learning/training and building up experience before I'll be earning a living wage (looking to start a family in the next few years). Considering a number of different career options, things like accountancy/bookkeeping and web design/IT server guy look like long haul jobs. Also looking at marketing type stuff, which seems less intensive. What it boils down to is what is a) in demand, b) pays well, c) can be achieved in the smallest amount of time, and d) isn't sometihng I'm totally unsuitable for (teaching, sales, etc).

I was five when I decided I was going to be an architect and haven't looked back once in the 28 years since. Just couldn't ever see myself doing anything else.

Career #1 (computers): age 7. Started getting paid for it at age 18 and have been working full-time in it since age 22.

Career #2 (music): age 13. Got my first paying singing gig at age 18. Gave up at age 22, started singing again as a volunteer at various churches and in a symphony chorus at 24. Got a paid church gig at age 29 and started doing ensemble work with a professional opera company at age 31. Briefly had a small-scale rock band at age 34.

Career #3 (acting): age 10. Did school plays from age 10 through age 18. Gave it up in college. Took it back up with the opera gig at age 31. Did a couple of small-scale shows with a local musical theater company at ages 35 and 37.

So... basically I'm not a superstar but I'm doing pretty much exactly what I wanted to do from a young age.

ugh, total respect and oodles of envy for people who can choose so early in life and stick with it. It's how it should be, I just wish i stuck with my art instead of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzsoftwarelicensingzzzzzzzzz

"I suspect high correlation between this topic and the 'when did you decide to give up on your dreams' topic"

Oh yes. Staying far away from this one; I've scrapped three responses already after no amount of editing helped me come up with one that didn't basically reduce to "FFFFFFFFFFFFUCK"

I find myself at 46 and still not Jacques Cousteau.

I just wish i stuck with my art instead of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzsoftwarelicensingzzzzzzzzz

Arts/creative jobs bring their own crippling problems. I'm coming out of a few years of unpredictable/low-paid but fulfilling/fun work (which is crumbling to bits due to 21st century economocaust) and my overriding regret is not spending the past 10 years working on something that can give me a decent lifestyle/home/family. It's an age-old argument though, no doubt worth a thread of its own.

Short version:
*Age whenever to about 15: "Oh, computers, those are kind of neat I guess, maybe." Get beaten up a lot because this is Alabama and we don't cotton to no book-learnin' types.
*About 15: Finally get some exposure to all the art and film and writing out there I can actually care about, decide I want to get involved in film. It turns out no one gives a shit about Pynchon or Nabokov or Cronenberg or Fritz Lang or queer cinema or anything. Promptly fail out of school because I can't sleep and I'm terrified of basic human interaction. Transfer into public high school where senior-level biology classes involve coloring photocopied diagrams from the textbook (which, by the way, has a sticker in the inside front cover reminding students that evolution is just a silly theory). Take a film elective, which turns out to be a blatant concession to the football coach (who teaches the class) so his players don't fail out of school. Actual test question: "What is Bruce Willis's name in Armageddon?"
Not his character's name, oh no, that's too difficult. (It's Harry Stamper, by the way. I still remember this because apparently "Who gives a fuck" was incorrect.)
*Finally, college: Got rejected from every school I applied to because as it turns out acing the SAT at 13 doesn't mean shit if you spend the next five years totally withdrawn and depressed and let your grades slide. Settle on an open admission film school in Chicago because holy shit, ACTUAL CITY WITH SHIT HAPPENING IN IT. Decide that directing is an unrealistic goal in a super-competitive field, decide to study editing and sound and maybe pursue the academic side. Last a year and a half before washing out because by this point I am a perpetually shell-shocked social retard barely capable of leaving my apartment without hyperventilating and wanting to die.
Next 6 years: Stuck in Alabama again, try to start again with computers, which it turns out I kind of hate, fail anyway because of massive psychological baggage, live for a while with junior high friend who is in town finishing up grad school because his life has basically been an uninterrupted line from the "computers are neat" stage above, occasionally post half-thought dribble to ILX just to be enthusiastic about SOMETHING. Never leave apartment.
Now: I answer phones! Oh dear, I am deeply sorry your Thomas Kinkade jigsaw puzzle is missing a piece! Yes, you're right, I, personally, should have been more careful! OH NO NOT NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON AMAZON OF COURSE I WILL DROP EVERYTHING TO PLEASE YOU

I want to see a musical with HI DERE in the cast.

senior-level biology classes involve coloring photocopied diagrams from the textbook

I had this experience in high school, too. It's kind of amazing I had any interest at all in biology after that.

I decided to be a music writer my senior year of high school. I had told my college I was going to study "advertising," but then changed it before my first semester started. Probably a pretty stupid decision in hindsight.

age 24, not too long after I'd gotten $40K+ in debt getting a degree in something entirely unrelated. but I love it and am now freelancing, which is great when I have enough work and terrifying and awful when I don't.

hahahahahaha

― Mahindra Satyam people (dan m), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 12:46 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yes

first grade i guess but who knows how long i have doing this before i burn out

Sort of fell into graphic design at age 26. Too lazy to find anything better to do now.

well yeah that's the thing, writer as career is weird. i think, for the sake of self-preservation, that "writer" is less something i would say my career is and more something i would say i am no matter what and that it has always somehow played into whatever my career is. career-wise, i have just started to say "i'm in communications and media"

xpost

I want to see a musical with HI DERE in the cast.

at least one person on these boards has high school productions of "West Side Story" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" featuring TWO ILX moderators (and one occasional poster) on videotape

Still not an Amazon afaict.

Still Not A Player

I'm 31 now and no closer to knowing what career I have chosen than I ever have been, even though I now have a career. I did just kind of fall into it, though.

admrl: do you fuck a lot

I have way less of a (tangible, at least) "career" than I had 4 years ago and I am learning to love this fact, finally.
xp haha

always wanted to do be a journalist, like from age of 5 or so. detour into writing about music wasted a good 8 years, then working in news/sport for 2 years and finally in the last year finding the right type of job for myself.

The exciting field of webpage editing allows me to utilize both of my primary skills (criticizing minutiae, surfing the web).

the exciting field of bookkeeping allows me to tell my boss, "I'm sorry but that's not possible." and not get in trouble for being "disempowering" like my previous career in commercial radio.

i don't have a career, sorry

well yeah that's the thing, writer as career is weird. i think, for the sake of self-preservation, that "writer" is less something i would say my career is and more something i would say i am no matter what and that it has always somehow played into whatever my career is. career-wise, i have just started to say "i'm in communications and media"

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 5:13 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is a nice way to think about it.

sometimes i think that i will quit writing altogether in a few years and teach english classes, but i sort of dont think i could ever really quit

lol oh man this q

Always thought teaching would be dope from maybe 15? After four years I still think it is dope but I am thoroughly sick of *working*, so probably quitting to pursue fortune on the moon :(

i've gotten to the age/stage where 'teaching' now looks like not a bad option, after 10 years of working to just cover day-to-day bills didn't get me anywhere.

im at that stage as well. though a job like web page editing is quite appealing as my primary skills are criticizing minutiae and surfing the web as well. i need to find out how easy it is to get work in this sector and how to train for it.

Decided to be an academic at age ~6 because my Dad was one and had lots of books (I liked books a lot). Now am on the way to being an academic. It seems to have worked out so far, luckily enough; at least, I think I would be less happy in most other kinds of work.

22, still haven't. ;_;

aw hell stfu you don't know yer born at 22, leave us failed wrecks in peace

yeah 22 is too young. theres nothing wrong with not knowing at 22.

what kind of academic, sean? that's always been the dream tbh

do you need to have a 1st to be an academic?

in a broad sense ("I want to be an academic!"), @ 21, in a more specific sense ("I want to be *this kind* of academic"), @ 27

I still think the idea of just 1 career is kind of a drag: there are so many fun things to do & fun places to live that getting stuck in any one is a bit depressing. I'm doing pretty well on living lots of places but I'm not sure about whether I'll ever change careers.

Managed to have dream career as under/postgaduate 1996 to 2003.

I'm a computer scientist, freshly arrived in the not-quite-grown-up world of being a postdoc.

xp titchy: A first doesn't hurt - especially for getting PhD funding - but in general a decent 2:1 + good references + maybe some research experience should be enough to get a PhD position. After that nobody will really care what grade you got in your undergrad.

hmmph hard to get any postgrad places from a business degree, that's my problem.

Not sure about pure research, but there are all sorts of business/management/policy masters courses out there.

chosen career = pr0n star I chose this when I was about 22, but noone has employed me yet.

working towards my other choice = pub landlord I just need to earn enough money towards that 'career' goal. is owning something a career?

you can get a franchise, but that's liek the worst job in the world, isn't it?

xp to seandalai- yeah but they're all v. boring. at this juncture i'm like the michael palin character that wants to be a LION TAMER

yeah franchise is not the same thing! although perhaps it's useful for learning the ropes..

yeah i reckon pub landlord would be sweet rly. hard to make money at that though? also working all the time.

since i currently spend most of my money and time down the pub it kind of mitigates both of those problems.

oh yeah, a lazy alco is the perfect candidate to run a pub.

srsly tho?

What a depressingly assumptive question.

I had a terrible nightmare about being back in 1999, just about to start university. I was running around and ringing my parents saying "I'm not meant to study English Language and Linguistics! Get me out of here, it'll ruin my life!" One of those wake-up-sweating sort of dreams where you want to call your mum...

What a depressingly assumptive question.

at least trying to address the gulf between how i thought it worked, as a kid - that you want to be a fireman!, so you go to fireman school!, and you become a fireman forever! - & the realisation/understanding of the drift & possible eventual solidification of career-finding, seems worthwhile.

not yet and I'm 36

30--it came to me a sudden flash of wisdom, after I'd messed up everything else.

Like, age five. I decided very early in childhood that I wanted to be an architect. Fortunately every thing I encountered after that backed it up. Sure, I had detours where I thought of heading for something more profitable and less stressful, but, really I knew from an early age.

Condensed career: I had to find money after uni. Started a sales job. Now that's all I can ever get.

I'm not acting anymore ;_;

they call me the Seeker.

Im actually considering career change at the moment

i'm at a natural juncture atm. current job is public sector and comfortable but pay is pretty bad and prospects are worse. In itself i'm not even sure that would be enough for me to jump, but my gf is seeking work after completing her masters and that's not gonna hapoen locally, and i'm working without a contract at the moment besides. So i'm looking at suitable courses for a business grad with no interest nor experience in business. Fun.

My career path has largely been driven by a negative impulse, in a way - I promised myself (no offence, DL) after uni that I'd never take a sales job (three of us who were all friends at uni swore each other the same thing), and since then I've just taken advantage of opportunities. I decided I'd quite like to work at the university, and applied for a library-based job there cos it was in the music and film department (2002); over five years I got two promotions and went from department skivvy to running it.

When we bought the house and there was a management restructure of the library (both in summer 2007) I got moved into an inappropriate team, but the money got a little better, so I stuck it out and, after about 12 months of career hell (for me) and yet more management changes, I ended up with a new, good manager who recognised I was in the wrong job and helped me with opportunities.

On the back of those opportunities I applied for and got a fixed-term job in another team, more money, much more suitable role, understanding and progressive management still, and loved it. Off the back of that I've applied for and got another new job, still at the uni, related department, same money, but an even more suitable role and now on a permanant contract.

I guess if you'd said to me 9 years ago when I started working here, "what job would you like in 9 years time?" I might have, in a moment of gumption, said "I'd like to be the university's copywriter" (which is the new job), but I don't think I deliberately set out on a course of action to get there. At least not uber-consciously.

What would be my dream job or career? I don't know. I've never really been very focused on the future. Saying that, I do think there's a lot to be said for positive visualisation leading to actualisation - i.e. that if you envisage yourself doing something enough and with sense, you'll find ways, consciously or unconsciously, of getting into a position where you can do it (which might mean making sacrifices in other areas). That might be the kind of car you drive or the job you do or it might be being able to cycle over Peak Hill in Sidmouth without stopping to catch your breath. It might be baking an awesome pistachio brownie. Who knows.

I've never had a career plan - only an idea of the kinds of things I like doing. Lukcily I've ended up doing some of them.

many jobs require more self-belief and confidence than I can manage

been doing my best to avoid work since i left school in 1997 and have been doing pretty well so far

Haha, I swore I wouldn't take a sales job either. Managed it for about two years but ended up getting lured into a "marketing" role which turned out to be sales with a bit of admin thrown in - and then slippery slopey.

I did manage to progress into company training (customer care/sales training) for a broadband provider, which I genuinely loved because you get to present in front of people and fuck around with Powerpoint and find out about how people learn without having to hang around a bunch of school children all day. Sadly that lasted under a year as the company got bought up and I became a redundand.

Tried a few other training roles but they never really worked out, and after a spell of unemployment (applying for jobs I wanted to do but just getting turned down), found myself going back in sales.

What's dangerous is that I'm burnt out on it. I might at one point have cared about meeting targets and call rates and all that shit, but I'm 31 in October and frankly, no matter how well I do, it's not really going to feel like an achievement so long as I can pay the rent.

first got published at age 21 and never looked back but 30+ years later my "chosen career" (print journalism) barely exists. que sera sera

it seems like people expect things that were once paid for to now be free via the internet - like magazines, news, music etc - thus the end of those careers

tell me about it

lyfe

I am telling ya

it really seems like the music biz in particular is totally doomed

After several years of starving and busking, I thought I'd found my career at age 24 when I got a job working as a music producer for a storytelling show on the CBC. I chose music for the show that had to compliment the stories and also fulfill Canadian content laws. I also helped with brainstorming the pieces and responded to letters in the public e-mail account. The job was fun, and I liked the people I worked with. After only four months, I was able to afford my own computer.

When I started getting offers to tour as a solo musician, I initially wanted to keep my desk job, but my boss and co-workers were very encouraging. Relying upon music-making for your income can lead to sleepless nights-- I have nightmares about sound-check, ha ha, lol-- and I'm offered zero job security, and would much prefer to be working a job that allowed me to do CrossFit and have kids/dogs/a garden. But, considering that so many other full-time musicians are back at the CBC before the age of 40, I'm optimistic that a lateral move will present itself at some point.

This thread is a very entertaining read but I think that measuring one's life up to other's w/"how old were you when" as the yardstick is, like, empty calories.

like penis size?

Nah, dick size is much more important

that CBC job sounds satisfying, tho i notice you seemed to accumulate extra jobs there at a fast rate.

I know it sounds like a cliché, but I think I'd love to be self-employed - and this is after seeing my parents' lives fall to bits after deciding to go down that road.

cbc sounds like, "anything need doing? chop a bit of firewood or anything?" "yeah actually u seem competent can u edit our election footage also? cool."

thats when I wish I lived somewhere that you have a national health service instead of trying to pay1500$ a month for your own coverage at your self employed work

Honestly, CBC work, in radio, is trickier than you'd think. They take the public's opinion very seriously and will consider all incoming feedback. The opinions of the 'executives' also count for a lot, many shows get retooled and reshaped.

people ALWAYS say I should get involve din voiceover work but I have no idea how to break into that career

But yes, the show's producer-- my boss, who is a year younger than me and owns a house and car and pets and does CrossFit, bless her-- she finds herself knocking down walls, driving long distances and engaged in surprising research activities.

Seriously OP, the music is about the only thing tolerable about DNTO, so good job!

(The show I worked for was not DNTO.)

still not settled

do not troll owen

didn't you do the theme?

Roughly age 20, I guess. I think I just want a career that involves a lot of researching and analysing stuff that isn't all just numbers/statistics. It's what I enjoyed most in uni and it's what I enjoy most in my current job, even though currently I'm not working with stuff I'm interested in.

My backup/second love has been video games (since around the age of 13) but I have zero programming skills and I don't want to work on the marketing/branding side of things.

you should be a freelance playtester

can you get paid for that?

That's my default query these days btw

sometimes the world makes "final decisions" for you- an opportunity presents itself or it doesnt, a job is offered or denied, and so the decision isn't really yours . . . and even when you have a career, nothing's ever final- you are still free to do - or to try to do - something else, it just gets harder to imagine that you have that freedom, or more threatening to imagine the work involved in changing your life to be something/someone else, if you're already far down a particular road

I am someone who, even as a child in the 1980s, imagined that by the year 2000 I would be going to graduate school in something, but I wasn't sure what. I was always aware, probably because of parental expectations, that that was "the plan": you go to college, then grad school, then you work at whatever you did grad school in. But as a child I always also wanted to be an artist of some kind (I used to draw pictures all the time). Now I'm a college professor and (sometimes) a moderately successful touring musician. So I guess I have succeeded at being the person I was expected to be by others, and I did turn out to be the person I wanted to be, more or less. But there is something kind of rigged and circular about treating this like a "decision"- you are the person who makes the decision because your environment and your parents and your institutions shaped you to think that X was desirable and not Y. The economics of middle class comfort-oriented American life encouraged the idea that splitting the difference between day job and art hobby is just how things go. And separate from that, huge amounts of good luck permitted me to actually have a tenure track position after eleven years of getting a PHD, which is quite unlike the experience of most of my grad school peers, who struggle for adjunct positions. So if I said that I made some "decision" and then stuck by it and that's why I am where I am today, that would disavow all the other factors in play (parents, lucky breaks, institutions, timing, economies) which made this possible.

you should touch people's secret areas!
(waiting for default query with miscellaneous delight)

Work for an indie gaming house how bout

Play-testing video games is poorly paid and I imagine quite boring after a while!

I could get along with writing game reviews, but I'm not interested enough in that to put in the effort to pursue it. I think the problem I'd have with working in the video games industry is that my favourite sorts of games are all fairly Japanese-ish, and I'd find it difficult to get motivation to work on like, FPS games or something. I mean, currently I sort of do work with Act1v1s10n and I'm not really into their output so it's difficult to get into it at times (also COD fans are insufferable). The stuff I do for Xb0x (working on a bunch of their Facebook pages) is alright but I think I'd get tired of it quickly as a f/t job.

Doesn't matter. Going back to uni in a month in potentially ill-fated attempt at career switch. If it fails, video games it is.

@ the tune, you say "luck" but we know your tenure is the product of many hours honing your craft on message boards

you caould make more money insutling video gmaes loudly while playing them on youtube

well I don't have tenure yet, and if I keep posting here I definitely won't get it

this is my fifth year, I have another two years before they make the big decision for me about whether I stay or go

*fingers crossed*

does this mean i can blame my parents for being clueless/aimless at this stage?

blame the internets

good post, the-tune-is-space. i just have jobs instead of a career but i think i would be similarly wary of assigning much of it to being an over-arcing plan, particularly in circumstances when, even if you were making decisions, you were making them in the light of certain conditions & the likelihood of some things coming off. the more specifically consequential decisions are probably more to do with what's tolerable, i think. like i used to think that, around here, after school people going into casual work were doing so either in offices, retail or some part of catering (idk what encompasses bars/kitchens & cafes, maybe not catering), which after some flapping around seemed like the kind of thing that would reflect some sort of this-is-the-most-bearable-thing attitude in light of, like, having some contact with other people or, eg, not having to come into contact with other people.

-arching rather. i wasn't sure.

I decided to be a music writer my senior year of high school. I had told my college I was going to study "advertising," but then changed it before my first semester started. Probably a pretty stupid decision in hindsight.

― Elektro Guzzi Mane (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 5:01 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Kind of curious as to what age I'll choose my next career...

it was pretty much decided for me, by everyone around me, when i showed some "promise as a writer" as a very young boy. i wanted to be a cartoonist or a filmmaker until my late teens, when i realized i didnt have the talent for the former or the personality type for the latter. i then dicked around until i was 23, not taking writing too seriously, taking time off to fuck around in shitty noise/punk joke bands or go-nowhere record labels, and then finally started making contacts/selling music journalism stuff, in large part thanks to ilx.

i do wish someone had told me, as a very small boy, that a life of poverty and frustration awaited me, or that someone had told me, as a teen/early twentysomething, to stop dicking around and start taking it seriously sooner. (i didnt even bother to try and sell a piece of fiction until i was 31. it sold, but life has sort of conspired against me finishing anything since.) i think i'd be much further along than i am, even given how shit the market for any kind of writing is right now.

I always wanted to be a songwriter/recording artist and I still do but I'm not sure I regret a life of relative ocmfort so far and health insurance with random office jobs - also - anyone choosing xray tech as a job re-think it

True to my display name, the idea of a career always seemed rather alien to me. I did manage to have something of a career as a technical writer, but the only career I ever wanted was as a non-academic poet, which does not exist apart from my fanatsies.

fantasy careers are the best careers

I have refused to do anything other than my chosen career since I decided that I had to stop working in shit jobs I hate an just go for it. That was a year ago. Starting to come together but I haven't had any money for a year and I'm really hungry.

so that kind of worked? considering it tbh

I knew I was going to spend my life reading and writing, so I've chosen careers in which I can do both as much as I can in my spare time.

not for the faint hearted. Many sacrifices must be made.

hm i like money and food too much atm

I once worked somewhere looking after troubled teens over night - as long as they slept you coul dbasically have your own career while working there - like writer or something. Just sit in an office for 11 hours and give some meds

nine

owenf hats off to you

i don't have a career, but between writing, editing, and teaching humanities i think im in on the ground floor of three fast-rising industries, so watch this space

i don't have a career, but between writing, editing, and teaching humanities i think im in on the ground floor of three rapidly dwindling industries, so hold your breath

my life^^ lol u.s.

In the future the only jobs will be farmer, IT support, prostitute and plumber

I even get my haircut online these days.

For better or worse, never seriously considered anything but writing. When I was four I wanted to be a cartoon, when I was five I wanted to write and draw Pogo, when I was seven or eight I wanted to be an astronaut. Haven't strayed since. Never really did anything else for pay apart from working for the university as part of my assistantship, and managing a convenience store for a few months.

Wait... you're an astronaut?

Keep it under your hat, I don't need to hear CaptainLorax's thoughts on the moon landing.

what is writer?

I've worked in advertising and marketing since I was 18 but it wasn't until I was 27 or so that I faced the fact that I was never going to be a famous writer and decided this would be my career n shit

he has excellent penmanship xp

I have cut my own hair for 7 years now. Once you get the hang of the back bit w/mirror you'll never go back. big society.

is anyone else in tis bitch a hairdresser?

im fucked