Career Choices if you were starting again

[El Presidente]

My son comes has one semester to go before completing his year 12 studies. He has worked hard and will graduate with marks good enough to do pretty much whatever he chooses.

From your experience. If you were 18 again, what career path would you choose? Would you have changed the career track you have gone down? why?

I would appreciate your thoughts/life experiences/suggestions.

[riazp]

In my case Rob, I studied Finance, and as you know i'm a banker. During my studies, I worked at mcdonald's and I after I finished my studies I was a manager for a couple of years before I finally found a position that I actually wanted to do in the financial world.

But If i was do to it over again, I would have followed my dreams, not have listened to my mother, who wanted me to have "a proper job" and studied in Cuisine and become a Chef. THats what I really wanted to do, thats what I loved and still love, I love to cook. I probably should have followed my dreams and studied in a culinary school, and have become a chef, which is a thankless job and have no life, but its something i'm passionate about.

So thats my story.

[kgoings]

I joined the military for a couple years and then got a job in IT. I have progressed up the ranks and I like what I do (16 years in IT) and I make good money.

I have put lots of thought into this in the past couple years. I really love to help people. And when my mom a couple years ago had an aneurysm we spent a lot of time in the hospital. I actually thought about a career change at the time cause the people there, nurses, docs, and surgeons are really helping people. I still would love to do that, but I am the sole provider for my family and don't have the time to go back to school full time to do that. So I would do something in the medical fields.

[CaptainQuintero]

I wouldn't have got that job at a pub at 16, microwaving steak gave me a crooked slant on cooking

I would probably say pick something that you enjoy that helps people, it doesn't have to be traditionally helping people such as being a doctor but anything from cooking food for people to organising hot air ballon rides etc

As long as you do something which makes people feel good, and you get enjoyment from it then everything else tends to fall into place.

I think it's hard to have a bad day at work when your job entails giving others happiness.

[Nocoins]

I'd become a doctor or join the military, but I'd probably not want to be a doctor in the military.

[Cohiba Stevie]

I would have loved to work in a recording studio as a sound engineer.

[First Lady]

Trust me being married to a chef and coming from 15 years in hospitality , the industry has alot to be desired My husband is no longer a chef and has no want to go back to it or cooking ( being a cook cook he feels he doesn't have to do any cooking )

I always wanted to be a fashion buyer or be in that industry but my choices took me in a different direction... I have had heaps of fun along the way, meet some great longlife friends and if it wasn't for my choice of career Rob would never have heard of me and offered me this job

I think when I go to my High School Reunion in October I am going the have the most interesting job out of all of them

I love my job and my boys and count myself very very lucky

[Colt45]

Without taking into account how any changes would effect my current life, I'd probably have made more a go of music.

[mbrody]

First, follow your dreams if you can afford to, or don't mind struggling while you go after it. If I stayed with that, something in Film is what I would have went after.

Second, when reality hit, I should have listened to my father and become a teacher.

[BobKincaid]

My thinking is to suggest to the young man that whatever he does, it's not necessarily what he'll be doing ten, or perhaps even five years from now. This is a much different world from that of our fathers and grandfathers. This generation has been trained from the ground up in multi-tasking. The age of the Enlightened Generalist is upon us. He may change careers five times before he finds his passion. I found mine early, but wound up having to do a number of things before I came back to it. If I ever have to leave it again, I'll go weeping.

I've had a number of careers in my time. Broadcast is the one I love most and at which I've worked the hardest. Lawyering was brutal and brutish and just plain hard on the soul. Roofing houses is just plain hard on the hide.

From my vantage point, the key is to find something that occupies both body and mind. When a person does that, they start approaching a "calling" and trending away from a "job."

Good luck to your young man, Rob! He sounds like a good one!

[MoneyPit]

We joke about what our alternate careers would be while at work all the time... I found myself in engineering because I was always good at fixing things and it gave me a sense of accomplishment as well as the satisfaction of helping others. I always smile and say I would be a pharmacist, the thought of giving the crazies their pills makes me laugh. I probably wouldn't be very good at it but I sure as hell would have more cash to spend on cigars.

If I could I would love to be a master carpenter for an organization such as Habitat for Humanity. Unfortunately, as much as I love carpentry its just not a skill that I've ever perfected. I always tell my younger family members to find something in which they have an interest and will provide them with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at the end of the day.

[benjaminbbush]

My track would have remained law school, but I would have gone to work for the prosecutors office to get some courtroom experience. I LOVE my work as a transactional real estate attorney (especially when the market was better) but I would love (and may move toward) doing some real lawyering in the courtroom.

[CigarAsh]

I've always had a love of fine craftsmanship and woodworking. It's a hobby I'm passionate about now and have often thought a career doing it could be fun. But part of me fears trying to make a living at it would kill the joy.

For anyone interested this is the kind of stuff I like to do (and yes, I've made a fair number of humidors, too): http://lumberjocks.com/gashley/projects

[Guest rob]

I worked as a Mechanical Engineer for 17 years before I got into selling Real Estate.... the change I would make is to have started in Real Estate right from the beginning.

[Styler]

This is a subject that I often think about, not that I'm bitter or anything! Physics was my favourite subject at school and so it was an obvious choice for me to study physics at uni. I wanted to be a research astronomer or quantum physicist. The problem was that the university I wanted to go to had canceled their applied physics course that year due to lack of interest. I had the option of waiting another year but there was no guarantee that the course would run then either so I went with my second choice which was computer science. 10 years later I earn an alright salary from a boring IT job. I can't really complain as there are many people out of work but I wish I had studied physics one way or another. I recently looked into doing it part time but it would take me about 10 years to get a good level of qualification by which point I would be nearly 40. The moral of the story is make sure he choses something he is interested in, not just something that will end with a ' decent' job. I believe it's the Japanese who say that if you do a job you love you never have to work a day in your life. Any jobs going in the cigar game?

[CBL]

Im one year away from graduating as an Advertising major and I can't wait to start working in advertising and hopefully make my mark with some cool campaigns.

But if I was 16 again, I might have gone to a culinary school, then to London to do an apprenticeship and hopefully to New York to work in the kitchen of a renowned chef.

[headstand]

Interesting comments so far.

What I have gathered from my life so far:

1. most people today have multiple careers over their working life. It's a useful thing to know a head of time. Apart from the early ski-bum jobs, I have had two major careers so far.

2. oddly enough, the flip side of point #1 is that it takes 10 years to acquire expertise. Having recently bridged that time span in my current career I can attest to the accuracy of that statement. It's a strange transition from tentative to confidence, hesitation to certainty that make a world of difference in your job satisfaction. Think of the kid who has been collecting bugs all his life - is it a surprise that he loves his job teaching about bugs at a university for the rest of his life? He was an expert by the time he got his graduate degree...

3. who you work with does truly make a difference (Lisa, you know what I'm talking). I would never have lasted in my current career had it not been for the people I currently work for and with. I regularly get my ass kicked by the company brass, I have single handedly made the manufacturers of Advil and Gaviscon wealthy, have had to confess great depths of bitterness to my priest, YET I would not trade my current job for anything but the comfort of retirement...all because of the people, including the brass that kicks my ass.

4. oh yah, it's tough for the kids of successful parents - big shoes to fill and all that...

5. money makes a poor substitute to happiness (my two boys are teaching me that one -love them to bits). Then again money buys cigars so the verdict is still out.

Hope this helps.

[bombaybill]

I would work for a Non-Profit organization. Prefer a job in the liberal arts......my big regret is passing up on the job to work for the Met Opera in NYC.

[docbp87]

Honestly, knowing what I know now, I would be in the same field I am in now, but in a different position. I work in a huge independent compounding pharmacy. I didn't go to Pharmacy school though (but I am seriously considering it now, given my experience, and interest now), but if I could do it all over again I definitely would go to Pharmacy school right out of undergrad, since being a Pharmacist is a fantastic gig, no matter what kind of pharmacy you work in. The pay is much higher than most people probably think, the work is fascinating, and rewarding, getting to help people medically one on one, and the field is always changing, and progressing. You get to see the cutting edge of disease treatment, and well... medicine. I'm not sure what pay is like for pharmacists in other countries, but here in the US, base salaries are well over 100K in your retail chain stores, more in independents, and compounding labs. Plus there is the research and development side, working for the drug companies directly, which is really cool work.

[First Lady]

To work for the Met in NYC... what a job that would be

[CohibaBehike]

Just had my first "real" job interview today and wondered this all day... Hope to be moving the way I'd like to be and hopefully I'll land this job, big step up for me in the land of money (Broke to less broke ). I'll let you guys know in 10 years if I made the right choice of my career!

[DougB]

I am a school of hard knocks cook turned classically trained chef that would have been a surgeon if I could do it all over again.

[Puros Y Vino]

Great question. My natural talent is art. I could sketch, paint in many varying styles, sculpt etc. Right through high school I scored fantastically in all my classes. I applied to the big art school in Toronto and was turned down twice. I don't think I was weird enough for them. My fingernails weren't black, I didn't dress goth and I didn't have a soulless depressed look on my face. From there I thought screw it! What's a promising growth sector?? Computers/IT. I went to university for four years, got a degree and had job offers halfway through my fourth year. I worked for a small firm and was given a lot of responsibility and autonomy, made a lot of clients happy and kept a 125% billable rate for 4 years. The owners loved me. I made them and myself some decent cash leading up to Y2K. I'm in the IT Service Mgmt side of things now which allows me some creativity but I somewhat regret not following my natural talents at art. I've done next to nothing in terms of new pieces in the last 15 years besides a few sketches and watercolours. I would've been happy in graphic design had I kept at it. Nonetheless, I still have my talents and will get back into art for the love of it. My IT career has a made a lot of things possible for me. So I won't look back at it negatively. I've met a lot of good friends, traveled extensively and gained new pursuits. Wine and cigars for instance.

[aes8]

Jedi Knight

[First Lady]

Jedi Knight

You and Smithy