Graduates 'Could be Jobless For Years'

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

That is the thing I can't understand about the youngsters today, a fair few have no idea what they want to do after they leave school yet I knew exactly what I wanted to do from the age of 4!

What was that? When I was 4 I would have known that people delivered milk and other people worked in shops.

I didn't know a lot more until I was about 16. Then I knew people also worked in offices, as hairdressers or joined the army.

When your only exposure to the world is your small village, you have no idea what's out there.

I was actually 35 before I found out what a degree was about/for. I just used to think that people went to Uni to sit in classrooms for another 3 years, then became teachers. Really. We just had no idea back in my day about them.

SingleSue

thescouselander wrote: »

And how would a youngster know what they wanted to do? I certainly remember when I was at school and my view of the world was very different to reality. You only learn the truth when you get out in the real world and get some experience behind you.

To he honest I know a lot of adults who are unhappy with their chosen profession and still don't now what they want to do.

I think you were very lucky in knowing what you wanted to do at the age of 4 (I did too) but for most people this is not the case.

Probably the same way as me...by looking around them. They certainly should have some idea by the time they choose their GCSE's so they know where to direct themselves.

Mind you, I never went into the career I picked for myself when I was 4 properly..the dream is still there but it is a waning dream now.

I was always one of those people who had a plan of my life...except the plan didn't quite go to plan! :rotfl:

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

Probably the same way as me...by looking around them. They certainly should have some idea by the time they choose their GCSE's so they know where to direct themselves.

We were asked when our time was nearly up what job we wanted. Certainly there was no pre-planning what you wanted to do, nor information about what you could do, before we were 16.

SingleSue wrote: »

Mind you, I never went into the career I picked for myself when I was 4 properly..the dream is still there but it is a waning dream now.

I was always one of those people who had a plan of my life...except the plan didn't quite go to plan! :rotfl:

Plans are for the lost!

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

What was that? When I was 4 I would have known that people delivered milk and other people worked in shops.

I didn't know a lot more until I was about 16. Then I knew people also worked in offices, as hairdressers or joined the army.

When your only exposure to the world is your small village, you have no idea what's out there.

I was actually 35 before I found out what a degree was about/for. I just used to think that people went to Uni to sit in classrooms for another 3 years, then became teachers. Really. We just had no idea back in my day about them.

I wanted to be a nurse, this developed through my school life in wanting to be a nurse for physically and mentally disabled children, then on having my children, realised that I wasn't mentally set up for it (it would upset me too much) so decided on being a mental nurse.

Things got sidetracked along the way and it kept being put on the back burner as more money was available to be earnt elsewhere.

I was a very inquisitive child and would drive people barmy with all my questions....I was reading age 11 books at 4 and a half in my quest for knowledge!

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

We were asked when our time was nearly up what job we wanted. Certainly there was no pre-planning what you wanted to do, nor information about what you could do, before we were 16.


Plans are for the lost!

Nah, a plan is my salvation...would have gone completely round the bend if I hadn't had my master plan over the last couple of years.:D

vivatifosi

SingleSue wrote: »

I wanted to be a nurse, this developed through my school life in wanting to be a nurse for physically and mentally disabled children, then on having my children, realised that I wasn't mentally set up for it (it would upset me too much) so decided on being a mental nurse.

Thanks Sue, I've been waiting for you to answer, I can go to bed now that I know! I wanted to be an Astronaut myself. I blame growing up under the Apollo programme.

Good luck reaching your goal if you decide at some point its time to.

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

Nah, a plan is my salvation...would have gone completely round the bend if I hadn't had my master plan over the last couple of years.:D

I've never had time for any plan since I should have had one. It was always change, change, change. Wasn't ever long in one place, jobs/income/situation changing. Always having to work out where the money was coming from this week/month to pay for life and I've been all over the place. I was doing an OU course at one point, got over halfway through, then circumstances changed and I wasn't in a position to continue doing it. If you're not settled and having constant change you just wait, hoping that things will settle/change soon ... but if after 10 years they haven't you kind of just treat the change as normal and don't even think about plans.

Who knows, in 2 weeks' time I could have had a phone call, interview ... and be starting a new job 100-200 miles away. Or maybe my temp job will extend a few weeks. Or maybe there's no work in 2 weeks. So I can't even think about anything until I know what happens next .... and repeat, repeat ....

No point me doing a degree now. When I get a job and settle somewhere I can pick up the OU again, but not until then.

globalds

Interesting thread.
I will definitely be pushing my kids to continue to Uni.
I have very few academic qualifications and spent a few years working in Japan and was very aware of the difference amongst the group of ex pats who met to share a pint .The graduates and none graduates working world was poles apart.
I do not feel comfortable with the huge amount of debt built up to gain this qualification ...mainly for the notion that when you are young it is one of the few times you can hold to high aspirations and morels and make choices on them ...The idea that you end up for example working for a questionable corporation because the golden handshake will clear your debts kind of makes me feel we have lost something as a society....
But maybe some things gain value when they start costing more ?
I see this countries biggest threat to future successes being a land populated by under educated ferrel youth rather than an over supply of slightly more enlightend if some what naive youngsters .

baileysbattlebus

PasturesNew wrote: »

I was always good at Maths ... in fact right now I am working as an Info Analyst building spreadsheets that others can't destroy, in order to collect information in a standard format, then perform what I consider to be quite basic maths on that data. As for spreadsheets, I hardly use them, but they're so straight forward and obvious to me that I can always work out what needs to be done. Having said that, I've also written training manuals for them and delivered training courses ... and supported Excel.... but I just find it easy/obvious to do 99% of what your average person could possibly ever want to do with them.

I mostly create straight forward (to me) formulae that perform the equivalent of pivot tables, yet enable me to present the information in better ways, so the exact data output can match exactly the reporting requirements.

And I feel guilty for taking their money it's so easy.

Aah, but you're in the minority PN. I am the same and have never had an issue with either maths or spreadsheets. Spreadsheet modelling used to be part of my job.

In one job where there were temps and they had to fill in their timesheets using 100th's of an hour, a lot them couldn't fill them in correctly. Ofcourse they didn't realise they couldn't fill them correctly. When I used to sign them I used to tell them that they would be underpaid. They would put 7.45 instead of 7.75, 7.15 instead of 7.25, you get my drift, so at the end of the week they could be an hour or more out. And they would be paid for less than the hours they had worked.

I used to correct the timesheets for them and the frightening thing was that some of them never got their heads round it.

And some that thought they had, would add up the times and still use 60th's of an hour for the weeks total, although they had used 100th's of an hour for the days. That's just one example. These were all ages not just young people

One bad side of this was that you were never sure about the quality of the work they would do, if they couldn't complete a timesheet correctly what else couldn't they do, but thought they could.

And don't feel guilty about taking their money, I wouldn't, you obviously have skills people need.

baileysbattlebus

SingleSue wrote: »

I wanted to be a nurse, this developed through my school life in wanting to be a nurse for physically and mentally disabled children, then on having my children, realised that I wasn't mentally set up for it (it would upset me too much) so decided on being a mental nurse.

Things got sidetracked along the way and it kept being put on the back burner as more money was available to be earnt elsewhere.

I was a very inquisitive child and would drive people barmy with all my questions....I was reading age 11 books at 4 and a half in my quest for knowledge!

I used to work with one girl during her holidays, who was training to be a mental nurse
She was dyslexic, now if there is one thing that would worry me it would a member of the medical profession who is dyslexic. She had stickers to put on all of her course work.

She was a lovely girl, but I wouldn't be happy if she was reading or writing any medical notes for me!