Why does choosing a career path have to be so confusing/difficult?

kingslayer

Have you always known what you wanted to do, or was it just by fortune that you are in the job you're in now? Do you still not know what you want to do?

I'm 25 (almost 26) and I still have no idea what I want to do. I have made a thread on here before regarding this, but i'm just finding it hard to think of something.

I got really cr*p GCSE grades at school, so i've decided to sign up next month to go on two courses, both in maths and english. I really want to achieve an A grade in my GCSE resits this time. I think that will be a big achievement for me, and it will definitely give me the confidence to go onto further education. I am dyslexic, so i haven't always had the confidence, mainly due to that reason.

I am also looking into some free online, 6 week short courses via distance learning. The thing is, will these look good to a prospective employer?

My plan is to volunteer right now, apply for some part time jobs (or full time, depending on what i can find) and work as many hours as possible; earn as much money as i can in that time and decide by this time next year which direction i want to go in.

Another thing is, i am fed up of living in this area. It is really depressing and there's nothing exciting about it. I look around and many people are either struggling financially, homeless, or just plain despondent. I want more out of life, but unfortunately things didn't go the way i would have liked in the past.

I live with my father currently, and although we have a good relationship, i just need to get away ASAP to grow within myself. When i have enough money, i think i will houseshare with people, just so I'm out of the family home. I can wash for myself, cook good meals from scratch (no takeaways) and clean, but my father is a control freak when it comes to domestic duties haha, so i don't get a chance to help with washing or anything else, apart from cooking which i do. I also clean the house when i can and cut the grass/tidy the garden etc.

I would love to be around successful people, as currently the friends i do have are timewasters and have no motivation to change their lives at all. One friend has been dealing drugs without my knowing; he brags about earning all this money, but he will get caught and put in jail if he carries on being foolish. Another friend of mine just sits playing video games and watching t.v. when i go to visit him; his mum gets annoyed at him, but he refuses to change and my motivation lessens when i visit him, but he's a friend and i'm not going to totally dismiss him. I just don't know how to make influential/successful friends. I want to be surrounded by people who help me to flourish. I am starting to regain my motivation to change myself and my outlook, even though it's been a long process, so it would be good to have success in my life at last.

daytona0

The trick is to plan in the long and short term...

Sounds like short term you want to volunteer a bit. Great! Vet into some schools, clubs, even businesses for admin-type roles. All experience is good experience. Theguy who designed the mac I believe took a typography course in uni because wanted to and ended up using that experience when designing it. So all experience is useful even if you cant seee it now.

Sounds like long term you want some better qualificatios. Great! Go and plan how you are going to get them.


As for what you should do, who knows. Life isn't that clear cut sometimes. As long as you are continually growing you will find yourself a much happier person and things will have a habit of just falling into place in the future. Good luck!

iclayt

http://www.do-it.org.uk/ - volunteer in a variety of things and see what appeals. Admin for a charity could get you a clerical position, or working with children or older people could spark an interest in taking a course in health/social care studies. All experience is good experience.

Vision2Learn are currently offering free distance learning level 2 courses in things like business and admin, customer service etc. Places filling fast but worth a shot. Free if you commit to the course, approx £100 if you withdraw during it, probably take about 4 months to do, all done online: http://www.vision2learn.net/channels/courses.aspx

When I was unemployed I was able to do ECDL level 1 & 2 for free at my local FE college - this or the equivalent appears on the essential or desirable list for most office based jobs. See what IT courses you can do for free.

Focus on improving your life now and the future will work itself out. It's good to have ambition but you never know where life will take you so just try a few things and see what happens! You're still young, I've just turned 30 and still haven't a clue what I want to do. I'm typing this at work and in a minute I'll start my daily "I need a different job!" hunt - I wish I had broadened my experience and horizons when I was younger!

WolfSong2000

I'm 27 and still no idea what I want to do. Oh - and despite 3 attempts, I never did pass maths GCSE (I have mathematical equivalent of dyslexia). Have I let any of this hold me back? No. I managed to get a masters degree at one of the top UK uni's and have managed to get a number of different jobs, in different areas - in the last one, within 6 months I was earning more than people at the grade I was working at who had been there 3-4 years and if I'd stayed would have been a consultant within a few years earning hundreds of pounds a day. Unfortunately rh job drove me absolutely crazy, so I left, but I just moved on to something else.

It's not as much about experience as it is attitude. Employers can teach people skills, but finding someone with the right attitude is much harder. This is one of the reasons employers tend to employ people they like - so, even if you don't have the correct skill-set, if you can demonstrate the right attitude and ability to learn quickly and efficiently then you're in with a pretty good shot .

Trick is to find out what your strengths/skills are and play to them. And they might not always be what you think. Despite being atrocious at maths, the last job I had that I was very successful at required a fair amount of maths and a great deal of analysis. If I'd told myself I couldn't do it because I'd failed maths I'd never have discovered this particular hidden talent. My point is, go into everything with an open mind and never say to yourself or anyone else "I can't do this". Yes, you can - you can make an effort and try. Even if you don't achieve what you wanted, you'll still have learned something that you can apply to future situations.

InsideInsurance

Almost 36 and still no idea what I want to do - simply because you have a well paid job doesnt technically mean you know what you WANT to do!

I did well at school but dropped out of uni. From 15 I was working in call centres part time and so when education stopped I just did that full time. The area I was living wasnt good and whilst there was a lot of call centre work it was almost all agency with a very high churn of staff.

Eventually decided to relocate but as it was pretty unplanned I had to take the first job I could find and I knew with 8 years call centre experience I would be pushed into that space but decided I wanted something of a technical subject so I could progress in ways other than man management. So ended up working for an insurance company.

After 20 months there I found an internal advert for a great sounding job that I could tick most of the boxes on but it said they wanted 3 years change management experience and I didnt have any. Just afterwards the annual Graduate recruitment started and I saw that for internal staff you had to be of "degree calibre" rather than actually having a degree. Applied, one of my interviewers was the Head of Strategy and it came up that my main driver was to get change management experience.

A few days later I got a call saying the guy had been particularly impressed and wanted to offer me a 6 month secondment as long as I could get to London by Monday which would either become perm or I could go into the grad scheme if it didnt work out.

10 years later, and several companies/ jobs on, I am still basically doing the same thing just on 10 times the money I started out on. Still dont know what I want to do as a career but at least this allows me to do what I want outside of work.


I suspect a lot of people fall into their careers/ industries rather than making really active decisions to be there. Outside of actuaries I know of only a single person who actively chose to work in insurance.

PasturesNew

As the presenter on the radio said the other day (to the studio guest who was there to encourage people to do engineering) .... "most people only know the jobs their parents did, or what was in their street...."

It is almost impossible to know what is out there. You have to know: what is out there, where is it, do I want to live there/do that, are there more/less jobs doing that in the next 10 years .... and what is the route to get to it.

Some people are lucky and know these answers.... and some fall into it by geography/luck.

It's a shame there isn't somewhere you can sit down and come away with the answers ...

fufu_banterwaite

kingslayer wrote: »

My plan is to volunteer right now, apply for some part time jobs (or full time, depending on what i can find) and work as many hours as possible; earn as much money as i can in that time and decide by this time next year which direction i want to go in.

Another thing is, i am fed up of living in this area. It is really depressing and there's nothing exciting about it. I look around and many people are either struggling financially, homeless, or just plain despondent. I want more out of life, but unfortunately things didn't go the way i would have liked in the past.

I’d suggest that, by this time next year, when you have worked as many hours as possible and saved as much as you can, to get your working holiday visa for Australia or New Zealand (or Canada), get a flight over there and spend two years working and travelling.

I will broaden your horizons and change your mind. It did for me.

BrassicWoman

So many threads. So much time typing. No action?

tomterm8

If you are on JSA at the moment you're entitled to three sessions with a careers adviser ; they can send you to something called the morrisby profile that may help.

IMHO, many people never know what they want to be when they grow up. In those cases they just have to keep taking opportunities as they present themselves.