Life is FAR more important than work
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Yes. The truest of true things. Shame it only truly sinks-in when we’re old…
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I keep trying to drum it into my kids,if you can get a job you enjoy/love you have kind of cracked it. Sod working 50 years in a job you hate just because it pays better
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The key to happiness right there 
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Sometimes easier said than done when there are mouths to feed and bills to pay!
Sentiment is right, though.
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Of course I’m sure we have all done shitty jobs to pay the bills
Would just hate to see my kids get tied up in a hefty mortgage where you are under constant stress and have to tolerate a wanky job for 50 years through fear of losing everything
GLWT - explaining to kids why consumerism is a trap of lies we walk into willingly and never leave, even though we’ll die empty and unsatisfied…
Yep, one of many reasons why I have no kids of my own…
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So true, although most of the current younger generation will struggle to even get a mortgage.
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Yes, we all have options in life. You just have to choose the route you want to take
Me too, Lauren wants to be a vet, has done forever and is smart enough to do it, but I’m really worried about the competition for places. But I suppose the study path she’s going to follow would work for being a doctor, and she’s comfortable with techy stuff too, so she’ll find something that fits.
Ellie I’m more worried about, she’s fairly clever but shit at converting schoolwork to exams, she has a vague idea that she’d like to join the RAF and do something engineeringy, but the only thing she shows any real interest in is stupid fucking American youtubers, crappy teen TV and the most fucking godawful boy bands. She actually reminds me a bit too much of me, albeit with shit taste in music, which doesn’t bode well.
I actually did the “If you’re not doing something worthwhile by the time you’re 18, you’re out of this house!” speech the other night 
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My niece wanted very much to be a vet & had to work extremely hard to get onto the degree course. Since qualifying she has worked in several vet practices and is utterly disenchanted by the actuality of working in the ‘industry’. So I’d strongly recommend that your daughter talks to some (preferably young) vets & finds out more about what it’s really like before committing to it as a career path.
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I remember being at school when some new fangled computerized career planning thing (jiig-cal) was introduced. It was a tick box questionnaire of sorts. I was excited to learn what the computerized oracle would suggest. jiig-cal indicated I had the aptitude to become a pig farmer! Remarkably specific but there it was, a life wallowing in shit surrounded by pigs. Ironically the prediction was rather accurate as I went into the music industry.
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It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot of late with this likely career change from tech to cheffing.
Growing up the perceived wisdom seemed to be that it was a bad idea to make a hobby into a career because it would ruin the hobby. I’ve come to the conclusion that was shitty advice. I should add that I didn’t dislike doing computer related work, but a lot of the companies were complete arseholes to work for, which has become an increasingly important aspect for me.
It’s not clear cut but it does change the hobby - it becomes harder to ‘switch off’ from ‘work’.
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I lasted precisely one year in my original chosen career…teaching Craft, Design and Technology in secondary school. I loved my subject and was good at it - making stuff from wood, metal, wires…electronics etc…I made SS amps and other stuff. Whilst I was doing my degree i always worked part time in HiFi shops. My first job in a real nasty school in S. Leeds put me off teaching and children forever.
I was pondering a job in HiFi / technology when one of the research councils offered me money to retrain as a software engineer, turned out that despite not really realising it i was quite good at the hardware/electronics stuff and I was offered a PhD place…the rest is history, but I did end up teaching electronics and computing.
now I rarely teach (Undergraduates these days remind me of those kids back in that school in 1988), but I deal with people and politics - I miss making stuff, but if the plans fall into place I’ll be retired by 58, in 6 years time.
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I loved craftwork at school and wasn’t particularly gifted academically. When I had to make a choice between metalwork and woodwork aged about 14, I chose woodwork because metal was a lot more hard work with all of the filing, sawing, etc. Was a lazy cunt even back then 
Unlike a lot of others on here it seems, after serving my joinery apprenticeship, I couldn’t wait to get off the tools. Grabbed the very first opportunity that came along to go on the management ladder, in my late twenties.
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You mean just like the majority of us have ?
I’ve banged on about my job enough… 
However, most of the advice I got when I started was, that the trade had died and was never going to recover because people dressed differently “these days”. I didn’t really have a clue what else to do because I had grown up around my dad’s workshop and it was all I had ever known. I took the longest, hardest route possible by learning the making side before the cutting side and somewhere along the way I developed a passion for it. Now, I am one of only three people my age on the street who can cut (plenty younger and only one or two older) and I am the only one of those who can make a coat (anything with sleeves is a coat). Come to think of it, I am pretty much the only person on Savile Row actually working as a tailor, everyone else is either a cutter or a coat maker, trouser maker or whatever. I am lucky to have a job where I can join up everything I have learnt these days.
I will never retire, the trade is a huge part of my life honestly and now I am a bit more mature, I have a good balance between it and everything else. Besides, it’s only now that the feeling that I am an imposter is receding and that I can actually do it…
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I certainly have that imposter feeling with even the notion of applying to some of the kitchens round here as an apprentice! I think it’s probably not helped by the fact that my sense of smell is essentially non-existent, which may or may not turn out to be a serious issue.
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I thought so too, until my eldest daughter applied to BAE and was told there was nothing suitable, she has a PhD in IT and Science based subject, strange company. She now works for Helsinki Uni in research and the other opportunities were in France, USA and one in Nottingham (for half the money of Helsinki and having to spend 1/2 her time in Switzerland). It seems that in the UK we don’t actually want PhD students with technology qualifications and then wonder why we are falling behind.