following a career plan?

[Nebulous]

Are you following a career plan?

What is the next step in your career path?

[Sassy]

To be honest I never really followed a plan, oddly enough just quit my job of 8 years working in Fast Food. Restaurant called Raising Canes, felt very stuck and numb working there after awhile in fast food industry you feel you have nothing to offer and give stuck in between that reality unable to move. Finally realized I can move and get the hell out of there. Even before never really had a plan after high school wanted to just live life in the moment. 

[Animedragon]

Career planning wasn't really a thing when I was at school. When you left school unless you were going on to college or university you went along to the local job centre to see what was on offer.

I ended up doing a job I didn't even know existed, initially I thought of it as a stop-gap until I found something else, but I found I enjoyed it so much I stayed doing it for 48 years. I ended up working for four different companies in lots of different places.  Curiously in my final 10 years I worked for three different employers but in the same room in the same building.

[efaardvark]

Career plan?  I think I remember having a Plan, but it didn't even survive through college. 

My original idea was to finish HS then go to a community college nearby that had classes creditable towards the University of California system.  I'd take the general-education and lower level classes at the CC where it was cheap(ish) and then transfer to UCI to take the "real" courses and complete a 4 year C&IS degree.  Seemed like a good Plan at the time.

Anyway, I took the anthropology 101, English-lit, and phys-ed at the CC to get that stuff out of the way.  Took a couple low-level electrical engineering (digital) courses towards the degree too.  That was fun.. the class project was building a computer out of NAND gates.  My bits were the ALU and I/O.  (No pun intended.)  Also took a physics class that had transferable credits.  So far so good. 

Unfortunately the Plan only survived about a year and a half until I ran out of money.  I never believed in going into debt for education expenses (or anything else for that matter) and I'd thought I could do part-time work for cash while going to school.  Turns out I'm not that gifted.  Work OR studying.. trying to do both made a mess of everything.

So I took a semester off and started working for a mini-computer OEM doing system software and tech support.  Made some money but the company went out of business.  Not really a problem as I was planning on leaving anyway & I'd just go back to school a bit earlier than planned.  Summer break was coming up however & I decided I didn't need the vacation so much as more tuition/book money.  Fortunately the planets aligned - literally - and I found a job changing reel-to-reel tapes on the Voyager Neptune encounter at JPL.  (JPL is only about 20 minutes away by freeway.)   The work was work a trained   could do but it paid well and fit with my future plans.  The encounter and data playback was only a couple months and at the end of summer I'd have some money and could go back to school and finish the degree. 

But my boss liked my work & at the end of the Voyager encounter asked me if I'd be interested in a full-time job in realtime ops in the NOC there in the SFOF.  Wasn't at all part of my original Plan but hey, NASA, so I took it.  I figured it would look good on the resume, was good work experience, and if it didn't work out I could always go back to plan A.  The next 40 years were a blur.  Always something to do and more work than people to do it.  Never did finish the degree.  Hopefully someday I'll be able to retire.  Career?  Plan?  What plan? 

 

[Emotion Flux]

Well, since I never finished school and have a lot of other things to do before I try to get an education, I don't exactly have a lot of possibilities when it comes to a career. Being an autistic kid in the 90's was vicious... no one even knew I had it, apparently, since we only recently discovered that when I'm now at the age of 34, so I didn't get the help I needed. I didn't have any special attention like I should've, so I just fell through the cracks.

Maybe a career at some point, but for the time being, I'm in limbo.

[Nebulous]

Nope, I am happy with my blue collar job. I have a cheap mortgage and can pay my bills just fine. I don't want some highfalutin stressful job that will put me in an early grave. I do my 8 hours, then go live a life! No stress at all.

[animechat]

I never has really plan and doing simple jobs with elastic working time.

Edited July 14, 2023 by animechat

[Metro]

So, I had this topic open for a while, really thinking about my answer. 

As an undergrad student in the middle of my degree and with the expectation from family to continue these studies into a master's degree, I do see myself looking for a high-end degree, ideally, I'd love to continue onto a Ph.D., make a name for myself in the academic world and dream of having an impact on the world.  

[Digimon_Sommelier]

Owning an anime company. That's the aim.

[Animedragon]

14 hours ago, Digimon_Sommelier said:

Owning an anime company. That's the aim.

As in, licensing anime series and releasing them on DVD/Blu-ray in the US/Europe or forming your own studio and creating original anime series?

Both are possible, with a good deal of work, effort and a lot of money.

[Otaking66lives]

Had a career mapped out with a certain company...didn't work out...now I have a new one with a new company...making a career out of my current job and retiring from here...eventually...lol XD

[Digimon_Sommelier]

16 hours ago, Animedragon said:

As in, licensing anime series and releasing them on DVD/Blu-ray in the US/Europe or forming your own studio and creating original anime series?

Both are possible, with a good deal of work, effort and a lot of money.

Both are in my lane of dreams. If I could produce/dub Digimon series, as well as original anime I have written, that would be SUPER!!

Edited July 26, 2023 by Digimon_Sommelier

[viruxx]

I'm beyond ready for a career change. It's been long-overdue and should have happened years ago. I'm digging around and taking career/personality/interest assessment tests, looking into things that I might find more meaningful and fulfilling than what I'm currently doing. I don't exactly know what I want to get into after the restaurant business yet, but I can sure as hell say I want nothing more to do with direct customer/public service ever again, ideally. For now, I'm focused on eliminating my debts, while saving up a little at the same time. Once my obligations are satisfied, I'll likely make my move to something (hopefully) better. At least, that's my "plan" at the moment.