"Get off your Mustang, Sally"

[steepholm]

Judging from interviews, every famous person seems to have been told by a careers teacher at some point that they would "Never amount to anything", "Just didn't have what it takes to make it as a professional" etc., but then went on to prove them gloriously wrong.

This never happened to me - in fact, I don't think I ever spoke to a careers teacher at all. Perhaps we didn't have one at my school? The traditional options were get married or work in the brewery/on the farm, so it would have been a rather dispiriting assignment, I imagine.

But are careers teachers universally this negative in their attitudes? Doesn't it seem like it would be the first thing you learn at careers-teacher school, "Don't tell children that they'll never amount to anything"? Is it some kind of reverse-psychology motivational tool, sparingly but deliberately deployed? Or are the celebs bending the truth a smidge? I don't know, but I'd be interested to hear whether anyone here has been subjected to this kind of treatment.

Comments

[calimac]

The closest I can speak to that is that my teachers in secondary school frequently warned us that university would be much more difficult. This did have a reverse psychology effect, because I found when I got to university that it seemed much easier than I'd been expecting. Though in retrospect I realize that there were some deep challenges in there.

I've seen a kind of reverse thing in biographies, which is of someone as a child having an improbably specific goal of what they wanted to achieve as an adult and then getting it, like (as with one character in Robert Caro's biography of LBJ) becoming Speaker of the Texas State House of Representatives. A.N. Wilson noted this in his review of the book, and then brought up a British semi-equivalent, which is the photo of the infant Harold Wilson posing in front of the door to Number Ten. Wilson then pointed out that there are lots of photos of children posing there, but since the others did not subsequently become Prime Minister nobody's interested in it.

[heleninwales]

there are lots of photos of children posing there, but since the others did not subsequently become Prime Minister nobody's interested in it

Indeed. Somewhere there's a photo of my brother posing on the steps of Number Ten Downing Street. (You could do that back in the 60s.) I remember feeling rather miffed that my parents didn't think it worthwhile taking one of me there.

But as to careers advisers, our school didn't have one. We were sort of guided, I suppose, and when it came to choosing A-level subjects, we were supposed to have at least a vague idea in mind. But the top stream of the grammar school was just assumed to be going to university, therefore any career choices would be made later.

[steepholm]

I think my family also assumed I'd go to uni (and they weren't wrong - I've barely left since), which may be why I either didn't meet an advisor or have repressed the memory. Mine was a Secondary-Mod-turn-comp, though I doubt the school made the same assumption.

[calimac]

We didn’t have any career advisors either, but I can remember taking a career aptitude test, which told me I should be an architect, having failed to ask whether I had any artistic talent or indeed an ability to draw.

[ethelmay]

I remember being indignant at the aptitude test having no better ideas for someone who said they liked logic puzzles and what not than mathematician, physicist, etc. (possibly not even suggesting computer programming, not sure). As if there weren't a zillion other areas where that sort of thinking was helpful, including ones I might not have thought of, which surely was supposed to be part of the point.

[calimac]

On the other hand there's this in an obituary:

"Shy and closed off, Redford said he didn’t fit in with the other drama students who were eager to show off their acting skills. After a performance in front of his class with a fellow student that ended in frustration and disaster, Redford said his teacher pulled him aside and encouraged him to stick with acting."

[steepholm]

It's the bad ones that make the more spectacular anecdotes, I suppose.

[joyeuce]

There was a careers room at my school, with shelves full of leaflets, prospectuses, etc. I used to go in and look at university prospectuses sometimes. But I think most of us hadn't really thought beyond university to a career at that stage.

The head of history was also the careers teacher, but I don't remember having many discussions with him. I don't think he liked me much after I got a B at GCSE (he'd told us that as the top set we were expected to get As, but most of us didn't, possibly because something came up in the paper on a period he hadn't taught us because "it never comes up") and opted not to do history A level (I couldn't face another two years of him).

[steepholm]

I actually dropped History at 14, which seems absurd considering how large it loomed in my life afterwards - not so much because of the teacher as the curriculum, which at that time didn't interest me at all (it was all spinning jennies and what not).

[joyeuce]

Similar curriculum, which I found very dull. But the way the school grouped subjects for GCSE, if I hadn't taken history, I'd have had to take biology, which I hated.

Someone else's comment has reminded me we did do aptitude tests a couple of times, one for potential careers and one for potential universities and subjects. I think they were the Morrisby ones. Can't remember what they told me, though, except that I had poor spatial awareness, which I already knew.

[thistleingrey]

My school counselor figured that my father was right and I shouldn't really go to college, though he because I was a girl and the counselor because I wasn't white. As a result, I have nontrivial bias in wondering whether some of the famous people got classism-biased remarks or similar.

[ethelmay]

ISTR, but I can't find the quotation now, that Robertson Davies was told that he might not want to be a psychiatrist because he'd have to spend all his time with rather unpleasant and difficult people (usually not their faults, but still), and he said that was actually good advice. (Probably indicating that indeed he wouldn't have been good at it.) I think he was the one who said that in his experience he'd had a lot of good advice in his life, and people bad-mouth advice unduly. (Oh, I found that bit. "It is often and carelessly said that nobody ever takes advice. It is not true. I have taken an enormous amount of advice myself, and some of it was extraordinarily helpful to me.")

[steepholm]

Do people bad-mouth advice? I think I've been a little too respectful of it, on balance, solicited or otherwise. BUt I might well be an outlier.

[steepholm]

I think the only piece of advice I really regret taking was the advice not to invite Umberto Eco to write a foreword to an anthology of the writings of John Wilkins, some time in the 1990s, on the grounds that it would have been impertinent to ask such an august figure. It's not that it wouldn't have been, of course, but in that case he could have just said no or ignored the request.

The anthology never came to pass - it was never going to be published without a foreword by Umberto Eco or something similarly spectacular.