At school, they advised me to become a vet. They were so wrong

In year 12, my exasperated careers adviser tried to cobble together ideas for me based on my stated interest, “animals” (because “the Mars vending machine” and “Orlando Bloom” were apparently unhelpful). He suggested I could be a vet.

After a dismal work placement emptying bloodied syringes and cleaning up dog poo at a veterinarian clinic, I realised my interest in animals was limited to cat memes and the occasional puppy.

A dismal work placement at a veterinarian clinic convinced me that I would never become a vet.Credit: Michael Howard

At 18, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life except watch the extended director’s commentary of Lord of the Rings as many times as humanly possible. There’s so much pressure on school finishers to know what they want to do with their lives, but it’s a lifetime process and, at 37, I’m still not sure that I’m there yet.

As Gandalf says, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” But I can guarantee you that self-knowledge and a good approach to whatever you do will help you find your feet on the path ahead.

After finishing school, I went into a bachelor of arts majoring in acting, which I thought would be fun, even though I had no desire to pursue an acting career. I liked being around creative people who operated on a similar wavelength as I did. I wasn’t a great actor and was often cast as the comic relief, but I discovered how much I loved to write, which I’ve done voraciously ever since.

My career has been less of a ladder and more of an Escher sketch with staircases leading nowhere or to somewhere unexpected that makes no sense until you see the whole picture. I’ve worked as a transcriber for a TV show about female murderers, taught English in China, pumped out coffees and gone fishing with paraplegics. I’m in the process of completing a master of applied learning to become a high school teacher.

I’m still not sure teaching will be my “forever” career. Still, I’ve learnt enough about myself to know that it will suit me: I enjoy communicating, on the page and in person, and the acting degree will come in handy when trying to engage teenagers in the thematic intricacies of Pride and Prejudice or doing a re-enactment of the smouldering Mr Darcy (via Colin Firth, obviously). But if you’d asked me at 18 if I wanted to be a high-school teacher, I would have looked at you like you’d told me you identify as a squirrel.

In his 2014 TED Talk, psychologist Barry Schwartz asks, “why do we work?” He argues that we work for more than the money, and yet, so many jobs, especially since the industrial revolution, have become “monotonous, meaningless and soul-deadening” with the only reason for doing them being the pay packet at the end of the week.

But even the seemingly “soul-deadening” jobs can be transformed into something meaningful with a bit of perspective and self-knowledge. You take what you can from everything, because you never know what will serve you down the road.

Wim Wenders’ Academy-nominated 2023 film Perfect Days follows a Japanese public toilet cleaner in his daily life. Hirayama, the protagonist, leads an unexceptional life and takes pleasure in simple pleasures, but his care in his work is exceptional, checking the underside of toilet seats for smudges with a mirror. On his lunch break, he takes photos of the dappled light in the trees and listens to his tape collection on the drive home. His life is starkly contrasted to his estranged wealthy sister, who appears later in the film and asks in disbelief, “Are you really cleaning toilets?” But Hirayama is content, which is worth more than a large salary.

“Even in unpromising situations, each of us, as individuals, can resist the ideology that tells us we don’t really care what work is like as long as we’re being well paid for it. We can demand of ourselves the effort to find the ways in which other people benefit if we do our jobs with enthusiasm rather than indifference,” Schwartz writes in his TED Talk companion book.

Life is an Escher staircase, not a ladder, even though we have this illusion of “making it” to some imagined destination, whether career or otherwise.

However, as Aristotle said, “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”, and this is especially true when choosing a vocation or cobbling together a mishmash of jobs until you find your feet. As the Irish blessing goes, “may the road rise up to meet you”. And in my words, “may your cat memes be plentiful”.

Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.

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