Choosing a career - Part 1

Choosing your future career is a really big deal - it could be the job you are going to be doing for the next 40 years or so, so is not something to take on lightly. I know that it is always possible to change your mind, and your career path, at any stage in your life, but since some careers require years of study and then specialised training (medicine, law, etc.) making the right choice as early as possible is quite important.
When I was young I wanted to be a vet - I have always loved animals, and felt that working with them would be great, but the realisation that sometimes you might have to euthanize them, or deal with horrific injuries, something I didn't think I could cope with emotionally, changed my mind. I considered marine biology, something I am still very interested in, but I have a fair skin that burns very easily (and very badly!) and decided that an outdoor water-based career was probably not a good idea. That was about as far as my career plans went until I was in my mid-teens.
At school we studied a variety of subjects until "O" (ordinary) level, and then switched to just 3 subjects for "A" (advanced) level, and generally these three were subjects required for the degree we planned to study at university, and this degree was going to be the foundation of our career path, so by "O" level we were supposed to have a good idea of what we wanted to do. I had no idea at all by then! A year before "O" level we were interviewed by a Careers Master who talked through our options, but for a few of us, like me, we sat an aptitude test to help with our career decision.
This test consisted of about 100 multiple choice questions, with things like: What would you rather do? 1. Cook a meal, 2. Read a book, 3. Play sport, and we had to stick a pin through the box next to our selected answer. Turning over the paper at the end (the Careers Master did this) the pinholes had made a pattern on the back, they actually corresponded to points on a graph, and this was supposed to indicate where our strengths lay. Mine was pretty much a flat line! This meant I showed no particular tendencies, preferences or strengths, and was of no help whatsoever! I was told, however, that this was no problem and that we could revisit it a year later on completion of "O" level.
I loved languages, and had an aptitude for maths, but my shyness made me disregard a teaching career, and I could not really see many options open to me. My father was an accountant, so I was gravitating towards that, following in his footsteps, but with no particular enthusiasm at that stage, though by the time I re-sat the aptitude test - a different one - my responses were slightly more focused and indicated that a career in accountancy might be a good choice! English and Maths were pretty much pre-requisites for a degree leading to an accountancy qualification, so that was easy, but selecting the third "A" level subject was proving difficult. I wanted to do French, but it was what they called a "subject block" meaning that, due to insufficient teachers at our relatively small school, French and Maths could not be taken together (at least the year I, and two others, wanted to do them!) - and my other options were limited to History and Geography! I had not taken either subject up to "O" level, and neither held much interest for me, but I chose History, though swapped to Geography after one term as I was struggling and not enjoying History, though didn't fare much better with Geography either!
The first year (of 3) at University studying for a Bachelor of Commerce degree - with a BComm you still had to do 3 years "articles" with a firm of chartered accountants before sitting your board exam - was tough. Subjects like Accountancy, Economics and Business Law were new to all of us (Maths and English made up the other two), and at first might as well have been Chinese. I was really struggling, especially with Law, and at the end of the first year was not doing well, and decided to change track the following year to a Bachelor of Arts with a view to teaching Modern Languages.
Subjects for year 2 were English, French, German (never done it before!) and Psychology (again new to me!), with Maths thrown in as my 5th! I was not totally sold on the idea of teaching, but basically had chosen subjects I felt I could do well in, and then looked at careers' options using those! It was not a good basis for a degree path, and I did not, to my sham, try very hard that year either. I have always had an aptitude for languages and my German professor could not believe I had no prior knowledge, as I picked up the basics very easily, but Psychology was another mystery to me - I prefer right or wrong answers rather than different interpretations!
At the end of year two I dropped out of University and decided to join a firm of Chartered Accountants, going the longer route to qualification - 5 years articles while doing a degree through distance learning (UNISA - University of South Africa), and I wished I had considered this before, because actually working with real life accounts it all made sense rather than the theoretical work in a classroom! I started work in Beira, Mozambique, for the firm that used to audit the company my father worked for, and soon discovered that I had a real aptitude for the work, despite the fact that I was having to speak Portuguese (my second language that I have been speaking since I was 7!) and learn the terminology in a foreign tongue!