Have you ever wondered:
Why did that person choose that career?
What are the basic requirements to get started in my career choice?
Would I have to achieve the best school grades to succeed in any career?
How do you land that first adult career job?
If I start a career path, can I ever change to a different career?
How have others met and overcome any career challenges?
What constitutes career satisfaction (beyond money earned)?
Each career story provides one person’s perspective to answer how he or she made their career choices, gained experience, dealt with any challenges, and eventually achieved career satisfaction.
Many stories are presented anonymously for several reasons: (1) participants were more likely to provide complete and accurate accounts of their career journey when not faced with potential adverse comments or embarrassment by revealing their identities; and (2) specifying where they lived, went to school and their business names might be a distraction to the readers.
All the career stories will continue to be available to the public via free access to this website which will be constantly supplemented, especially as new careers develop, and some disappear as totally unnecessary. (See COMMENTARIES – “EXTINCT CAREERS” – a mildly amusing list related to outside influences affecting careers such as new inventions, economic depressions, pandemics, etc.)
The target readership includes school students (especially high school and college) plus adults about to enter or re-enter the workforce (e.g., after divorce or exiting military service). None of the stories reveal confidential business or personal information.
These stories are presented for the guidance of people seeking useful and enjoyable careers, capable of supporting basic living expenses. Every career surely has an opening for one or more dedicated professionals. Good “luck” (which we define as “experience meets opportunity“) along your journey!
Obviously, the story of only one or a few representatives of each career cannot present the sole path for that specific career. But many of the experiences presented within each narrative are common to all careers:
* Rarely is a final career choice selected early in childhood without eventual change of direction. (See most career stories).
* Parental influences can be either direct (“You should be a doctor, lawyer or engineer!”) or indirect (e.g., copying a parent’s dedicated work ethic – see ‘MEDICINE – PULMONOLOGIST’); also, parental influences may be positive (e.g., parent obviously loves their career) or negative (e.g., child purposely avoids parent’s career as boring or avoids some of its specific annoyances such as commuting, excessive traveling or night hours). (See LAW – TRIAL ATTORNEY; see also COMMENTARIES – A PROMISE TO GRADS WHO SHOW NO PROMISE)
* While working hard to achieve “good” grades in school creates more career opportunities, a mediocre GPA does not kill all chances for a successful adult career when the individual is dedicated to continuous learning to enable his or her best daily performance. (For examples of career stories involving some poor high school grades but adult career success, see: ‘HEALTHCARE – OB/GYN’ and ‘LAW – TRIAL ATTORNEY’)
* Indecision for choosing a final career interest is not unusual even through high school or college graduation. (See ‘TECHNOLOGY – PROGRAM DESIGNER’)
* A random event (e.g., observing one workday situation or enrolling in one college professor’s interesting course) may spark a new interest in a career. (See ‘EDUCATION – COLLEGE PROFESSOR VIA SURFER DUDE’; see also SCIENCE – MARINE BIOLOGIST)
* Brief, part-time experience in a career setting, through an extended internship or brief ‘shadowing’, can be helpful to motivate toward – or away from – a career path. (See ‘SCIENCE – MARINE BIOLOGIST’)
* Most career challenges can be overcome; (See “HOSPITALITY – EXECUTIVE CHEF’); if not, there need be no permanent harm in changing your mind to return to your prior job or trying a completely new career. (See ‘BUSINESS – PROJECT MANAGER’)
* Reasonable risk may be accepted in pursuing a new career path or altering an existing path. The more you already understand about the path ahead, the less the risk. (See ‘HOSPITALITY – B&B INNKEEPER’ and ‘TRADE – CARPENTER’))
* What may appear to be “luck” in finding a career opportunity is likely just the result of (transferable) experience meets a (random) opportunity. (See ‘MILITARY – MILITARY TO CIVILIAN CAREER TRANSITION’)
* Someone else’s career advice to merely “Follow your passion!” should mean follow your interest while at the same time earning a living; merely following a passion could be accomplished as a non-paying hobby. (See ‘TRADE – ELECTRICIAN VIA COLLEGE’ and ‘TECHNOLOGY – SOFTWARE ENGINEER’) (see also COMMENTARIES – FOLLOW YOUR PASSION)
* For every person willing to work hard and continue learning, there are many interesting and financially supporting careers waiting. (See all career category stories.)
All career stories within this library are accurate summaries of either personal interviews conducted by the Editor, news articles, credible facts known to the Editor or obituaries of folks with interesting careers which included reason(s) why that career was chosen, how any challenges were met and finally, career satisfaction (other than money earned).
Where a person changed careers (sometimes more than once), their career story might be included within separate categories. For example: ‘ATHLETICS – College Scholarship Athlete’ and ‘EDUCATION – Science Teacher and Sports Coach’ are essentially the same person’s story presented within different category titles. In that way, a reader interested in pursuing a college athletic scholarship could be attracted to the ATHLETICS category while a different reader, interested in becoming a science teacher, could be attracted to the EDUCATION category.
Obituaries provide efficient ways to gather stories of unusual occupations such as Clown, Harpsichordist and Zookeeper. As one obituary writer noted: “While perusing death notices from local funeral homes, I came across the story of a lady who had been both a florist and a butcher. I wish I had known her during her lifetime, to prepare her career story. But then I realized I still could, while drafting her obituary!”
The Editor of these career stories reviews obituaries daily from several newspapers for several purposes: (A) to possibly add an interesting career to this collection and (B) to confirm – by omission of his own obituary – that he is still on the north side of the cemetery grass. So far, so good.
Other career guides may be found through the internet, including at US.BLS (Occupational Outlook Handbook), grow.Google/certificates, workprep.com, salaries/indeed.com, everyjobforme.com and careertech.org/Career-Clusters.
Artificial Intelligent (A.I.) has not been – and will never be – used for any purpose within this Career Stories Library.
The storytellers and their stories have been involved with the 50 U.S states plus Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East (see the career story within ‘EDUCATION – COLLEGE PROFESSOR / INFORMAL AMBASSADOR’), Nepal (see ENVIRONMENT – mountain climbing guide) and Thailand (see LAW – IMMIGRATION LAWYER)
Starting salaries and projected future earnings are important factors in deciding which career path to pursue. But, we won’t be reviewing the specifics of present or future projected compensation within this Career Stories Library project, for several reasons: (1) compensation rates are always subject to change so any information would have to be frequently updated; (2) compensation varies from geographic area to area – for example, pay rates in New York City are usually higher than any city in the mid-west, due to the high cost of living in NYC; (3) compensation should not be the main reason you choose – or change – your career.
The stories within this collection cannot possibly represent all possible paths for any career described: why that career was interesting to one person may not be the same reason which interested another; also, career requirements differ from time to time and from area to area (for example, in early 2023, the Pennsylvania Governor eliminated a college degree requirement for many thousands of state government jobs).
These collected stories cannot possibly predict every future career category. So, the extent to which these stories may help to guide future career searches is left to the judgment of the reader. There are several perspectives on the usefulness of these stories for considering future career paths. (The following are not listed in order of perceived importance):
a) A career counselor at Drexel University, Ken Bohrer, told this editor that he advises students: “On average, during your working life, you will have 10-15 different jobs, be involved in 3-5 different careers and be laid off or fired at least once.” (per 2/23 email exchange with Mr. Bohrer, who cites no peer reviewed studies for these statistics, only that “these are numbers that have floated about for years.”)
b) Per the U.S. Department of Labor: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) never has attempted to estimate the number of times people change careers during their working lives. The reason we have not produced such estimates is that no consensus has emerged on what constitutes a career change. A few examples may help to illustrate the difficulty of defining careers and career changes. Take the case of an economist working within the BLS who is promoted to a management position. Before the promotion, she spent most of her time conducting economic research. After the promotion, she may still conduct research but she also spends much more time supervising staff and reviewing their research, managing her program’s finances and attending to a variety of other management tasks. This promotion represents an occupational change from economist to manager, but does it also represent a career change? It depends on how you define a career change.”
Other examples of the same dilemma:
An easier example of a career change: physician becomes a comedian.
Until a consensus emerges among economists, sociologists, career and guidance professionals, and other labor market observers about the appropriate criteria that should be used for defining ‘careers’ and other career changes, BLS and other statistical organizations will not be able to produce estimates on the average number of times people change careers in their lives.”
The Advisory Panel for this Career Stories Library project readily concedes that no single story here presented should be the main reason to pursue a career. Instead, readers are urged to review at least a dozen different stories within different main categories, to begin to understand the common themes among them, as noted within section II. above, “Common Themes.”
One goal of this career stories project is to provide stories for each career, based on the known facts or experiences of all genders, ethnicities, religious and cultural backgrounds.
All careers should be open to anyone, regardless of gender, race, and sexual identification. If the reader finds that’s not so, push ahead to make it so!
Professions / Trades
When discussing careers, often the words: ‘Profession’ and ‘Trade’ are mentioned within the context of office work (professions) and field or manual work (trades). The Advisory Panel for this project suggests there are more similarities than differences among professions and trades, for the following reasons:
So, whether you are a medical doctor transplanting a lung or a secretary typing a report or a carpenter swinging a hammer and you are trying to do your best daily, always trying to learn how to do it better, you are a ‘professional.’
Critical Thinking
‘Critical thinking’ is a learned skill to question your own knowledge and information received from others (especially politicians!). It is invaluable in research and many workplace scenarios. Critical thinkers do not accept the beliefs and allegations of others without probing for the truth. For example: Attorneys pursue provable facts, not just what their clients believe, to devise strategies to persuade juries. Medical triage personnel analyze the needs of new patients to recommend the order of treatment by doctors. Plumbers and carpenters evaluate the materials needed plus the most efficient way to properly complete the job and thus earn a profit while satisfying the customer with on-time, mutually agreed performance.
Luck
Within these career stories, ‘luck’ may be seen as a random act, appearing magically by chance rather than through one’s own actions. But luck is better defined here as “transferable experience meets opportunity.” A great example is the career story of a former Army Ranger / paratrooper whose military experience included development and periodic reporting on Army facilities and strategies to senior officers; following his honorable discharge, while talking informally to a neighbor who happened to be involved in upper management of a hospital, the neighbor sensed the former military officer’s experience managing complex projects, his common sense and dedication to hard work and thus, proposed that the former Ranger join the hospital’s administration of its facilities. The new civilian accepted the challenge and went on to lead and expand several hospital systems. See his story within the category: ‘MILITARY – MILITARY TO CIVILIAN CAREER TRANSITION’
(1) The prospective storyteller and the Editor discuss a possible career story, including preserving the anonymity / privacy of the storyteller.
(2) If the proposed story idea is accepted, a 30-45 minute phone call is arranged with the Editor, who will take notes to soon prepare the draft story.
(3) The Editor prepares the anonymous career story, usually within one week; note – the storyteller does no writing! The Editor does all the writing.
(4) Editor emails the draft career story to the storyteller for comment and final approval.
(4) When approved, the Editor uploads the story to the website for free access by readers literally worldwide.
(6) Identity of the storyteller remains anonymous forever unless the storyteller chooses to reveal his or her identity for a specific or general purpose.
State – The “Career Stories Library” project is registered with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an “Unincorporated Nonprofit Association” under the name of “Career Stories Project”.
Federal – The Career Stories Project has been approved (effective 8/29/23) for exemption from federal income tax under IRS Code section 501c(3), specifically as a public charity per IRS section 509(a)2.
If you have any questions or comments about this project or believe your career story would be a valuable addition to this collection, please proceed to the home page topic:
Spot a mistake? Let us know by contacting the Editor.
(Note the Editor is a very part-time volunteer who cannot accept all proposed stories.)
It’s well stated regarding the support needed during peoples’ journeys through life that “It Takes a Village.” This Career Stories Library (CSL) project is no exception to the need for ideas, encouragement, wise suggestions and technical skills provided by many whom the Editor here acknowledges and thanks for their support: