Did you choose a career or did it choose you?

Having been born at a very early age I then stumbled through a normal childhood until about age 11 when in a family pep talk my Granddad warned me never go out with loose women.

Well that really opened my eyes as I never realised this phenomenon occurred, so then got organised and set forth with pockets full of spanners, screwdrivers, allen keys and duct tape.

Never found any loose women but seeing as I was carrying all this gear it seemed a waste not to mend a bit of tackle on the way thru life.

Thanks for the invitation Julian,

But how does a guy combat modesty? Well here’s my take;

With time on my hands sitting at a computer, it’s no longer all that difficult to jot down certain career issues. I just have to plug into `Memory Recall’.

However, I trust that in doing so I don’t stray too far from Model Engineering. In addition, I’m also aware (as the responses and earlier posts indicate) that there are many within this ME forum who have reached incredible heights.

It is, I believe, necessary to make the point that `having a career which chose me’, is/was really up to choices usually, but not always, made by others of higher standing. In all probability, they inadvertently made some right choices and some wrong ones. Whichever was the case, the end result is that I’m here, an old man scratching and scribbling, and feeling quite comfortable with the result.

In a nutshell, I admit to taking a few chances in my career (plastics engineering), but mostly `it’ chose me.

Does anyone remember the eleven plus?

Did anyone fail? I did.

That was another career decision of sorts.

In all modesty, at age thirteen (roughly sixty seven years, six months, and three and a half weeks ago), I just happened to be good at Practical Drawing. I needed to be good at something since there were many other things in which I was not.

How about 9% for history and maybe 11% for English?

Leaving aside obscure events such as tickling the ivories; blowing the liquorice stick; ballroom dancing; singing bass in various choirs (Peter, I would have bet you were a baritone not a tenor); and semi-professional photography; - in the main my career was not chosen by me. My career path was decided by others and probably started when my father who already had a respectable position in a plastics factory, arranged my first interview. That was all that was necessary to propel me into a career in plastics.

Without my career choosing me, I might have remained the kid who didn’t know what 7/8 was as a decimal, or for that matter what 0.5 was as a fraction.

Had my career not chosen me, I suspect that I would not have been sacked at the age of nineteen having become bored with mind-numbing repetition while working on derelict machinery. At the end of the week, having failed to secure a job somewhere else, I was told to take my cards back. I had been reinstated.

Having escaped from the boredom of being somewhere I didn’t want to be, by 1961 my career chose me for a position in a laboratory DO. This was with a research group who eventually wrote `scientist’ in my job description. Ha!

My career chose me – when I was urged to continue my studies. This eventually became a habit until I was awarded Fellowships in two institutes.

My career chose me – when I was invited to spend three months Down Under before being offered a permanent position.

There were many instances such as the sacking, when my career was given a nudge or even a thump. Two years of National Service in electronics might have taken over, but I still had a job in toolmaking waiting for me back home.

My career might have chosen a different direction when a chance meeting with an Assistant Dean of the Department of Physiology brought with it loads of practical work for biological exploration. By that time the Australian Taxation Office had my job description written in as Consulting Engineer.

That’ll do for now -

“Come on lads and lassies, show us your profile!”

Regards to all,

Sam (aka Dennis)

My dad was the engineer.. or at least he had studied as one in former czechoslovakia and as a young man pre-war had rebuilt a Java motorcycle and then followed Hannibal's trail over the Alps before circumnavigating the Mediterranean on it - no mean feat in the early 30's, let alone the dangers of North Africa.

Then those Germans got uppity and he had to escape by many weeks in the bilges of a barge down the Danube before being interred by the British in Palestine and finally joining the RAF.

My earliest foray into engineering was as an eleven year old. We lived in a small village and the two other boys my age and I decided to circumnavigate the globe. Being eminently practical and realising our limitations when it came to ship building we decided to stick to raft construction. So followed the felling of a number of trees with hand hatchets and physically dragging our building material home. It was a solid bit of building.. some 8 feet wide and 20 feet long with a cabin.

Of course we then hit the snag that once built the thing was a tad heavy to shift for three lads. The river was only half a mile away so naturally we set about digging a canal to float her down there. Dad let us get on with it and only intervened when he saw our enthusiasm wasn't diminished and we were starting to approach the Road in front of the house with every intention of digging our canal right across it.. and then through Mr Wooding's back garden, his shed and greenhouse and the Garden Centre beyond..

.. so he helped me build my first canoe.

As for my career.. well i decided what i wanted to be from an early age.. and did it and ended up with my own business and only retired because i got fed up with all the modern employment legislation and staff bunking off for a good time rather than doing the job they're paid for and caring for the patients. I loved the job but couldn't take the rest of the associated nonsense - it was time to retire.

Parts of the job were a form of engineering: I've drilled and tapped enough holes in bones and teeth and bent, twisted and bolted a goodly amount of surgical steel into things so long as it could hang together in alignment until it fused.

Sam,

You would bet wrong. For a long time I used to struggle with bottom C, but could make a reasonably stab at alto, although with age and voice darkenng, my voice has moved downwards. Nevertheless, at 71 I can still make a reasonable stab at 1st tenor.

Last July I took part in the Verdi Requiem singing 1st tenor. One of the other 1st tenors got the shock of his life when he heard me as he was used to hearing me sing 2nd tenor at one of the choirs. He was quite complimentary.

I remember 11+, or as it was known in my neck of the woods, Scholarship exam. Out of 11 entrants in my school, I and a girl were the only two to pass. But, although much is made about the negative effects of this so-called division at age 11 , there was a further chance at age 13 which never seems to be mentioned, so it wasn't all doom and gloom for non-11+ failures.

But Sam, you are also proof that 11+ failure wasn't the end of the world, something some of our leaders would do well to get their heads around.

Peter

Well I've been asked to box up the pressure washer so no time for a bio, but suffice to say I can sing as low as Paul Robeson

Neil

Like one or two of the subscribers to this entry I was inducted into the military as my father and two elder brothers were in the army. I went to join up at 14 and spent 3 years at Arborfield Army Apprentice school where I learnt basic fitting and on assessment was allocated to be an Instrument tech. This meant 2 years training on Optics and Electronics and precision machining.

I left Arborfield as 3rd class Instrument Tech and went to a Base Workshop at Donnington and was placed in a room with about 20 rather nice ladies all doing No5 Binoculars for an Indian contract. Unfortunately they were all married! Next i was placed on Segregation where i was given a sheet of inspections to do. Here I wandered around the massive stores finding kit and making a decision as to condition and disposal. Some of the kits/stores dated back to just after the First world war.

The Suez happened and the barracks literally emptied overnight and all the vehicles suddenly became a sand colour!

A few days later i was given a posting, to Hong Kong. I was drafted with 20 lads and made a draft Corporal which meant i was responsible for their admin etc. 35 days voyage and we went via Durban as the Suez was closed. We arrived in Hong Kong in the middle of typhoon and could see dead buffalos in the water and lots of wrecked boats.

In Hong Kong I arranged for my Girlfriend to come out and we were married in Kowloon and lived in then the highest flats but within months were overshadowed by taller buildings. After 3 years we returned home to the UK and I was posted to BAOR to Osnabruek. Here I had a Commer Instrument Repair veh. and we would be off to the tank ranges whenever there was tanks firing. It used to be very cold at times and the lowest i remember was minus 18C on LuneBurg Heath. At about the 15 month point I was given an emergency posting to Kenya as the Inst Tech in that location was cas. evac.to UK.

This was a plum posting where they overhauled and repaired Teleprinters and i worked on everything from Blower motors to massive Transmitters and Receivers.I made tuned ariels and the like for the DWS.

Also managed to fit in fishing and hunting and sightseeing and climbed kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya.

Sadly that all ended when Kenya got their independence and I was returned to the UK and to Catterick and back on Inspections where I had to visit every regular and TA and cadet unit twice a year and inspect their Instruments and typewriters.

Then a shift back to BAOR and a posting to an Artillery Regt in Dortmund with US 155mm Howitzers. I had 18 of them to repair and set up the sights and ensure accuracy. Lots of firing exercises and I diversified into repairing the engines, double supercharged 2 stroke diesels. same as used on Greyhound buses.

Then another posting, this time my last one to The School Of Artillery at larkhill in Wiltshire, here I ran the Inst. repair shop. Running 2 engraving machines which were never out of work and a small apprentice scheme to raise the lads ability to work on fine kit.

I was coming up to my 22 year point and started looking for work outside the Army as I was only 40. Saw an advert for a job close to where I was going to settle and applied and they held the job open for 6 months for me.

I had already bought a house in Medway and then started work with this Swiss Surveying Company, This all eventually led to the Company being re-named. taking the LEICA name and then a massive re-organisation and the setting up of a new HQ in Milton keynes. They bought my house and we moved to Milton keynes where I worked till I was 62 and then they had another massive re-organisation and this is where I took early retirement. Then we as a family moved back to Medway and I found work doing the same Instruments here in Rochester and in fact they shipped kit to us from LEICA for me to repair.

I am now 78 and I still work a 3 day week with them. I have to consider the wife and shopping so it all works out quite well.

I have a garage with a Myford ML10 and Sieg 3 mill and an Aciera drill. Lots of aquired tools and taps and measuring gear. I am about 1/3 through a 3 and a half gauge Evening Star but stuck for a boiler. Have a rolling chassis, smoke box done and the Tender finished.

Also keep bees and at the moment have about 9 hives on the go.

So, my career was moulded by events and location and it was all very fulfilling and of course I have pensions from all this which allows us to live quite well. The only regret is having to suffer passive smoking which has caused me to have asthma, but the lads who I served with are all now dead, heart attacks and the like so smoking kills!

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 14/03/2015 10:28:02

There was never any doubt that I was going to work in engineering. So that meant school careers advice went thus:

Advisor: What do you want to do when you leave school?

Me: Engineering.

Advisor: Next person please!

See my profile for details. Suffice to say that I ended up following the academic route. Currently self-employed and also director of a gas sensor company, where we are working very hard to build up business. Hence the reduced posting on this forum over the past few months.

I do vaguely remember the 11+, and I did pass. That had two advantages. One, the grammar school was 100 yards down the road from my parents house, and second I probably got bullied less than if I'd gone to a secondary modern.

Andrew

Mum and Dad were both Airforce WW2, so I decided fairly early in life that I was going to be a pilot, some times I thought a Fighter pilot after seeing my first Vampire, then I thought a Sunderland Flying Boat. By the time I got to my senior year at school, I had School Cert, but not UE, and I was colour blind(partial), so I joined the RNZAF Boy Entrant School as an Engine Mechanic, this didn't last too long as my health failed me.

Did an apprenticeship with Rex Aviation, the NZ Cessna agents at their Dunedin branch, then toward the end of the 1960s a Urea manufacturing plant was built in NZ, and the bottom feel out of the aerial topdressing industry (change in fertiliser type), as the flying hours fell, and the number of Ag aircraft fell, I became redundant.

Went south to Invercargill, thought I'd get a job building fishing boats, no. Went to the Hospital, thought I'd get a job in the orthopaedic appliance department, no but...work as a porter for 6 months, and start in the next Nursing course, so that's what I did, until my health failed again.

Took up wood turning for a few years. but the dust(even with a mask) got the better of me. so I shopped around, and bought an engineering lathe, I had all ready bought a mill, and started reducing big bits of metal into little bits of metal. Managed to pick up a few jobs making up bits for vintage cars and tractors. Round about 1990, I tried my hand at building a hot air engine, and I have not stopped building them yet.

Ian S C

LOL, good old grandad.I have found that the duct tape can be handy for securing loose women.

Not sure about the other tools though. But once I was helping a mate fit a hot cam into his 650 Yamaha motorbike in the driveway of his house. Two religious preacher types came up the driveway on their rounds looking for sinners to save. Have you been saved, the one enquired of my greasy mate. "Can you save anyone?" mate replied. Yes, the preacher said. "Can you save loose women?" mate asked. Yes, came the reply again. "Good, save two for me for tonight," mate said.

Interesting that so many arrive here from engineering employment. There must be a few like me who never had the opportunity/location to be able to choose. Tiny village, Mid Cornwall, stupidly won scholarship to local Public School as day boy. Classics good, hand crafts BAD!! First paid employment on mobile Fish and Chip shop ... yum yum! Applied to RAF for Aircrew. Graded A1 Pilot and A1 Signaller but no pilot vacancies. Completed training as Siggy and ended up on Valettas as Pilot's Assistant - right hand seat for t/o and landing and take over for Capt's rest break. V enjoyable! Then Beverleys but offered Air Attache's Co-Pilot/Nav/ W/Op in Bangkok - took all of 2 microseconds to accept! Back to UK and offered S&R Helo Winchman - jumped at it and stayed with 'Fling-Wing' , instructing, Test flying etc. for the next 14 years. Then grounded and at 53 saw a BA ad for tech instructors - applied, offered interview, offered job!!! Utterly amazed!! Taught BA pilots Tristar and 747 400. After 9 years enforced retirement but Virgin looking for 747 400 instructors so sidestep for another 3 years. 9/11 brought me to final retirement but part-time clock and watch sales.

Common fact through all of this is that I had little input - Luck, Coincidence, Right Place, Right Time etc but essentially, I just went with the flow ... VERY lucky.

Model Engineering? Totally lacking skills but used 'Auntie Betty's' offer of evening classes to do, amongst others, ME at the local Tech. Expected to be given a file and a lump of metal but no such thing. " This is a lathe - what do you want to make?" What I made was all the errors imaginable, including the spanner left on the Bridgie!!

Built up a workshop with far too many 'boy's toys' (would you believe 12 lathes!!??). Eventually Nature took a hand and destroyed the lot in the 2013 'surge' . House now part rebuilt and splendid new (small) workshop, so gathering bits and pieces again.

Still totally lack any engineering skills but love metal mangling even if nothing useful accrues.

Rgds

Bill

Edited By Cornish Jack on 14/03/2015 13:20:24

many years ago when metal work and woodwork was part of the school curriculum one could see the lads who had lack of interface between hand and brain and the lads who could, in their minds eye see what they were doing and carry it through. The main employer here in Medway was of course the Chatham Dockyard which ran a very good apprentice shop and supplied new lads to fill spaces as the older men retired. But the writing was on the wall as they say as successive Governments reduced Defence spending. I walked into the Headmasters study and just said, 'I am leaving to join the army' he just looked at me and said, 'I thought you would have gone into the Dockyard' I am glad I did not, as a while later it was closed down and my school friends all made redundant where i was trotting around the world seeing the sights and having fun. Now, I work with one of them and due to broken employment and the financial downturn his pension has gone down some 50% and he worries about his retirement on a private pension.

back to the Apprentices, we advertise for people and offer an apprenticeship but they come, have a look and scarper as there are no buttons to push and the complexity of an Electronic Theodolite in bits puts them off so we get no takers so all our experience will not be learnt before we retire completely. Very sad and a bit of a worry as it takes at least 3 years to learn the ropes as they say. My feeling is that they do not want to work with their hands and all the skills will be lost.

Clive

Forty nine years on the spanners.

Was hoping for a job as a shower attendant.......wasnt to be.

Destiny, destiny. . . I went for an ICL (remember them?) apprenticeship in '64', but when I discovered that it was not for building computers but to write software (Whats that???), I terminated the interview. In the 80's I met a software chappie who said they were the "creme de la creme" of the industry and earn't about £80k p.a. I guess about four times what I was earning maintaining capital electronic equipment. Ten years later due to my department being closed down, I drifted into the remote control aspect of the kit. Finally spending the last 12 years of my career writing software (NOT at £80K p.a.).

However the job(s) I had did have a measure of satisfaction about them as opposed to software where the real satisfaction comes from a nice bit of code which no one sees. All you get is flak about what it looks like!

Frank

The eleven plus has had a significant effect on the lives and careers of many. For some I have known it was such a shock and a `wakeup’ call, causing a mad scramble to escape from a Sec. Mod. school. A second chance came my way via a test at a technical college. Somehow I managed to fail that also.

It was not until years later when an older friend pointed out that he and two of his mates had also failed the eleven plus, that I began to relax my grip on my own less than satisfactory result. All three of them became business professionals; one in law, and two in engineering.

One in particular became a Fellow of the Royal Society. If you like a success story, see the link below -

In his own words, he said:

I consider that my greatest contribution to this world has been in developing the people I have helped to inspire and train, and whom I now leave behind me. My academic and research activities have now ended, but I am proud to reflect that much valuable work continues via the excellent work being undertaken by my past research students. I like to think that I inspired these young people to question and to probe, and not to be satisfied until they had devised clever workable solutions to their problems.

In short, to be ‘ingenious’; that is, true engineers.

**LINK**

Regards,

Sam

Peter, I am not a graduate engineer, just HNC with a lifetime in engineering (only a small proportion on the shop floor)

However as far as ME is concerned what impresses me is the final product not the qualifications of the guy that did it (for guy read male/female of course) I am in awe at the quality of the workmanship of the models I have seen at exhibitions, some times to the point of thinking I could never achieve such standards. These could be made by highly qualified engineers in the true sense or people with just a wonderful feel for working with the hands.

Bill D.

What gets me today is this government and a lot of other people referring to an apprenticeship of one year or even less In my day it was five years at least and with night school thrown in But we knew our job when we finished it

Roy

Well I guess it chose me. My only real career attempt was at the end of grammar school I applied for a short-service officer course in the RAF, got turned down. Not amenable to discipline, they said! May have been right tho'. Did a proper apprenticeship instead, day release, night classes etc. Became a self -employed draughtsman and did all sorts of work, including building and plumbing. By and large enjoyed it and learnt a lot.