The road less travelled…

Since someone posted Robert Frost’s poem on Facebook recently, I’ve been pondering the roads I chose not to take from school-days onwards.

My first career ambition was to be a lawyer. But the harridan who was head of my school burst this bubble very quickly. ‘No opportunities for a woman in that career,’ she announced. ‘Not unless she has a close relative already practising.’

So I went off to university as a very immature 17-year-old to study quite different subjects.

When I graduated, aged newly 20 (having wasted most of my time, I freely admit), I got 5 job offers after attending the jobs fair:

Working with computers for the GPO (in the days when computers were the size of double-decker buses!) in London.

Working in admin at Aldermaston.

Ditto at Porton Down.

Working in the Churchill Archives.

Working at GCHQ in Cheltenham (languages were my thing – including Arabic at uni, and Russian to Higher level in my spare time).

I didn’t take up any of these – mainly because they’d all have involved moving a great distance from home. I was a very immature 20-year-old.

Instead I opted (eventually!) for teaching, like my mother and great-grandmother. I lasted a very short time in schools. Having loathed school myself every day I was there didn’t make for a happy transition to being on the other side of the desk.

After a couple of years, I went back to university, and got a much better degree. Thence to a spell of research (in historical demography), then to teaching at further education & university level, then to journalism, then to PR & lobbying. I really loved that stage of my career, because I worked for many years with Norwegian companies, and both the journalism and the lobbying involved spending a lot of time in Brussels (oh, how I miss Brussels!).

But I can’t help wondering where/who I’d be if I had followed one of those paths on offer when I was 20.

One of my sons is now a Professor in the law faculty of one of our most prestigious universities. I promise, I didn’t try to influence him. All his own choice – but one which brings me vicarious pleasure. My other son is a teacher in a large secondary school 😂.