What did you want to be when you grew up?

[Daisy]

All the girls from my school seemed to go to work in banks or building societies. Nice steady jobs.
17 year old me thought I would rather be buried alive!!

Haha - I so agree, Gem. I also never dreamt of working in an office. Even after signing up for a secretarial course I thought I'd be doing something quite different. But I quite enjoyed office work providing the work itself was interesting and not too routine. I enjoyed teaching much more though.

Clover - I can picture how smart you must all have looked in your uniforms. It must have given you enormous pride in what you were doing. I remember one of my nieces going shopping for her silver buckle when she qualified - it was such a big occasion. I wonder if today's new nurses feel the same about their ill-fitting polyester uniforms or scrubs.

I remember a nurse friend telling me that as student nurses they had to live in nurses' accommodation and when they were on night shift they got breakfast in bed, which always struck me as a really caring way of treating them.

[Grauntie Mag]

I wanted to be a milliner. No chance, the advice from a visiting careers person was to join the army! No chance of art college either as it was full of ‘beatniks’ according to my father. He insisted we all had apprenticeships, even though, as the only girl, I would marry and not need a career. So, thanks to a friend of dad’s I was given a hairdressing apprenticeship in his salon. The opportunities these days make me green with envy!

[Daisy]

Grauntie - it's so sad that people like you and Oma had real ambitions for a particular career, but were knocked back by the times we lived in and people who didn't have the vision that you had. My dad was adamant that a few O Levels didn't make me employable and insisted I did further training after I left school. But the choice was up to me. The only problem was I didn't know what might have been available.