My dad, a cardiac surgeon, and my mom, a chemist, encouraged me and my brother to pursue our interests without dissuading us from anything. You can learn something anywhere. If it's not for you, you will find out.
Any profession your Dad preached at you as a teenager to never do?
- Thread starter GON
- Start date
GON
$100 Site Donor 2024
My dad has a hard-on for formal education. He doesn't really care what I do as long as I get a piece of paper saying I can do that. Nuts to that, I wing nearly everything and have a useless arts degree. He dodged the draft by becoming a teacher, and I bet he sucked, because his attitude is "I'm perfect and I'm in charge, so do what I do, verbatim."
He doesn't want his grandchildren becoming lawyers, and prattles on and on about it over the holidays when we see them. He's put a bunch of money in my kids' 529 plans, though, so he's given up that control, and I think he'd soften if either kid showed promise in the field.
He doesn't want his grandchildren becoming lawyers, and prattles on and on about it over the holidays when we see them. He's put a bunch of money in my kids' 529 plans, though, so he's given up that control, and I think he'd soften if either kid showed promise in the field.
This is exactly where I'm at too. My kids do not have to follow in my or my wife's footsteps. They need to be able to take care of themselves and it'd be great if they really enjoyed what they do for a living.
But I have my serious occupation also.
I rather be the piano player at least it is honest work with possibly quite a few fringe benefits.
My father was a concrete and masonry contractor with a small business. He never preached to me not to make a career of that work, but for 6-7 summers during high school and college, he worked my butt so hard that I definitely got the message.
I've also let my son choose his own path. He went off to university shortly before the plague broke out. He came back home for half a year and started an internship relevant to his future occupation. Now he's back in school. He's known what he wanted to do since he was 15 or 16. I myself wasn't totally sure until I was 22.
Nick1994
$100 site donor 2024
The family business was a collision repair shop from 1959-2005. My great-grandfather started doing it in the 1930s and my dad did it up until a year ago due to health problems.
My dad and grandfather always told me to not do something that was going to tear up my body, especially not doing collision repair work. They all suffered from it, I live with and take care of my grandfather now who is 84 years old and can no longer walk. His body was destroyed from working so hard his entire life. My dad is going down the same path.
All 3 of them were incredible with their skills for what they did, honestly about as good as it gets.
I work in IT and will not be beating my body to death. I already have some back problems.
I found a couple pictures from the late 90s, this was a Lumina that was nearly new and was destroyed. My dad cut the entire front end off and welded a new front clip on, I can't find the picture of it done but it looked brand new. The first pic wasn't our shop, that was a shop that couldn't do that kind of heavy collision work.
My dad and grandfather always told me to not do something that was going to tear up my body, especially not doing collision repair work. They all suffered from it, I live with and take care of my grandfather now who is 84 years old and can no longer walk. His body was destroyed from working so hard his entire life. My dad is going down the same path.
All 3 of them were incredible with their skills for what they did, honestly about as good as it gets.
I work in IT and will not be beating my body to death. I already have some back problems.
I found a couple pictures from the late 90s, this was a Lumina that was nearly new and was destroyed. My dad cut the entire front end off and welded a new front clip on, I can't find the picture of it done but it looked brand new. The first pic wasn't our shop, that was a shop that couldn't do that kind of heavy collision work.
GON
$100 Site Donor 2024
That is about as hard of a job there is. I helped out a friend's father who was in the same business. So tired at the end of the day I onetime slept with my boots on, too fatigued to take them off.
Go in with a degree but be respectful of the ones that work for you without one.
That is solid advice.
My dad didn't want me to get into farming.. while I helped a lot growing up on a farm he didn't encourage me to follow that path.
Started in sales just out of university with Pepsico. Best career ever, wouldn't have changed a thing about it
When I was in High School I told my Dad that I was going to talk to the military recruiters that used to come spend a week there every year . My Dad told me that I needed to remember that they will tell you anything to get you to join up . Of course he was basing that on his own experience in 1944 . He joined the USAAF and thought he was going to be a Navigator . About 2 o'clock in the morning a truck rolled up to their barracks and some guy read off a list of names of people that needed to grab their gear and load up . They were sent to Gunnery school in the Las Vegas desert and he became a Ball Turret Gunner on a B-17 . Yeah , it was wartime and things were different but apparently it left an impression .
Concrete work is honest hard work. I did it for a summer before my freshman year of college and it seriously motivated me to work hard in college. I ended up graduating college with honors and have several degrees and a good job self employed now.
The above poster mentioned being cleaned out from a divorce. So this is a side topic but equally or more important than a career, is marital advice I learned early. Whether you marry, and who, and kids, is/are probably the most important decision(s) most people can make. Well, that and engaging in serious criminal behavior or hard drug use.
Earlier I mentioned my lack of good career role models. However my single mom instilled excellent ethics and sound decision making abilities and reasoning. And, through my observations of failed marriages everywhere in my family and acquaintances, and later as an adult in friends, I was very leery of the institution of marriage and having kids with an EX. I dodged that bullet. And I was taught right and wrong and not to ever do drugs so I stayed clear of those landmines too.
One can recover from a bad career choice but it's very hard to recover from a bad marriage, criminal record, or hard drugs.
Earlier I mentioned my lack of good career role models. However my single mom instilled excellent ethics and sound decision making abilities and reasoning. And, through my observations of failed marriages everywhere in my family and acquaintances, and later as an adult in friends, I was very leery of the institution of marriage and having kids with an EX. I dodged that bullet. And I was taught right and wrong and not to ever do drugs so I stayed clear of those landmines too.
One can recover from a bad career choice but it's very hard to recover from a bad marriage, criminal record, or hard drugs.
My grandfather was a B17 tail gunner. The story goes it wasn't easy to get back there and once you were there you wanted to stay there and he could hold his bladder for very long periods of time. Not sure if the bladder had anything to do with it but that's the story.
Similar threads
