I think there's certainly a distinction between a job, a career and a lifestyle. A career not necessarily being staying in the same role, being in the same job was certainly something that was clear to me during the A Level Politics phases. Not staying in the same career was something that then became much more evident during my degree, seeing the range of ways that my experience and my skills could be applied in very different settings was something that gave me both reassurance and, for a little while, worry about where's all this going but that worry I quite easily dealt with in just not worrying about it. If there's something that you're worrying about that you can't affect then it's probably not worth worrying about otherwise we'd all not get any sleep about global warming and about war and famine and these kinds of things.
Being able to pick on things that you can achieve and you can change and seeing that in the jobs world you can use the part time work, voluntary work and these kinds of things to build up your experience of jobs or work places. Also, that you don't just have to have the one career for life and that you can do that for a few years and then move on or start the training for it and then stop it. These kinds of things, the flexibility of the workplace and the 40-odd years that you've got in front of you was certainly something that I realised much more at university whereas previously I probably had a bit of naivety about, 'You have to choose a job and you have to do it til you die' sort of thing, in quite a simplistic way.
Being able to realise that there's a lot more flexibility built in and even if an employer does want you to stay with them or an industry wants you to stay with them, if you're not motivated as an individual to be there and to do that then you're going to be a rubbish employee and you're going to fail at your job because you don't love it and it's not something that you really want to get up and do. As soon as you get to that point of not thinking that it's fantastic then time to move on.
