What's the right career path for me?

Heather

I left school really abruptly and just kind of didn't know where to go from there because I had no help I was just kind of left in this big world of not knowing what to do.

So I thought my results days were going to be a lot worse than they were but they actually turned out pretty good. I just had the absolute fear that they were just going to be atrocious.

My original plan was to go to uni to be a primary teacher but I didn't get the grades that I needed for it.

I just am really bad with big crowds of people and I vomit as TMI as that sounds whenever I'm around people. So being in exam halls and constantly having to do study groups and everything, I just couldn't work round it and school tried to put me in separate rooms for my exams and stuff but I just couldn't deal with the stress of other people around me all the time. I just ended up just deciding to leave

It was an awful decision, one that nobody wanted me to make because I loved school that was the thing, I loved it, but I just couldn't handle it.

I was unemployed for a year and a half, just kind of floating about and then I got my apprenticeship.

A customer service advisor came up and I just went for it because I knew I would be getting my qualifications, I would be doing college and I would be learning but not having to actually go to college or school or doing the things I hated to do.

They're centred on you and as soon as you walk in that front door, they're set on making you the best version of you you can be, which is why I think I've flourished so much in it.

I really genuinely thought I'd always be one of those people that was just kind of plodding along through life like going from job to job, doing the bare minimum, just to keep my mental health intact but here I am.

My results haven't defined my life, no. They've made me who I am and got me where I am but I put in the work to get the job and the apprenticeship I got not through exams, through myself and what I could do as a person not what my exams said I could do.

Rachael

I was bullied in school, I've got additional needs, I'm a young carer. I didn't let that stop me because actually, those things gave me the greatest skills.

I imagined my results day to go a lot worse than it actually did.

You know how in school you get that one kid in the class that was always being bullied?So that was me.

So I was dealing with a lot of stress at home, a lot of stress in school and just couldn't focus in the classroom.So to be able to actually learn enough to get grades was a miracle to be honest.

I going to my worker on exam results day and I forced her to open it. I was not going to do it and she was like 'you idiot, you've got a C, you've ed.'

I think I just cried for half an hour because I was like I can actually do it.

So I'd volunteered with the Youth Work Service in Highland since … I must have been about fourteen or something so even before exams and before those pressures.You know, my youth workers always said to me there is no wrong path, you can chop and change and it was like the one steady thing in my life so when the opportunity came up to gain employment with them I kind of thought, this is my chance to say thank you and this is my chance to help those young people who might need the that I did.

I hold positions within Youth Democracy so I'm the vice-chair of the Highland Youth Parliament.I've just been elected to the Scottish Youth Parliament for Inverness and Nairn.No amount of education could ever teach me those skills to go and speak up in front of people or demand change that needs to happen, but what does is talking to people.

Go, whether it's your careers advisor or your youth worker, because you'll find people who didn't go straight into degrees. You'll find people who have changed their degrees four or five times or people like me who don't have a degree but I'm ionate about what I do.

So find your ion, find what you like, find what makes you unique.

Gerry

Waking up in a hospital and you're like genuinely what am I doing with myself, so yeah that was the turning point in my life for me being stabbed.

I imagined my results day going absolutely terribly, I was one of the people that didn't show up to school and what not.Results never came for me and I thought that was kind of the end of the road for me.

I think the studying part was just sheer laziness on my part, like I would it that I was very lazy before, very unmotivated I just wanted to go out every weekend and do the usual antics.

Honestly, I didn't think ahead. I kind of lived life in the moment.

What I would have changed if I could go back now is probably ask for help more than anything. I think it was more a pride thing.

The turning point in my life was that I actually was stabbed due to the people that I was kind of drinking with and stuff like that.You know you get into these situations and this boy was there and I was stabbed and I kind of was like right Gerry that could have been fatal.

I managed to get myself together and got in with the Prince's Trust and they were instrumental in getting a job for me.

By chance, Quarriers had actually had a course coming up with the Prince's Trust 'Get Into Social Care' something I'd never seen myself in by the way, something totally in the different spectrum to what I'd seen myself doing.

My colleagues and the people we it's like a different class, it's brilliant and I'm just really enjoying my life just now and really enjoying where I'm working and stuff like that.

I get free lunch you know, canny whack that can you.