She brought a letter home from school, it read something on the lines that a careers advisor would be available in school on certain dates and if we and our child wished to meet with him then the school secretary would make an appointment.
Jodie does not have a life plan, she is like me, she awakes in the morning and whatever will be will be, I often drive her to college in a morning and every time I deliberately ask her what lessons she has on today just to see her shrug her shoulders and confirm “I don’t know”, I like her attitude to life.
Asking her at 14 years of age what she wanted to do with the rest of her life was as pointless as asking her what she was going to have for her lunch that day – it would just happen, thats all.
But I replied anyway and an appointment was made.
I can’t remember why but Suzanne was not able to make the all-important meeting, the meeting that was to decide Jodie’s future career choice and so I wandered into the school on my own, waited in reception for Jodie to be summoned from a class and was then allowed to pass through the security doors into the school – it wasn’t like that in my days, you could wander around schools at will looking for your child back then, I suppose its progress but I’ll take some convincing.
Once inside I asked Jodie where we were to go, she shrugged her shoulders in that familiar gesture and followed with “I don’t know”, I had to go back to the reception and ask the old bag behind the desk, she gave me a very annoyed look as she did with everyone, for someone who worked at a reception desk she sure got annoyed when people came to ask her stuff.
She directed us to a small office off the school library, we eventually found it after standing outside a different door for five minutes only to discover that it was a store cupboard, we’d only knocked on it a few times though.
The young man who sat at a desk professing to be a careers advisor looked like he’d only just begun his own career, I don’t know about you but I imagine that a careers advisor should be a person who has been around the block a few times, someone like my brother, someone who has been out of work dozens of times but on each occasion has spent on average around five minutes in finding another job, usually by virtue of his practice of walking into factories and using the phrase “Got any jobs mate ?”, our Ned would make a great careers advisor.
This young man went through all the usual questions, what was she studying, what subjects did she like, and then the killer, what would she like to do as a job ?
I was just about to answer “I don’t think she’s really thought about it yet” when Jodie told him that she’d like to work with animals.
His face lit up, here was something to persue, he pulled leaflets out of a bag appertaining to a veterinary career and thrust them in her direction rambling on about how difficult it was to qualify as a veterinary bu thow rewarding it could be etc etc etc
She looked at the leaflets without interest, “I’d like to work with wild animals” is all she said
The young careers advisor stammered a bit and then changed tack explaining that some veterinary’s did indeed treat animals in zoos but it was a speciality and maybe she could do some research of her own as to how to work with those particular practices ?
“No” she said “I want to work with wild animals – in Africa”
A silence pervaded the room.
He had no leaflets on how to get a job healing sick wild animals in Africa, if such a job even exists, I can’t imagine who you’d send the bill to after you’ve given a random lion its whooping cough vaccination for instance and neither could the careers advisor, he opened his office door and bade us goodbye with a very puzzled look on his face.
She’s currently studying fashion retail at college.
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