Oh, CAREER !  My mistake.  Career counselling.  The latest boom industry.

The Concise Oxford leads off its definitions of career with “a swift course of progress”.

Hilarious, eh ?  No mention of a blind alley down which a person’s joy and aspirations go and become quietly strangled by an assorted cadre of water cooler sociopaths.

Career counselling.  You go there with no concept of a career and someone with a soft soothing voice encourages you to believe that there is value and virtue in a logical progression of employment beyond mere monetary gain.

How unfair, confusing and pointless is the career counselling fiasco we throw at kids in Year 10

Do you think that a child is born and when asked what they want to do when they grow up, they immediately discard the notion of being a fireman, nurse, teacher, train driver, doctor, plumber, sparky, chippie, vet or truck driver – and demand to work as a career  counsellor ?  No ?  Then clearly this career counselling dude has chosen some other role for which he or she was manifestly unsuited – and now will assist you to do likewise.

Do you remember your turn with Mr/Ms White – the failed commerce teacher who was given the role reserved for useless people (equivalent to “Special Projects”) ?

Did it go something like this ?

M White: “What sort of things do you like to do ?”  This is a trick question because (with the exception of Rex Hunt) there is no career involving lying around on the beach with a copy of Ralph or New Idea and drinking beer / gin and tonic (Mr White’s secret fast track to retirement).  For a while there it seemed like being a muse was the go.  Lots of long lunches and fine wine in the beer garden of the Pig’s Arms and being fairly available s*xually for artists, musos and artistes.

But a year ten kid is far more likely to nominate a job that an attractive person on TV does – say super model , news anchor woman, game show host or Formula 1 driver.  Thinking of a military career ?  Get in the rather longish queue for “RAAF fighter pilot”.

“Sports star” is the ephemeral career option of choice for the puny, poorly sighted or generally bewildered.  And every ghoulish year ten kid has had a mental rifle through images of themselves in lab coats and goth gear as a crime scene investigator.

Then you complete a battery of tests where they ask 13 questions in 27 different ways to cross validate each other and quantify the unquantifiable.  “Do you love to add up and check columns of figures ?”  “Would you find checking a column of figures interesting ?”, “Don’t you hate calculation errors ?”.  These are interspersed with questions about how much you despise your parents and whether you are energised by the great outdoors, maybe a circuit diagram or Proust. “And how exciting are balance sheets, eh ?”

Perhaps the greatest irony is that a suspiciously large number of Mr White’s counselees become accountants – or perhaps something slightly less exciting – like commerce teachers.

Well, as it turns out the top three careers perennially in demand (leaving out prostitution, politics and policing) are actuaries, tax lawyers and …….. accountants.  In rare instances – say for example during a mining boom, there will be a run on geology faculties and mining engineering schools.  Rarely heard is “I have my heart set on being a scholar of ancient Greek, Latin and Sumerian”.  And more’s the pity, but how could this possibly complete with preparing a profit and loss statement

A couple of weeks pass as you rocket towards the now barely noticeable school certificate or basic competency document.  Meaning you showed up occasionally and troubled teachers not so much.  Then comes the follow-up meeting where the awful truth of your future career will be set in stone.

You secretly want to be a doctor.  You mum and dad are both medicos.  Your two elder siblings are both at medical school. Your grandfather was a doctor before the unfortunate Chelmsford affair – the one you have been instructed to refrain from mentioning.

Mr White opens the envelope as if he was about to announce the winner of “Best Director” and you notice a faint smile before he reveals that the Boggs and Meers test – which has a very high reputation for accuracy – has narrowed your best choices down to  (drun roll)  ……“chef, waiter, taxidermist, radio astronomer and deep sea diver”.

He seems to be completely comfortable with the randomness of this eclectic mix and the lack of apparent unifying theme.

And then, to cap it off, he puts down the test results, pats you reassuringly on the shoulder and says something wonderfully supportive (and totally unhelpful) like “Whatever you want to do,  I am certain that if you apply yourself, you have the ability to achieve great things”.

And with that you head off to the bus stop.  On the bus, a scout for “Home and Away” notices your trademark freckles and recruits you for a screen test.  That leads to a walk-on part, which in turn leads you to a regular gig and a salary roughly twice that of your parents – even before you land the huge pet food commercial deal and become the face of Pal.

Meanwhile, back in the careers room, a despairing Mr White scans the newspaper for positions vacant, takes himself off to TAFE and eventually lands himself a job as a chef in a resort in Byron Bay.  And when you come off the shoot, the waiter (do you remember Mr Black – your former HSIE and visual arts teacher ?) serves you their trademark entrée – gamberi Senor Blanco.