Were all school careers tests having a giggle? With Rebecca Low of The Hot Desk
plus the BBC Eastenders Dress Up Game
Because my brain is an enemy of progress, it loves to retain a random fact (can you name the 2 members of the Black Eyed Peas that aren’t Fergie and Will.i.am1?) at the expense of actual useful information (which way round are net and gross?). Luckily, though, one of these facts was something
told me once, an anecdote about her careers service at school, and it has lived rent-free in my mind ever since. Today, I thought I’d share a chat with her about it and the wider world of work, careers, and jobs — lemme know what you think below.Hey Rebecca! Please introduce yourself (even though I’ve just stolen the spotlight for your name, sorry about that…)
So I am Rebecca. I am a writer, facilitator and Events Coordinator based in Edinburgh. And I've been working variously as an employed person, as a creative Freelancer and kind of everything in between over the last 10 years or so. I'm currently doing a bit of work for a charity, and a bit of work for myself. Basically writing, words and people are always at the heart of everything that I do, because that's what I love.
Tell us about !
I’ve had a long held interest in work, the way we work and how it's changing, and I think it's come from having such a varied work life myself.
is kind of the culmination of that. I'm not going to be so bold as to say it comes out every week, but basically I chat about and reflect on certain trends in the world of work and work culture, as well as sharing bits of my own experience as a working person in this wild world, and how that links to different areas of my life and culture and art. There’s lots of different kinds of crossovers, but work is at the heart of it.As you know, I wanted to chat to you today based on an anecdote you once told me off-hand, which has lodged in my brain forever more (as random, inane facts often do, at the expense of other, more crucial things). Set the scene for the glorious Pep Talk readers!
So, I think I must have been kind of second year of high school, because it was part of prepping you for picking your standard grades2 and it was in our guidance class —the PSE kind of class where they were like “We don't know where to put these topics together”…
You will learn how to put a condom on a banana, but you’re sure as hell not gonna learn about taxes.
Exactly! So in that class, we all trudge to the big computer suite in the libraries. We sat down to our computer, and they were like, “Okay, today we're gonna think about careers.” And, and we were all like, “Alright, cool. We're 14, but whatever.” I don't remember the quiz but it was it was online in that early noughties kind of way — remember on the CBBC website, where there was the EastEnders Dress Up game?
Basically, it was very low res, brightly coloured, and lots of dropping and dragging. Basically a multiple choice that probably had its roots in some sort of personality test or something like that — I can't really remember the exact content of the questions. But it came up with your Top 3 Most Suited Jobs, and at the end of it, mine said I would be a really good launderette manager.
I knew what was coming. I knew the punchline and I’m still giggling. A LAUNDERETTE MANAGER. Absolutely no shade to launderette managers, but…why did it come out with something so bizarre and specific?
So specific, right? It did feel bizarre at the time, I was like “…what?”
From that fateful day in the library to now: do you feel like there have actually turned out to be any parallels between your career and launderette managing?
If I'm being very broad and generous, then yeah, definitely: if I think about the different things, the different projects I've been involved in, in different roles that I have worked in, that has always been broadly in a supervisory or managerial position, looking after a group of people who are giving a service (very broadly).
Do you remember it impacting anything you chose to do?
No, I don't think it has because I think I never really knew what I wanted to do. I think that is one of the biggest secrets that you're not told as a teenager is that actually nobody really knows, or very few people know what they want to do.
I think maybe why that memory sticks in my mind so much is because I think I've always really been searching for that thing that's gonna give me the kind of lightbulb moment to be like “oh, right, this is what I’m supposed to do.”
It makes me think of another similar thing that I did when I was much younger: a flowchart in Mizz or something like that. My friend and I were doing this little chart, and it was like, what should you be when you grew up? My friend got that she should be an author. And I remember being jealous because that’s what I wanted to do. Instead I got explorer: again, extremely vague, but also very niche. On reflection, you know, I feel like that is perhaps more suited to me. Maybe I will write a book one day, who knows? But I remember again at the time, being like, “Oh, that's not what I wanted it to say, you know, I'm really looking for clarity in a work career horoscope.”
What do you think your 14 year old self would say if she looked at your career now?
I think my 14 year old self would be like, “this was not the plan. I don't know what the plan was, but this was not it.” But I also think she would be proud of the fact that I've just kind of tried stuff out, I guess. And I think I even have to think about my 20 to 23 year old self3.
For all those kind of evolutions of yourself, no matter whether you're looking at your work life, or your relationships, or your creative life, or whatever it is, I think it’s important have a bit of compassion for that younger self, particularly if you're still in a space where you're like, oh, I don't really know what I'm doing.
Obviously the launderette manager question is actually just a vehicle into a whole conversation about work and careers. With your experience in arts and the charity sector, how can we improve the careers advice we give future generations?
The number one thing is: don't feel like you are wedded to something. Don't feel like the choices that you make when you're 16 will necessarily impact the rest of your life. I know that that isn't true for everybody, and that being able to see that comes with a degree of privilege, because if you know you have some degree of a safety net, then you can go out into the world and be like, Okay, I'm going to try this and it doesn't work like that. But definitely know that you don't have to do the thing you choose at 16 for the rest of your life.
This is an age thing but also: advocate for yourself. I I look back on younger working me and I put up with so much shit. It was a lot of shit and being able to say to yourself that you're in this in a certain role or a certain sector because you want to progress is fine. You should never let anybody tell you that you have to be stuck in a certain level for the rest of your life.
If you want to go into a job because it's a job, and it's going to help you pay your rent, and maybe do nice things on the weekend or take a holiday, and that's it: that is also fine. I think that's also true for freelance work — if it's not your life's work, then that is fine. Maybe people know that, but I think that came to me quite late, and before that I felt I had to have a job that I could be like “I'm giving my all to this at all times”. I'm so passionate about creative learning and Scottish theatre, don't get me wrong: it's really important and extremely underfunded, and the people who work in those jobs do not get paid or trained enough. But if I could go back, I would give myself the permission to be like, yeah, my job is fine, but it's not my life.
Final round-off question which I ask everyone: what are you enthusiastic about outside of work?
Never being at home. I am an out-of-the-house gal. If I’m at home it’s because I’m sick or cleaning or doing my tax return. My home is where I recharge, but I’m made to be outside, stomping about. It’s something I’ve only just realised in the last couple of years (maybe it’s a pandemic-induced realisation but still). I LOVE being at the seaside especially. I love the water and the waves and the wind blowing in your face. I mean, they had a lot of problematic thinking but I reckon the Victorians were pretty spot on about sending people to the seaside “for their health”.
And if you want a more specific thing I’m enthusiastic about right now then it’s got to be The Holdovers. I saw it at the cinema this weekend and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s one of my favourite films I’ve ever seen!”
Thank you so much
for making time on a sunny Monday for me to ask silly questions about off-handed comments you made years ago! If you got a similarly wildly off-base response in your school careers test, I would LOVE to know — please pop a comment here or message me! Alternatively if you have any thoughts about the careers advice system in general, I’d be super interested.Ap de Ap an Taboo — I will genuinely send you a prize if you got that, so reply to this with your address/comment below with your email if you did.
GCSE equivalents in Scotland
This was particularly jarring to hear as I think Rebecca and I are similar ages (hovering somewhere + or - a few years around 30) and in my head I’d collapsed time and space and we were kind of 14 less than a decade ago, and then I had to do the maths and died a little inside.
You might think this is odd being platformed by a woman who runs an entire business around enthusiasm, but actually: I think this view is so helpful, and one we should normalise more. We don’t give enough nuance when we talk about people having to love what they do — I think we need to acknowledge that there’s plenty of room for jobs that are fine to fulfilling, but aren’t exactly your life’s purpose. Maybe you don’t want to monetise what brings you the most joy, for example - nothing wrong with that!
I remember doing this careers test so vividly (also went to school in Scotland) mine came back with fence erector!!! 😂😂😅 I went into product design in the end so maybe there are some parallels there? 🤔 they were definitely having a laugh with that test though. Would love to find the person who made it😂
I was told I should be an army major or a farm manager. This was in an inner city school. We all pranked our careers advisors and told them we wanted to be careers advisors. By about the fourth one they realised.