I got my PhD, spent a couple of years teaching on contract, and then got a tenure-track job as a university professor.
I was going to college, and ran out of money. I was down to my last roll of pennies to buy ramen with when I got hired on at Wal-Mart. Stayed there, built up some savings, and continued my education. Got my BA and then my MA. Whoopee-do dah. Economy went to shit, and now all the jobs I want/am qualified for are gone, or are going to PhD's, and now I'm lowlevel hourly management still at Wal-Mart. But hey, I've got a job and I can pay my bills and sometimes eat.
I've just applied for a career position at the place where I am currently an intern so we'll see how that goes...I have a B.A. and an M.A., just graduated this spring, so the next year or so will probably decide much of my future. Who knows what will happen.
Bachelor's in Astronomy --> Master's in Astronomy --> PhD in Astronomy --> Astronomer. Quite straightforward actually.
Blind luck and good friends? Left school and went through the YTS programme getting a BTEC in Business & Finance and RSA in Information Technology. Finished the course but hadn't found a permanent job by then. Less than a week after, the parent company of where I'd been working called me up for a temporary job. I evidentally made enough of an impression to be still there over 15 years later and working my way up.
Current job - chose my degree due to inertia/laziness, applied for jobs in that field after graduating with a couple of degrees, picked my speciality because I'm naturally nosy but discreet about it and worked my way up, getting the speciality qualifications on the way. My future self-employed portfolio career from this autumn - partly grew out of interests developed during within my current job, partly from interests developed outside of work, partly from disatisfaction with being an employee generally and partly from opportunities that just happened to arise.
I started my current career doing tech support back before the "Y2K" crisis when they were basically pulling bodies in off the street. I took a few courses then eventually moved into programming. After a few years of experience got into a Master's program in Software Engineering, finished it up then moved to another company.
I don't have a career.I work in retail which,I hate and am trying to obtain more education so that I can HOPEFULLY get out .
The long story is that I fell in love with maps when I was 3 years old. In college, I ended up in the Geography department, and graduated with a Geography degree. Got a job making maps for a small map company. Eventually, I applied to work for the Marine Corps, and worked my way up in my current position - all within my field.
I have a delicious image of giant mechanical grabbers reaching out of windows, pulling random passers-by in, plonking them in front of computer terminals and keeping them there until they learn to code, dammit!
^My main memories of the Y2K thing was a) our project manager was a very loud Irish woman who stomped a lot (she did have great legs though) and b) somebody wrote us a letter asking if the bricks in our building were Y2K compliant. Remember the Y2K compliance thing? Everybody was at it. My career? I'm definitely in the random job and worked my way up camp. Degree in Environmental Science/Geography, job in Finance/IT. Got the job in the mid 1990s through an advert in the London Evening Standard. I now waste all my time on European regulatory issues.
Decided my then current career (McDonald's management) was going to frakking kill me before I hit 25, so the wife and I packed up and moved 400 miles away. I went through a temp agency, first job lasted less than a week, I'm still at the second job 13 years later and an assistant manager.