About a month before leaving school we all met with our careers advisor - my chat was late in the afternoon, I sat there & talked about getting a job, progressing through some sort of training, maybe an apprenticeship & mentioned that sometime going forward I would like a job where there was the opportunity to travel -

You could hear the sigh from him right across the room, he rolled his eyes, bounced the pencil off the desk, practically throwing it at me & said something like - Young man, there is not a big wide world out there just waiting with baited breath for you to leave school, you will have to lower your expectations or you are gonna find the next few years bitterly disappointing -

Lol, I would love to meet him now - ( except he is probably brown bread by now)

Did anyone else have a similar experience ?

As I remember the conversation went something like this:

- What do you want to do?
- I don't know
- Then there's not a lot I can help you with. Next!

Yes, I had a maths teacher who was absolute crap. He just couldn't be arsed and was a lazy f***.

I told him I wanted to be an engineer and he scoffed and said your maths is no-where near good enough.

So I bought some books and taught myself. My mum had no education to speak of as she was brought up in an orphanage my dad was a p*sshead who went out every night drinking. In those days it was how it was.

I managed to get myself a grade B in math and an apprenticeship at Marconi's. Despite having what I now know is dyslexia I studied for a HNC and got it. The maths was at a really high level. Tanh, cosh, sinh for example. None of which I've ever used.

I've been an engineer my whole working life. Marconi's,working on guided weapons, the Tornado fighter etc. A Mainframe computer company, two Print companies (working on pre-press including lasers), and finally healthcare (x-ray). I've also travelled the world as an international engineer, fixing stuff the local engineers couldn't.

After we got our HNC results we went for a drink and who was the barman. Yep Rodney Hull my maths teacher.

He asked me where I was working, KFC or Wimpy and laughed.

I took great pleasure in telling him Marconi's and we were out celebrating completing our apprenticeship getting our HNC results. His face was a picture.

I said no thanks to you though you were a s*** teacher and reminded him what he had said. Then said anyway barman 5 pints of lager!

In retrospect he did me a favour as it made me sort things out myself.

Sometimes teachers say that deliberately just to light a fire underneath a promising pupil. I was always told I was lazy and must try harder even though they knew that I actually worked hard.

One more point

i think it was Jamie Oliver who had dyslexia and was in the dunce's class.

and he reported that all the dunce's became hugely successful in later life.

most startup entrepreneur millionaires seem to leave school at age 12.

And the dole office queue has many eejits with Master's & Phd's

Kayla did Anfield & Old Trafford