Unfiltered Story #267989

In Germany (or at least my part of it) students attend primary school for four years and are then divided into three types of school, based on their grades. Only one of the types ends with the students being able to attend university right away. I am going to that kind of school and we go to visit our local job centre to learn about how to apply for jobs and find out which jobs could suit us. As a part of this we take a test to determine a couple of jobs that fit out profile and we are then supposed to write an application for one of those jobs. I do the test and get a couple of jobs that don’t interest me at all and don’t require any lengthy and/or complicated education. While those jobs are important for our society to function and I respect the people doing the work, those jobs just aren’t for me and I decide to search the database for any jobs that might interest me. I don’t find any and ask the instructor why there are no jobs that require a university degree (which you have to get to become, for example, a teacher) in the database. The instructor then tells me that those are the only jobs the job centre helps people to apply to and that a degree of any kind is unnecessary “in the real world”. This revelation does not only surprise me, but a few of my classmated who want to become doctors, teachers or scientists. We protest but are shut down by the instructor and proceed to reluctantly write an application for those jobs. I have since applied for many jobs to pay for my university fees and none of the tips we received that day were helpful. I’m studying to become a teacher and I already planned the lesson on job applications and it will be nothing like my experience in the job centre.