If your character lived IRL, what would they have done when they left school?
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CUTT
- Nell -- Definitely did nursing rather than medicine, was ace at it, works double shifts and gets depressed about bureaucracy.
- Dion -- Did economics because his father told him to, hated it, and lives in mild fear of having to actually work for a living.
- Heresy -- Left school at 16 having been repeatedly expelled for fighting, to the despair of her mother who wanted her to do A levels. Got a series of random jobs, ended up as a prison social worker who hates her job but thinks it's too important to stop.
- Meredith -- Studied medicine, intending to go for surgery, then got married and had kids, and went for GP as more family friendly. Regretted it all her life, and is now bored and irritable and rants about glass ceilings. :P
- Rosamund -- Astrophysics or something, and stayed in academia all her life.
- Evelyn -- Left school at 14 (he's old enough that was a legal age at the time) and became an apprentice at some not terribly exciting trade. Did ploddingly well enough at it.
- Francis -- Did Business Studies or Economics because he actually found it interesting and was pretty good at it.
- Ariane -- not much changes, really. She studied chemistry and then did a PhD? in drug research while volunteering for the SJA. At some point during this she ends up as a disabled students' rep and annoys all the university authorities, but not quite enough for them to do anything about it.
- Astrid -- Grew up in Norway, decided to go to university in England because it "looked interesting", was less worried about what it was she was actually studying, probably went for archaeology or geography- something with lots of field trips to look at things.
- Lucie -- Considered joining the police straight out of A levels, decided to do a degree in something like sports science first, eventually did join the police and narrowly avoids being sacked a few times for things like being photographed in a goth club with her hands down someone's trousers.
- Bil Harkins studies Medicinal Chemistry, gets thrown out of the university following some sort of terrifying lab explosion, and decides the only person who'd possibly employ him is himself. He starts an absinthe distillery.
- Damien Carrington drops out of Land Economy and starts a power metal band with someone he met in Finland.
- When Pip the Kender left school she would mostly have done petty shoplifting, trying to persuade older people to buy her cigarettes, making friends with all the homeless people around the town centre, avoiding getting caught truanting by the teachers....oh, you mean, after she was too *old* to be in school anymore?
- Aethel -- some sort of practical course sponsored by the MoD?, because it was assumed that she would do uni. Which she would have reasonably straightforwardly got a 2.2 in and then subsequently forgotten nearly everything about, after moving onto her actual life.
- Leith -- Went to a top-tier public school and followed it up with a spectacularly debauched gap year. (Canon!) Made his university offer by the skin of his teeth, reading Oriental Studies or similar; he then spent every term partying and every summer break in Bangkok, which he supported through dodgy Bitcoin trades and fiddling the means-tested grants. Somewhere along the way he met a psychology postgrad and took a lot of interest in her highly specialised research.
- Maia initially left education after A levels, ended up working various jobs that required her to look intimidating and occasionally beat people up, then got disillusioned and went to uni in her mid twenties to study the workings of the mind. The PhD? that follows is, inevitably, on the psychology of carrot-and-stick approaches to interrogation.
- Krsto -- Went to school in Croatia but got EU funding to study particle physics somewhere in Italy, where he read a lot about transhumanism and was regarded as the weird foreign guy with no friends. Spent the next few years working at CERN and taking postgrad courses, then made a "breakthrough" that never appeared in the journals, mysteriously acquired a lot of money, and moved to a private compound in the Middle East.
- Ezra -- Barely made it through sixth form. He started a degree in media studies and got kicked out after one term for drug abuse, after which he moved into a family friend's attic and is probably still there.
- Florian -- Did medicine, seldom left the library.
Other systems
- Darya dossed around at school, probably got kicked out of at least one for drink or drugs. Went to a third-rate university to study journalism, spent her entire time at parties then pulled at 2:1 out of thin air by dint of being too smart for the course she's on. :P
- Fergal (Maelstrom) -- Studied Civil Engineering.
- Isolde got into a redbrick uni chosen purely on the basis of its sports team (rugby or something. Rowing's too non-violent) to study something a bit serious, and then her gap year became a decade or so of volunteering with charities who build stuff, living off the back of a motorbike. Probably got hooked on flying things and joined a Force or something so she could ride helicopters instead of motorbikes.
- Clarice got a full scholarship to an independent school, and went to study Maths and Music at a good university. She then carefully maintained an image of spending her entire time rowing, drinking and LGBT repping, but worked hard when nobody was around to witness it and consequently startled people by doing well despite never being seen in a library. :P Got pissed off with it all by her final year and jacked in all her job offers to go on an extended gap year, much to the headdesking of her parents. Eventually stopped mucking around and joined the forces, and wholly failed to get off with Isolde. :P
- Sophia Faulconer was definitely a biochemist whose parents occasionally sent her a huge cheque and would have nothing further to do with her. Perpetual PhD?/postdoc with a messily complicated love life involving the Russian secret service.
- Percival almost certainly does something ridiculous like joint-honours Literature and Applied Physics. Possibly more reasonably: Physics, just happens to read a lot of books of a genre not usually associated with physics students.
- Fiona goes to medical school, where she is successful thanks to student grants that she is deeply angry at seeing withdrawn from younger students from similarly poor backgrounds. She becomes a harassed looking obstetrician who plays the stock markets as a relaxing hobby, feels guilty at the money she makes from this, and uses it to fund student scholarships.
- Ban-Ak-Car narrowly avoids expulsion from school for being caught having sex during break time because she is a straight As student, studies something along the lines of Classics or Archaeology, paying her way through university with an erotic webcam show. She is so successful at this that she continues to make porn as her day job after graduating, much to the embarrassment of her university when they find out several years later, probably when she makes a large donation just to see if they'll accept it.
- Eleri studies computer science, methodically sleeping her way through as many of her fellow students as she can. She becomes a freelance software tester after that, and probably dyes her hair purple. A few years down the line, she meets...
- Geraint the lorry driver, who is far smarter than his exam results would suggest. He left school at 18 and has been hauling loads in Merfyn, his beloved truck (which definitely has no smuggling compartments at all) ever since. On quiet nights on the road, he studies for an Open University degree in ecology, but tends not to mention this in public.
- Malachai studied joint-honours History and Religious Studies, then got ordained as a priest. Canon!
- Pete Keeper studies medicine and gets a job as a rural GP in Yorkshire. He also runs a erotic fiction and photography website as a hobby that turns out to bring in more than he makes at his practice.
- Friar Alan took a serious degree like Environmental Science or Accounting at a redbrick university, worked hard at it, and spent a lot of time with student religious groups. As soon as he graduated he went to a seminary and got ordained as a priest. He takes on more charity work than he can cope with, and fails to have any impact on his parishioners.
- Igraine did either pharmacology, chemistry or biochem, either way it involved a lot of glassware. Probably then became some sort of horrific grad student