Decision one · which field
What does this field actually feel like?
You cannot sensibly answer “do I want to be a lawyer” at fifteen. Nobody can. But you can answer “is this the kind of question I would enjoy working out” — and that turns out to be the more useful question anyway.
Each set below is a handful of real questions from inside a field. Not careers advice, and not preparation. Read them and notice your own reaction: wanting to know the answers means something, and so does not wanting to.
Fields with pages written
| Field | What it says | Written so far | Exams |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | Fourteen questions about things you walk past every day. None of them are about careers, and none of them need anything you have not already been taught. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more than any amount of reading about what engineers do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 4 exams |
| Medical | Fourteen questions about your own body and the bodies around you. None of them are about careers, and none need anything beyond school biology. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more than any amount of reading about what doctors do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Commerce | Fourteen questions about money you have already handled. None of them are about careers, and none need anything beyond arithmetic. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more than any amount of reading about what accountants and analysts do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 2 exams |
| Law | Thirteen questions Indian teenagers actually run into. None of them are about careers. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more about whether law suits you than any amount of reading about the profession. | 13 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Design | Fourteen questions about things somebody made on purpose. None of them are about careers, and none need you to be able to draw. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more than any amount of reading about what designers do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 2 exams |
| Defence | Fourteen questions about groups, orders and pressure. None of them are about careers, and none need anything you have not already lived through in a classroom or a team. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. That reaction tells you more than any amount of reading about what the armed forces do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Sciences | Fourteen questions about ordinary things — a cooker, a cut apple, a fever, the sea. None of them are about careers, and none of them need anything you have not been taught. What they have in common is that the interesting part is not the answer but how anybody could possibly have established it. If that sounds like a good afternoon, that tells you more than any amount of reading about what scientists do. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 4 exams |
| Computing | Fourteen questions about software you already use — autocomplete, the queue for tickets, the password rules, the thing that breaks on results day. None of them are about careers, and none need any Maths beyond what you already have. What they have in common is that the interesting part is not what the machine does but what somebody had to decide before it could do anything at all. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Media | Fourteen questions about things you scrolled past this morning. None of them are about careers, and none need anything you have not already seen. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. You consume more of this field's output in a week than most people did in a year, and have probably never been asked to look at it sideways. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Hospitality | Fourteen questions about places you have already been. A restaurant, a wedding, a hotel on a family holiday — you have sat inside this field's work many times and almost certainly never been shown a single decision behind it. None of these are about careers. The point is not the answers; it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 2 exams |
| Education | Fourteen questions about classrooms you have already sat in. None of them are about careers, and none need anything you have not watched happen. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. You have more evidence for this field than for any other on this site: ten years of it. | 14 questions, and where it leads | 1 exam |
| Government Services | Fifteen questions about things you have already stood in a queue for. None of them are about careers, and none need anything you have not already seen — a form, a counter, a rule that did not quite fit you. The point is not the answers; it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. You have dealt with this field more often than with any employer, and probably never looked at it directly. | 15 questions, and where it leads | 3 exams |
| Entrepreneurship | Fourteen questions about things that do not exist yet, or exist badly. None of them are about careers, and none need anything you have not already noticed while standing in a queue. The point is not the answers — it is whether working them out sounds like a good afternoon or a dull one. | 14 questions, and where it leads | No exam in the catalogue yet |
The rest of the map
These are the fields this site will cover. The list is closed and it is ordered — the ones with a school-leaving entrance exam and real numbers behind them come first — so it says what is coming rather than everything anyone might mean by a career. Where a field already has exams in the catalogue, its exam list is live now, ahead of anything written about it.
| Field | In the catalogue | Written so far |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
| Management | 1 exam | Nothing written yet |
| Agriculture | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
| Merchant Navy | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
| Psychology | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
| Performing Arts | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
| Skilled Trades | No exam in the catalogue yet | Nothing written yet |
More fields are coming, and they arrive in pieces. A field is written in three parts — whether it appeals, which job and how you get there, and which exams gate it — and the tables above say which parts exist, field by field, in the order they are being written. The shape is deliberately the same each time, so a field that bores you is as informative as one that does not.
These pages are judgement, not data. Where a question has a legal or factual answer, that answer is checked against the primary text and cites it; where it has not been checked yet, the question is shown without an answer rather than with a guessed one.