🎭 Scene 2 – “It’s All on You”. Career Advisors

A school corridor. Echoes of footsteps. Voices overlapping. A door with a laminated sign: Career Advice Office. The walls are lined with motivational posters: “Your Future Starts Here!”, “Aim High!”, “Be the Best You!”

Students linger outside a door labelled Careers Office. Some are talking nervously. Others wait silently, holding onto fragile hopes or vague questions.

Inside, the atmosphere is flat. The career advisors sit behind cluttered desks, surrounded by paperwork and league tables. Laptops open. Phones buzzing. Schedules tight.

The first student walks in. He asks about apprenticeship options in the trades. The advisor scrolls quickly, shrugs.

“Honestly, I don’t know much about those. You can just look online.”
He is handed a sheet with ten QR codes and a website link — printed out in grayscale, badly formatted.

Next, a young woman walks in. She’s dressed neatly, speaking with quiet confidence.

“I’m thinking about studying criminology.”
There’s a pause. The advisor leans back, smirks slightly.
“Criminology, hmm? Let me be honest with you — all those -ology degrees won’t get you anywhere these days.”
The student blinks.
“But I’ve been reading about forensic psychology—”
“Mmm.” The advisor cuts her off, hands her a printed page. “Here are some safer options. These are popular. Try to be realistic, okay?”

The young woman walks out, her back a little lower than when she came in.

Outside, a group of students gather.

“What did they tell you?”
“That I should lower my expectations.”
“They gave me a list of jobs with the best pay. None of them had anything to do with what I’m good at.”
“I felt like I didn’t matter.”

Over time, the students start to blur into one another. The advisors are under pressure. The advice feels rushed, templated. Some students leave with five different links. Others leave with nothing but a feeling of confusion — or worse, invisibility.

Meanwhile, in the hallway, a group of students gather, comparing the advice they’ve received.

“Did they even listen to what you said?”
“They told me to go online too.”
“I feel more lost now than before.”

This scene shines a spotlight on the structural flaws in career guidance in schools: lack of proper training, information overload, pressure to meet education targets, and no time to understand the young person as a person. This scene also shows the lack of empathy, training, and cultural awareness in many school-based career services. Advisors — themselves under pressure — often rely on shortcuts and stereotypes. Instead of listening, they sort. Instead of supporting, they dismiss. For many students, the result is not direction — but doubt.