Law School
All lawyers say this, which is why I referred to it earlier. I think it must have something to do with competition. The second you tell a lawyer you're interested in law school their face goes dour and out comes a speech on how bad it sucks to be a lawyer.
Of course it's understandable. There are too many lawyers, but what's one more?
I don't think it's a fear of competition so much as an acknowledgment that a significant number of law school applicants don't really understand the drawbacks of the career they're signing up for. Add to that the fact that many people graduate with too much debt to get out if they really don't enjoy the profession.
I haven't even graduated yet and I've already seen a number of my friends significantly change their career plans after getting just a minimal taste of life in a big law firm (to be fair, this could also easily apply to me, although I never intended to work in a big firm and, mainly due to age-difference, my goals were less well-defined than theirs). Firm life can be stressful and many of us didn't appreciate just how mindblowingly awful the paperwork can become (and this is as summer associates whose primary responsibilities center around deciding where to have lunch and what firm activities to participate in).
I think most of us (with some obvious and somewhat tragic exceptions) understood the general downsides to the lifestyle, e.g. the long hours, the tedium, the egos. What many of us (myself included) didn't completely understand -- and are still miles from fully appreciating -- are the small, needling aggravations of the job. One thing I didn't appreciate going in was how obnoxious it can be to constantly have people doing things for the sole purpose of making your life difficult (these are variously referred to as "Opposing Counsel" and "Third-Year Associates").
The upside is that the field is broad and full of variation. Just thinking of 4 of my good friends up here. Next year, one will be a compliance inspector for Vermont's department of agriculture, another is going JAG, a third will be working for the Orange County prosecutor's office, and the fourth is going to business school. If you would've asked all 5 of us what we thought we'd be doing at graduation back when we started 1L year, I guarantee you all 5 of us would've said something like "First year associate at a small/medium-sized firm in City X." I don't think we're at all unique.
That being said, none of us fully appreciated what we were getting into, and, while I don't think any of us has even a little regret about deciding to go to law school, we could've benefitted a lot from a clearer vision of the profession.