I wanted to be a scientist from about the age of 4 also, but I stopped with that when I realized that if you were a scientist, you’d have to be an athiest, and I didn’t want that (I was 4 at the time and I thought that up by my lonesome).
About the second grade was when I figured out that I liked to write.
About the fourth grade was when I figured out I loved learning about history.
About the seventh grade was when I figured out that I enjoyed helping other students in my history class understand the lessons.
About the eleventh grade was when I figured out that on some topics, I actually knew more than my teachers.
So all in all, I want to be a prof. in American History.
I am a news junkie. I’ve always been interested in everything going on, but in high school was forced into the math/science track. I was good at all that stuff, and started out in Pure and Applied Science in college, but never truly enjoyed it. And I hated lab work. It wasn’t until a few months after I wandered into my college newspaper at age 17, outraged at all the typographical errors making it into print, that I realized Hey, you can make a living doing something that does NOT involve science.
That was nearly half my lifetime ago, and I’ve been a working journalist ever since.
I’ve got two callings in life: to be a father, and be remembered. The first’s a bust, and while I’ve yet to do anything particularly noteworthy, posterity will have to be the judge of the second.
My whole life, really, I’ve been both an artist and a computer junkie.
My parents got a computer when I was 5 years old, and I can remember being really interested in drawing since at least the first grade. I started programming computers on a whim when I was 11, and started taking it seriously at the beginning of high school. If I had to narrow down a true moment, though, it was my senior year in high school. That’s when I realized, not only was I interested in this kind of stuff, and not only was I good at it, I was really good at it, almost to a professional level.
That’s the direction I’ve been going ever since. I’m still in college now, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to find a rewarding career once I’m done.
I knew I wanted to be a radio DJ by the time I was 14. I did my first official radio work at 15 and was convinced. I worked in it for awhile and then went full-time into being a musician and sound engineer for a number of years. The poverty of attempting to be an artist forced me to work at other things so I could eat, etc.
It’s 43 years later and I’ve moved to Florida and have been back in radio for five years. I’ll just keep doing this until I physically can’t go in anymore. It’s something I really know and love. Thankfully, it keeps me from being able to post in the “moronic customers I have wanted to kill” threads. I solicit customers for other businesses, but I’ve never actually dealt with one.
I wish I had one. I started out college as an engineering major, switched to biology with the intention of going into biotech, got fed up with being in school for so damn long, switched to something I’d have fun with (literature), thought about going into anthropology because it was darn interesting to me, but stuck with a lit degree, and now I’m an English teacher who doesn’t particularly like teaching. I’m probably going to go back to school sometime soon and get a different degree in something both creative and technical, like architecture. Life would be a lot easier and more lucrative if I knew what the heck I really wanted.
I was 11. I’ve had a very few second thoughts, and the focus of the field has changed a bit, but I’ve yet to actually deviate. All the other options I was remotely interested in were unrealistic/impractical; I was too anal to dream about those, even as a kid.
Depends. I knew my goals pretty early on; the specific details are for me more about skillsets than about job title.
At age 3 I heard one of my great-aunts talk about the trip she’d just come home from. She’d spent a month in Chile, one in Argentina, had been up to Iguazú and all. She said she could do it “being a widow and all”, so I figured that when I was big, I wanted to be a widow!
Later I rephrased it to wanting to be financially independent.
I chose Chemical Engineering as my major on grounds of ability, both to do chemistry and to stay awake during chemistry lessons, of distance to home (regular chemistry would have meant going home every weekend), and of sounding more factory-oriented than the information I was being given about regular chemistry.
Now I’m a computer consultant. Not rich enough to stop working, but yeah, the piggybank is fat and I’d say I’m as financially independent as anybody who needs a job
The one thing I knew I did not want to be was a teacher. All my relatives were/are teachers. Started college in International Law, graduated with a Masters in Teaching. Then I definitely did not want to be an administrator. Too visible and conflict-y and I loved my kids and my classroom. Sure enough, a little personnel shuffling and suddenly I am the principal of a middle school. After a few years, I am needed to be the district’s director of technology and assessment. I am very good at my current job and enjoy it a lot, but my real calling, my true love and what I am best at is teaching (that seems to need punctuation but I can’t tell what.) Of middle schoolers, no less. :smack:
I never did. I picked it out of a bowl of “socially acceptable” careers when my parents threatened to throw me out of the house unless I got a doctorate.
I really like my job, though. Grad school was ups and downs but I can’t beat my job. Golden handcuffs for sure.
I had been working a series of service and office jobs and was very unhappy. My Hubby suggested I go volunteer at the local museum because I loved history so much. He said if I showed them I was dilligent, surely they would hire me.
I was skeptical, but he was right. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Luckily I got on at the perfect place for me: it has a small staff, so I get to do everything from cleaning artifacts to designing exhibits.
The museum field is one of the last few in which the words “equivillent experience” still have meaning. Should we ever move (which is the only reason I’d ever leave my job) I’d have little trouble getting on at another museum given the breadth of my training.
I’ve never been happier. I actually look forward to going to work in the morning-- something I never imagined I would do. I’m respected by my co-workers, though I’m the youngest person there, and they encourage me to be creative. There’s an awesome staff-- we all get along very well, and everyone is willing to pitch in where needed.
The only fly in the ointment is the pay. It’s mostly symbolic in nature-- no one works there for the money, that’s for sure. But how much is being happy worth to me? I figure that well makes up for any lost income.
I like to say that I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was a fetus. But that’s probably not technically accurate :). I do remember being at primary school once probably aged 5, everyone had to put on a hat from a box that corresponded with what we wanted to be when we “grew up”. I think I wore a firemans hat, but then, I think there either wasn’t a pilots hat or someone had already taken it.
Anyway, to all intents and purposes, I have always wanted to be a pilot. I started lessons when I was 18 and started my first flying job at 20. Never looked back.
