I wanted to be a pilot in the worst way.I wanted to Fly fighter aircraft,bombers,Commercial aircraft it didn’t matter.I was actually an alternate in Army ROTC scholarship.I found that my eyes were not good enough for fixed wing military aviation BUT I could be a helicopter pilot.That dream fell thru when my alternate status didn’t pan out.From there I decided that I’d at least join the Airforce and WORK on aircraft.Well that fell thru too.(Navy recruiter got to me first and talked me into going “nuclear Navy”).
So,here I am 20 years later looking back How the hell did I go from Dreams of flight to becoming an operating engineer in a computer data center?
What were your dreams versus reality?
I to had dreams that did not pan out. After High School I had thought that I would join the Marines, be a lifer , 30 yrs and out. Not to be. It’s 25yrs later, dead end job, no real life. I’m not a total loss I can always serve as a bad example. MTS
I wanted to be either a truck driver or a psychiatrist. Never really got to do much of either – but got to do some of both.
I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades. I guess maybe that’s inevitable considering the wide differences between my childhood dreams.
From age 10 I knew I wanted to be a medical doctor. Spent my undergrad years focused on biology, chemistry, anatome and physiology and such. Then I married a lawyer and became a father while avoiding medical school applications.
Took a job as a chemist “just for the summer”. I’m still a chemist.
I beat myself up for a long time, thinking I let myself down for never persuing medicine. But now I’m happy doing what I do. And I still have a wife and children.
I still can’t watch ER, because that could have been me.
I wanted to be an Astronaut… then a Cop… then a Medical Scientist… then an Experimental Lobotomist… then a Cop… and then I got into the computer field for quick money as a Webmaster and Webpage designer… now I’m going from there into Networking and HOPEFULLY will get my Cisco Certified Networking Administration certificate by age 17… and if I want, get my CCIE (Cisco Certified Internet Expert) within 10 years
all within 15 years… wow…
I want to do EVERYTHING. I’m seriously having a problem deciding on a job. I want to teach, either Junior High, upper level High School, or College. I want to do something in business. I want to do something in computers. I like to sing and play keyboard, something like that would be nice. I want to HELP people, I like to help people out with their problems. I like to write, I like to draw. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a youth minister. I don’t know. . .
I wanted to be an astronaut too! I still remember watching the Challanger explode…that made me want it even more. I used to watch this movie all the time, I forget the name, about these kids in Space Camp who accidentally end up in space. I wanted to be those kids (except the one that died)!
Then when I was ten, I got glasses. My vision sucks - my contacts are negetive 5.75. The eye doctor said I am nearly legally blind. So that dream went bankrupt about ten years ago.
Right now, I’m still in college trying to decide. I’m definitely going to write, but as for a career…either law, sociology, or anthropology. Or a college professor.
I still wonder sometimes if, had I not been so crushed that I couldn’t be an astronaut, I would have excelled in the Natural Sciences. I barely passed Biology and Chem, but I didn’t have much trouble at all when I applied myself. I just wasn’t interested.
I go to air shows here in Baltimore every year and they depress me to no end. 
I just want to be up there so badly.
I wanted to be a veterinarian, a magician, a teacher, a dancer, or an actress in elementary school. By seventh grade, I wanted to be an author. In my freshman year of high school, I wanted to become a medical doctor. In my sophomore year, I debated between being a pediatrician and a psychiatrist. In eleventh grade, I was sure I would be a psychiatrist. I kept psychiatry as a goal throughout my senior year, although I dabbled with the idea of being an OB. A few months in to my freshman year of college, I realized that I didn’t need to torture myself with pre-med right then. I was planning on moving to England and raising puppies for a while. Now, I’d like to go into clinical psychology, although there are days when I seriously consider becoming a fairy princess. Still, I have this deep-seated yearning to someday see the initials “MD” after my name… There’s no law that says you can’t go to med school when you’re forty, right?
I have never, ever wanted to be an astronaut. The idea of being in outerspace freaks me out to no end. Blood and guts and whatnot are no problem, but being up there with the stars? That’s too much for me.
I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I wanted to be a geneticist, and I still do want that, in some vague way. However, there’s this little thing called math that stands in my way of my ever realising that dream.
I’m a technical writer/proofreader (whatever I can get work as). I’m a little more realistic now, in that I’d like to get into linguistics if I go back to school.
But I’ll never forget the grade seven science class in which I first heard the term deoxyribonucleic acid.
When I was 9 years old, I watched a video in class on archaeology. I decided then and there that that was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Did anyone believe me? Probably not.
15 years later, and am I doing it? Not full time, and not for any money, but yeah, I am. I’m a technical writer full time, but I do archaeology on the weekends, and stay involved with it.
Though, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up…
I wanted to be Princess from the G-Force cartoon. Needless to say that was a little unattainable. Then I wanted to be a Jillaroo on a station, a vet (but I can’t stand to see animals suffer), a model (but I just don’t cut the grade and am about 50cm too short), a wizard(but I can’t even do magician tricks), and I definately wanted to be a stunt person for a long while but decided my bones break far too easily. So instead I became a pre-school teacher which I loved and then when I became ill I had to give that away so now I am working in the mining industry in administration - a long way away from my childhood dreams - but I still have a vivid imagination - and you never know - I may one day get to dress up as Princess - if I can find someone to indulge me and dress up as mark.
I always wanted to be an entertainer of some sort. A dancer, a singer, a rock star, an actor, a writer.
What am I doing? I’m in customer service for my local government. Why? Because I eventually realized that I have no real gift for entertaining (although I’ve been told that I write pretty well). So, I married a musician. I’ve got two beautiful little kids, who are shaping up to be musicians themselves. I kinda like it this way, being the support person.
I’d just better be the first one that gets thanked when my husband and his spawn win their first Grammy…
Maybe the G-Force team from Battle of the Planets had something to do with it, but I’ve been fascinated with Japan for as long as I can remember (I’ve sometimes wondered if it was a sexual Asian-fetish kind of thing, but I was into Japan long before I was into girls). This made life a little uncomfortable during the 80’s, when America was petitioning to make Japan-bashing an Olympic event.
All through school, I had assumed I would become an engineer or research scientist. Well, things didn’t work out that way, but I did find out about all the job opportunities available in Japan. Once I heard about that, coming here just seemed like the natural thing to do. That was 5 years ago, and I’m still happy with my decision.
–sublight.
I wanted to be either an orchestra conducter or an architect. Turns out I am tone deaf and am bad at geometry. Grr.
I believe the opperative phrase is “Californian”
Since I was about 5 years old I wanted to be a writer or an artist. Writing and drawing were the two things that I loved most in the world, and they still are. Unfortunately I let my friends and family convince me that I couldn’t make a living that way, and so I never even bothered to apply for art or writing programs.
Now I’m in my third year of law school and I hate it with a passion that I didn’t know was possible. If I had known I would be this unhappy I would have said “to hell with it” and gone to art school like I wanted, no matter what everyone else thought.
::sigh:: The things we do to please our parents.
I wanted to be a meteoroligist when I grew up. However, in college I realized meteorology required a certain degree of proficiency in mathmatics that I did not possess. So I floated through three years of college as “undecided” before winding up majoring in journalism. After graduation I realized I did’nt even like journalism and the starting pay was horrible. A family member told me our local police department was giving a civil service exam. I took it for the heck of it and somehow made it onto the department. I’ve been and officer for five years now.
I wanted to be a rock star and an actress and a dancer. I wanted to write hit songs and Broadway musicals. I wanted people to clamor for my autograph. Of course, this all happened in my Walter-Mitty mind - I was terrified of doing ANYTHING in front of a group of people.
Then I thought I wanted to be a foreign language teacher in junion high - languages come easily to me and I had this killer crush on my jr. high student teacher. Plus it was an acceptable “girl” job.
Instead, I enlisted in the Navy and became an avionics technician. Then the navy sent me to college and I got my degree in aero engineering. I’m working for the navy as a civilian: aerospace structural engineer - 9 more years till retirement.
There’s still a part of me that wants to do something to entertain. I’ve written songs and stories and poems. I’ve gotten over my terror of audiences and I’ve sung and emceed shows - even played my accordion in public! I’d like to try my hand at storytelling, I think. Who knows what’s next - I’m just shy of 47 and I figure I’ve got time to try a few more things.
My mother saved all my old report cards, and I was looking back through them a few years ago. Kindergarten and first grade RCs had a space for the kids to check a box of what they wanted to be when they grew up. So, in 1966 and 67, I put down that I wanted to be a soldier and/or pilot.
HELLO! Vietnam, you little dumb-ass! But I didn’t know how stanky that whole war was then, and how bad it would end up. I just was always drawn by two things: the military and aviation.
Here I am, 30+ years farther on, living the dream. I am a fifteen-years-into-it member of the U.S. Air Force, and I love it. I plan to stay in as long as they let me, because it’s fun, and money isn’t everything. <cough>
I’m also a private/commercial pilot, but I can’t do it for a living (poor eyesight keeps from from holding the requisite kind of medical certificate), so I just fly for fun.
I guess I’m all about fun. But I take my job (intelligence analyst) very seriously. And I’m pathologically proud of my uniform, and my privelege to serve. It ain’t for everybody, but this life is far, far better than the self-serving, grasping, chase-the-buck existence I left behind at age twenty-four.
Growing up I always wanted to be a loafer. I constantly dreamed fo the vagabond lifestyle. Roger Miller was a God to me “Third boscar midnight train, destination Bangor, Maine. Old worn out suit and shoes. Don’t pay no union dues. I smoke old stogies I have found, short but not to big around. I’m a man of means by no means, King of the Road”. Oh the dreams of non-grandeur I had. I’d look sort of like an Emmet Kelley clown, maybe with a bit of sad-sac or Danny Kaye thrown in for good measure. Just riding the rails, living off of the kindness of strangers. Will work for food. Brother can you spare a dime?
Alas, my dreams are shot to hell. My stupid father had to be born of royalty and all the “proper” trimmings of that class. So here I sit, on the most up to date computer, surrounded by servants and hand-maidens jotting this reply as I ignore my internet start-up business that’s bringing un over $500,000 a month. Damn it all.
But at night, when I lie in bed and the manor house is quiet, I can hear, as if off in the distance, sweet music. “Trailors for sale or rent. Rooms to let fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets. I ain’t got no cigarettes…”