From about the age of four until I was ten I wanted to be a country singer. I really wanted to be Crystal Gail. I was going to have hair down to my ankles and wear cowboy boats and a cowboy hat. Luckily I realized at an early age that no one would ever want to hear me sing. Now I sing frequently when I am home alone and in my car but no where
In my middle school and high school years I wanted to be an Oceanographer. I really wanted to be a female version of Jacques Cousteau. I really really wanted to feed sharks with my bare hands. Now I live as close to the beach as I can afford and own a boat.
Now I am a public accountant and I enjoy my job even though it isn’t as glamorous as my dreams were.
Dream Job : Voiceover Talent If I could be a character on a cartoon (None of those pokemon things, damnit) I would be quite possibly the happiest person in the world!
Always, from the earliest time I can remember, I have always wanted to be an underappreciated, overworked, underpaid secretary for a bunch of PhD’s who become overwhelmed when faced with copy machine technology (you put the paper WHERE???).
Seriously, I had wanted to be a lawyer. But, even if I started now with school, I’d be somewhere between retirement age and death before I even got a degree…
And the “open my own catering business” dream is sorely lacking in the fundage (read “MISSY IS BROKE”) department.
<sigh> What I remember wanting to be as a child are things like a teacher, an archeologist, and Princess Leia. However, I must have blocked something, since I recently found a scrapbook I put together when I was eight, and it says in no unconditional terms “I want to be a computer programmer when I grow up!”
Guess I got what I hoped for. Now, back to coding…
I had EXTREME dinosaur love. It was the books first, then the museums (I grew up 45 minutes from the American Museum of Natural History), then the movies (King King? Who wants to watch a giant ape? Hey! There are Dinosaurs in this!!)
I loved science, and wanted to be some kind of scientist.
In high school I was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. I discovered physics. I also found out how limited a market there was for paleontologists.
So I became a physicist/Optical Engineer (I’ve got both degrees). I now am a scientist.
But every now and then I get an urge to dig up old bones.
I always wanted to work in some remote, underdeveloped country. As a kid, I watched National Geographic specials with awe. Although, I never was much of a naturailist. I like animals, but if I could have been Jane Goodall without the gorillas, that would have been even better.
In college, I studied psychology for reasons I cannot remember. I travelled a lot, and for a long time, that satisfied my desire for the exotic. But then, it just wasn’t enough.
After 8 years in social service and a few more as a secretary, I finally got back to my roots and began living my dream. I started a charity to work with the poor of Nepal.
We still don’t have enough funding to allow me to live in Nepal, but we have managed to run a medical clinic there for the past 3 years and are now working to open a school. I am still working as a secretary so that I can fund my trips back and forth and I’ve been lucky enough to spend several months in Nepal each year for the past 3 years.
I would love to be able to live in Nepal for 6 months every year, come home and do fundraising for 6 months, and then go back. Lather, rinse repeat. I’m not there yet, but I’ve been asked to speak at a couple of functions in the coming months (my first time being asked to speak rather than having to beg for the opportunity!) and I’m hopeful that I’m going to get to live my dream after all.
If I could do it all over again, I’d have studied international relations in college.
My problem is/was that I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I wanted to be when I grow up when I was young. So far I’ve been:
Security guard
Secretary
Ticket sales
Caterer
University administrator (in two different countries)
Musician
Factory worker
Data entry drone
Warehouse assistant (shoes and wholesale groceries)
Advertising salesman
Public radio announcer and classical music DJ
And those are just the ones I got paid for. At present I’m a Civil Servant for a foreign government. My main hobby, which doesn’t pay anything, has gotten me free trips abroad and appearances on international television and major concert venues.
I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, but in the meantime it’s been real interesting…
jr8 “I could have been a great spy, if I wasn’t such a lousy liar ;)”
“Very often when I listen to the list of my previous jobs I wonder if I exist. The intersection of such sets is surely empty.”
– Benoit Mandelbrot
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be an artist or a cartoonist. Later, about high school, I decided to start devoting myself to animation. I noodled around with 8mm shorts (nothing great really) on the side while I worked as a picture framer. Got my first computer in '96 and started taking classes in Lightwave computer animation.
Now I am making a pretty good living as an computer animator. Granted, I’m not doing cartoons or video games. I do animations of rocket launches and satellites deploying solar panels and extending their antennas for sales presentations. Not bad work (beats framing) but I still hope to work for Pixar or Pacific Data Imaging someday.
Thanks, Inhuman Tacky Toad. I know that the work we are doing is really helping people and I find that extremely satisfying, but…
My motives aren’t entirely altruistic. I love the travel, the excitement of strange places, the mystery of other cultures. I’ve often heard people say things like, “Don’t admire me for the work. I get more back from it than I could ever give”, and I always think it sounds so hokey and plastic. And yet, don’t admire me for the work. I get more back from it than I could ever give.
That being said, thanks for the encouragement. Some days we really need it
Wanted to be a paleontologist or archeologist. Got my degree in Anthro/Archeology but couldn’t find work in it. Got into drafting and have done some museum exhibits, which is closeish.
Oh boy. When I was 3 or 4 I told my mom that I wanted to be either President of the U.S., or a cocktail waitress.
<waits for laughter to die down>
In junior high I wanted to be a writer but I was concerned because I thought most of them didn’t make a lot of money. (I was also pretty serious about becoming a rock star, although lack of talent kept getting in the way there.) A year or two later I realized that I could go into journalism and get paid for writing, so I wrote for the school newspaper in high school and then majored in journalism at college. Due to a couple personal issues I ended up going back to school to get a Computer Science degree, and here I am now at a software company.
When I was really young, I wanted to be an actress. I was in all the school plays. My last starring role was Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, in my senior year of HS. In college, I gave up the idea of acting, and went for pre-vet. However, anything beyond 1+1 gives me a migrane and let’s not even talk about balancing chemical equations (but I can balance my checkbook, so all is not lost). I graduated with a major in anthropology. I wanted to go straight into grad school, and eventually end up working for someplace exciting like the Museum of Natural History in NY, or the Smithsonian, or National Geographic. Math reared its ugly head again at the GRE, and kept me out of grad school. I figured I better get a job, and ended up in the veterinary profession as a nurse. There is still a lot of math involved (drug calculations and such) but I was able to learn by doing. Too bad I couldn’t have gone through vet school that way. I like my job as a vet nurse but I still dream about grad school. Maybe one day…
Michi
I always wanted to be a royal princess. Every Halloween for over 10 years I dressed as a princess. I kept thinking my REAL family would come for me. As proof to me that I was in the wrong family, my older brother wanted to be a garbage man.:0 At 16, I decided I would be a Mafia Boss instead, then a director, and am now back to princess. IRL, secretary and now a domestic goddesss. I figure it will all get sorted out when I reach the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter will tell me…“Ummmm, we made a slight mistake.” Then I have his head chopped off.
Childhood dreams: Egyptologist or vet. Considered running a kennel and raising dogs.
Reality: Got married young. After brief stints at seretary/transcibing, stayed home and raised the rugrats to maturity.
Now: I have just finished medical transcription certificate and am going to give that a shot.
Totally pathetic.
From the time I was 5 to about 15 I wanted to be a pilot. I then started playing with computers doing graphics and 3d art and decided I wanted to go into that for either film or games. I then did a year of university while I was waiting to get a job doing 3d art and got really involved in physical anthropology.
I now work doing art for video games, and I’m doing my pilots license on the side. I’m going to start taking physical anth courses in january (hopefuly). Pretty good, huh? I’ve hit 'em all on the head. I’d call it luck, but things seem to work out a little to often in my case. Maybe I’m just single-minded.
Niggle, what is physical anthro? Do you mean biological? When I studied anthro in college, we were taught that anthro encompassed 4 things: archaeology, biological, linguisitcs, and cultural.
Michi
Growing up I wanted to be a housewife, with gobs of kids, really.
Reality: after high school I went to business school and graduated typing over 100 wpm, taking shorthand, filing like a breeze. I got married. Then I went into the USAF where I had fun for 4 years. Got divorced while in military, no kids. I went back to school, got an Electronic Engineering degree. I am now a single person who dotes on gobs of nieces and nephews and have a successful engineering job.
For a while, I wanted to be a farmer with seven children and a whole island of sheep. (Shudder.) And a veterinarian specializing in insects. And a gorilla scientist like Dian Fossey. And a folk singer. (Double shudder.) But most of the time, from about age nine through eighteen, I genuinely believed I was going to be a professional writer. The first rejection note from the college literary magazine ended THAT in a hurry. Even if I had the talent, I realized I’d never be thick-skinned enough.
Actual profession? English teacher. Perhaps there’s something in this “those who can’t do” business, after all…
From about the time I was in the 6th grade I wanted to be an archaeologist. I got my degree and moved onto grad school, and then I got hit with all sorts of money issues. I was unable to get my Ph.D, but I hold out hope that I can go back and finish.
If I could be a character on a cartoon (None of those pokemon things, damnit) I would be quite possibly the happiest person in the world!