I starred in grade school plays in 3rd-6th grade, and also videotaped other grades’ plays that I wasn’t in. As I got older, I got more interested in backstage work, and did that (mostly lighting) through high school. I now manage professional theatre spaces and started my own theatre company.
Yeah, there’s no question the traffic is horrible. However, how much you have to deal with it depends a great deal on how you arrange your life. If you want to live in a classic suburb you’ll probably have a two-hour commute every day. However, if you’re willing to live in a condo or an apartment (of which there are a lot on the west side) you can avoid a lot of the hassle of getting around.
Still, if the congestion of a big city isn’t your cup of tea, you’re probably better staying away … .
I’ve collected records (music) all my life, and still have two 45’s I got at age 7. Started taking piano lessons at 9 or 10. Have ALWAYS loved music, first and foremost. A career as a musician (performing,teaching, whatever) was never a viable option, and [ long story would go here] ended up being a full-time professional Piano Technician for 32 years. Retired five years ago.
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I really do not like really big cities. TO me purgatory would be told I had to move to Manhattan or Long Island … to others it would be heavenly.
I can take smaller cities, but the LA basin really bothers me. It is too big and sprawly, and too full of people. I also need handicapped accessibility and most cheap apartments don’t tend to be all that accessible. Besides, the best archeology program in the country is U of Arizona =) I have been to Tucson before, and liked the area.
When I was a wee lad, about 4 or 5 years old, my father took me to work with him on a Saturday. He worked as a product manager for a textile company, and used spreadsheets for his work. Now, this was long before the days of personal computers, so I am talking about large pads of paper with columns and rows printed on them. Well, my father gave me a pad and some pens and sat me down at a desk with the chair cranked up as tall as it could get.
So, y’all probably think I became an accountant or something like that, right?
What I used those spreadsheets for was as a kind of graph paper. I sat there and created control panels for giant robots and spaceships and jets and submarines and whatever else I could think of. I must have gotten some ideas from Captain Video because all of my designs involved large TV screens with buttons and knobs and levers and , of course, a steering wheel of some sort.
Fast forward several decades and one of the things that I am very good at is designing human-machine interfaces. That’s right, control panels for giant robots and killer death beams. Really. OK, the robots are the kind that do industrial automation and the killer death beams are lasers that inscribe codes onto products, but still it IS pretty cool.
That, incidentally, is why I said that even if I won the lottery I wouldn’t quit my job.
What subfield of archaeology? Southwestern/Mesoamerican?
I’ve said in other threads that because my childhood home was generally in disarray, I spent a lot of time tidying and cleaning. But it went a bit beyond that. For instance, I once spent an afternoon in my mom’s friend Mrs. J’s house untangling the fringe on her Persian(?) carpets. Unasked: I mean, I saw the fringe and had to straighten it out. When I went to the supermarket with my mom, I hung over the side of the cart putting all the cans together and arranging them neatly, with the boxes and bags as ballast. And so forth. It stopped short of OCD, but I did get genuine pleasure from getting things squared away. And now I square away other people’s things for a living.
This is my father, too. He’s told me stories of riding his bike over town to get parts for the radios he built in his bedroom. He’s now a broadcast engineer. I’m kind of jealous that he always knew his passions like that. My mother and I are both dabblers, we’re interested in a bit of a lot of things and can never hit on one mission in life.
I do remember, sometime in high school, learning about PhDs and dissertations, and I was told that it was like a combination of all your interests (if only!). I remember thinking that I would write about medieval women writing about religion, because I liked reading about the history of the Middle Ages and women, about religion, and I’ve always liked reading and writing. I forgot about that for a long time, then went to university to study modern political history, and somehow ended up doing my MA thesis on the writings of early modern nuns. But I’m pretty sure my career will involve none of that.
Dad gave me a Rollieflex at age eight (1971) since i was already using his Zeiss Ikon folder for a couple of years. Yeah, I had a “good eye.” Also had a couple of Land cameras given to us from people at his job. I loved that instant pic and neg! As I look back, I marvel at the money spent on these pursuits.
Pro photog (among other lines of work)
I’ve been telling folks since I was about three years old that I wanted to be a scientist. By around 6 I had narrowed it down to physics, and at age 9 (when I first read A Wrinkle in Time) I was saying I wanted to do relativity. Now, obviously, I didn’t have enough mathematical background to actually start doing relativity at that age, but all the math I could get my hands on, I devoured.
As a child, I was always fascinated by other countries- the more exotic, the better. I remember days wandering around my (largely immigrant) community asking my friends’ parents how to count in their language. As a ten year old, I hung a map over my bed and covered it with pins and string like I was planning world domination. I dreamed about deserts and steppes. The line from Beauty and the Beast, “I want adventure in the great white somewhere, I want it more than I can tell” could nearly make my heart break. In middle school, I spent hours in the library looking at books about ethnic dress and regional holidays. My “what do you want to be when your grow up” jumped from archeologist to filmmaker, as I weighted what had the highest likelihood of sending me to the far reaches of this world.
Now my closet is full of African pagne, Punjabi suits and Chinese qipaos. I’ve joined the locals in dancing in and singing for everything from Tabaski to Nepali Women’s Day. I can get by in four languages. To this day I keep a map of whatever country I’m in on the wall, and trace all the roads I have taken with a marker. And often I end up taking most of the roads.
I’ve been teaching abroad for four years on two continents. My work and my passion have taken me to over 20 countries, some for months and years at a time. And during these times, I’ve had some genuine adventures. I’m about to enter graduate school for International Development (don’t tell anyone, but I’m pretty sure I’m about to get my first acceptance letter!) and hopefully that will be the launch pad of a long career in far-flung places.
Then again, I did lots of other stuff as a child. When is all that I time I spent making light shows at night by putting flashlights under laundry baskets going to pay off?
I was super bossy as a child, but I was also a huge dork. I preferred reading books and writing stories to the company of most people. When I did interact with them I was always telling them what to do.
I’ve become a teacher. 
Not so sure about the late bloomer bit - I have a job and I do just fine, but yeah. I want to be a lawyer. So I’m going to be.
It’s kind of scary.
Right after I decided that I didn’t want to be a Good Humor Man, I knew I wanted to be a scientist, although I changed the concentration several times. I finally ended up a physicist and Laser Engineer.
I also wrote a lot, and started sending my articles and stories in to magazines when I was 8. My first publication was 15 years later, in Scientific American.
As a kid, I was fascinated with airplanes, and liked to build things/open up electronics to “see how they worked.” I went to school for a degree in Electrical Engineering, at a pretty aviation-influenced school. I’ve done construction work before, and now, I get to blow stuff up–for the Air Force.
Tripler
Are they related? Yup.
Does high school count?
In grade 10 I stumbled across a copy of Coevolution Quarterly in the school library and was blown away by an article describing a solar-powered railway into Yosemite Park. I gobbled it up and searched out more about solar-powered houses and electric railways and ecological design. I took drafting and designed an underground solar house in grade 11. (in my spare time, I continued with art and science and languages.)
I went to architecture school. And flamed out. I wanted to do solar houses; they were into post-modern symbolism. And, too, I got sidetracked by computers and electronics. I switched to electronics, actually graduated from college this time, and got a job fixing circuit boards. (Hey, it was the eighties.) This was the start of a 25-year detour that also taught me about writing and documentation and knowing one’s audience.
But electronics ended, and now I’m drawing up solar-powered houses again. But I continue with drawing and languages. My electronics background means that I have no problem understanding solar-electric systems; my architecture background means I can understand housing design; my recent building-code courses give me the legal permission to sell drawings, and my experience gained by volunteering to help build houses means that I can make designs that are practical. Combine this with Ontario’s turn to the green, and I may (theoretically) have a new career.
So, either I planned this real well, or I’m really lucky. 
There was a show on tv about a boy. His father gave him a bunch of computers. He used them to solve crimes with his friends. This was the most awesome thing ever. Using a computer, I mean. Not solving crimes or having friends. I was 11. I saved up 50 dollars for the tandy 16k. I then spent months filling the 16K. I transcribed other people’s programs and wrote my own. The show got canceled. I got a tape drive.
I liked computers a lot. Whien I was little my dad would bring me to work and show me the big iron, I’d get discarded keyboards and greenbar. Computers made sense in a world people didn’t.
I flirted with chemical engineering in college, but that was just standard college experimentation. I got a CS degree and have programmed professionally ever since.