Our own @ekedolphin used to work with captive dolphins. Not a research biologist, more of a zookeeper IIRC. And IIRC is male.
I remember her. She got run off by one of the periodic bouts of unmoderated misogyny (or was it anti-LGBTQ?). An interesting and highly intelligent poster.
I wanted to be a pilot. I’ve been hearing-impaired since 2nd grade, so deep-down I knew it was a pipe dream. My parents did me no favors with their “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” philosophy though. I did end up working in the airline/aerospace industry as a tech writer and eventually engineer, though. So mission somewhat tangentially accomplished!
All NASA data is made fully public, at latest, a year after it’s collected. Nowadays, you can get it online, but it’s been a mandate for them from the beginning. They probably had a policy of sending it to everyone who sent them a letter. And education and public outreach has also been a NASA mandate right from the start, so two birds with one rocket, there.
I have a cousin who became a state trooper for that reason. He’s never in his life used any mode of transportation at less than its maximum possible speed. He was also a tanker in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reports that the official maximum speed of the Abrams is just what the governor is limited to, and if you disable the governor, you can go much faster.
Myself, I was already telling people that I wanted to be a scientist by about age 4, refined down to physicist by 6, and to astrophysicist by age 9 when I read A Wrinkle in Time. And I did indeed get my MS in relativity (the closest real analogue to the father in that book). But I’m now a math teacher, which I suppose isn’t too far removed from that. Also kind of the family business, as my mother was a teacher, too (though she was 2nd or 3rd grade).
NASA has of course long depended on public support for funding their programs. The interesting thing in this case was that (a) it was probably pretty obvious that I was just a kid, and (b) I wasn’t even in the US. They sent me a nice press kit via international mail containing numerous glossy 8x10 photos from the mission.
I wanted to be a clinical psychologist.
I wanted to cure my uncle’s schizophrenia.
I remember attempting to do this by getting ahold of a college level intro to psychology textbook. I was convinced I was going to find the answers in there. This was approximately fourth grade. I was telling everyone I was going to get my PhD (I was super popular among my peers, as you can imagine.)
Later in life I did seriously consider becoming at least a clinical mental health provider, and did an internship for a while providing therapy in a partial-hospital setting, but it was evident pretty much from the beginning this was not for me. I am a marshmallow.
I think it’s funny that rather than becoming a clinical psychologist, I married one. It’s nice because neither of us ever tire of the subject.
Cowboy, astronaut, archaeologist. When I was ten (or around that age) I decided on a career in the Army. Held that dream until I was seventeen, when I failed the physical for very poor eyesight in one eye.
My son says he’s going to have a PhD and be the professor who “knows the most binary numbers.”
He also plans to go to college in Chicago and is under the impression we’re coming with him.
I also had the dream of joining the astronaut corps, but of course that didn’t pan out. However, I did a project in my first after-college job to build part of the Shuttle Mission Simulators (both the fixed-base and motion-base simulators). I don’t remember the exact dates when we delivered the hardware but I think it’s safe to say that the astronauts on several dozen missions used my hardware in preparation. I also got to be present to watch the first set of hardware deployed on the fixed-base simulator. And I think I rubbed shoulders with at least one astronaut. (You’re not supposed to interact with them prior to missions because of the possibility of them catching a cold or worse.) So that’s something at least.
I wanted to be a “scientist” (i.e. white lab coat and clipboard). Later - a “weatherman” - but as someone posted above for their dream job - just seeing all the complex math turned me off.
Well, you’re half-right. I am male. I did want to be a marine biologist when I grew up, but I was never any good at science.
But am I correctly remembering you did work w dolphins?
This is incredibly wonderful. Both parts put a smile on my face.
As for me, I had two goals as a kid: being a major league baseball player or being a professional writer.
I kinda washed out in the first long before high school, let alone college, but I make my living now as a freelance writer–mostly in educational publishing, which probably wasn’t quite what I had in mind back in the day, but I have published quite a few things that my second- or third-grade self would certainly have approved of.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be either an astronaut, or a secret agent. I ended up a satellite engineer for an intelligence agency. So, a little bit of both.
At one point, when I learned that there were houses that you could hitch up and drive anywhere (trailers), I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in an ordinary, stationary house.
Around this time, my mother informed me that I was going to become a lawyer (I had a big mouth).
So I would answer grownups’ questions about what I wanted to be when I grew up, “I’m going to be a lawyer! And I’m going to live in a trailer!”
Damn cataracts! I first read that as “I had two goats as a kid” and wondered if you lived on a farm, and why you didn’t prefer dogs instead!
Sorry, not me. Maybe you’re thinking of @dolphinboy .
My username is ekedolphin because dolphins used to be my favorite animal.
I wanted to be an archeologist, but realized that it was something I was very interested in (still am) but not what I wanted to do as a profession. I was working in a later government job while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, got moved into the accounting department as a result of a reorg, and discovered that I not only was good at it but enjoyed it. It helped that this was high-level accounting, and I ended up managing the chart of accounts, analyzing legislation to determine how it would affect our accounting and reporting requirements, and working on interdepartmental task forces.
Sorta like Jim Rockford on TV, but not quite.
Funny, but usually two goat have kids, not vice versa. As to goat pets vs dog pets, we’ve had threads and threads on the entertaining antics of rural household goats. Maybe not as useful as a farm dog, but lots more laffs.
D’oh. Thanks for setting me straight. It was @dolphinboy who worked with them for some years.
A few careers ago when I was a teacher I got to use a portable planetarium, which the kids loved. In addition to the star show I would also show photos - Hubble images, astronatus on the moon, etc.
My very favorite moment was this: I showed a photo of a space-suited astronaut and would ask the kids if they wanted to see the person inside without their helmet. The next photo was exactly the same, but the astronaut now held the helmet in HER hands… It was Sunita Williams, with her distinctive long hair. The kids (and often adults too) would invariably exclaim in surprise, not having expected the astronaut to be a woman. I always hoped this made an impression on the girls in class.
My dream job was training seeing eye dogs. I ended up a data analyst. I like numbers, I love dogs.
StG
Interesting to see in the video how “soldier” rises precipitously during the 1930s and 1940s, becoming #1 during WWII, then drops off after the end of the war.
I’m kind of sad to see that in the last few years, 4 of the top 8 slots are YouTuber, Influencer, Pro Gamer, and TikToker. At least Superhero is near the top, so some kids do still have admirable ambitions.