I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to fly into the sky and see the earth underneath me. I honestly studied for that while I was in high school and took college classes as well. Sadly, I never once thought about the fact that I am so near sighted that I couldn’t see the whiteboard when I was sitting in the back.
My dreams were dashed when I learned that USAF pilots needed to have perfect eyesight. I showed them, I’m now a Records Manager and spend my days squinting at paperwork.
I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I was about six, because you get to write on the blackboard all day!
Then when I was about ten, I upped my game and decided I wanted to get a PhD and be a professor.
In high school during one of those dreary, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ classroom polls, I said that I wanted to be a history researcher and spend my time in archives and stuff doing medieval history research. I also really really wanted to go to a ruined cathedral. (I grew up in the US so it was a little difficult to find them lying around).
Briefly in high school, too, I thought about switching to communications, or at least minoring in it, so that I could work in radio (I’d just seriously got into rock and roll) as a plan B.
Final results:
*I lecture on ancient history at a university.
*At my old school, I got to write on chalkboards to my heart’s content (it never got old!) although here it’s all whiteboards which just isn’t the same.
*I do historical research and get to go to archives and then conferences to present my findings. I also get to write stuff and publish it.
*Although my under and post-grad stuff was medieval, and my career stuff is ancient, because of my medieval foundation I still get to slum in the early Middle Ages sometimes.
*I’ve had the chance to play around inside lots of ruined cathedrals (as well as some that are still in good nick!)
*I’ve also lectured on the history of rock and roll, and published/given conference papers on it.
*Bonus: I’ve worked in museums at various times, and have had the chance actually to handle and play with some of the neat things that I first saw in my 10 year old self’s history schoolbooks.
Took a long time, but got there in the end.
Never knew what I wanted to do, but I never dreamed, while growing up among all those rednecks in West Texas, that I’d ever end up abroad, let alone in Bangkok. Even in my early 20s, I remember one bored afternoon playing some “name the capital” game with some friends and a map. When asked the capital of Laos, I was clueless. When told it was Vientiane, none of us could even pronounce it. Now I’ve walked those mean streets. (It’s a nice little town actually, not mean at all. Sleepy for a national capital.)
I haven’t ended up yet.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do as a kid, and I’m still not sure now. I should probably decide one of these days- I’ve done some interesting jobs, but nothing really long term and with much of a future.
I caught the train to and from school. As an eight year old I thought there could be no more exciting job than being a train driver. By the time I was in fifth form (year 11) my career aspiration had changed to becoming an actuary, because from what I read in the careers book in the school library:
So I became an actuary, and I’m still doing it, thirty years later.
That’s really neat, Sam. I’ve not been any place as exotic as Thailand, but I’d done stuff/been places that, when I was little, were just place names in books. It’s an amazing feeling 
I wanted to be a teacher, and I am. There was a pretty long phase whee I wanted to teach archaeology, and be an archeologist, but even then my vision was more about the teaching part than anything else. My childhood self would be quite content with where I ended up.
In order- Doctor, anthropologist, film maker. Now I am an international development professional, which gets at the heart of the motivation behind all of these. Mostly, in the end, I just wanted to travel.
I wanted to be a fighter pilot, I ended up being an airline pilot. In hindsight I’m glad I didn’t go down the military path.
Ha! Me too! As a child I thought this was a very stupid question: *There’s a zillion things in the world and I hardly know about any of them – how the hell should I know? How about I finish 5th grade and see what happens. * It seems I had a preternatural understanding of my ignorance.
Currently, employment lawyer. Living way below my means because there’s nothing I enjoy doing more than nothing, and I’d like to do that someday soon.
When I was about 12, I wanted to be a copy editor after watching Never Been Kissed. The movie is a mediocre teenage romcom, but Drew Barrymore’s job looked like something I’d really enjoy.
Then, for awhile in my teens, I wanted to be a writer. But I learned that being a voracious reader doesn’t make you a good writer.
After I took high school physics, I wanted to be a physicist. I got a full-tuition scholarship from Purdue, and was accepted to their honors physics program. Unfortunately, the content turned out to be way over my head… my high school was fairly mediocre, and didn’t offer AP Physics. So I decided I’d like to be a philosopher.
After a year of philosophy classes, I decided that job prospects were better for teachers, and that teaching was something I could probably do.
After one semester as an education major, I decided that administration sucked, I **hated **teaching, and computers were the future.
After 2 years as an IT major, I ran into a brick wall with one asshole professor. I tried retaking the class the following semester–it was unfortunately required for my major–and he was still the only one teaching it. I was depressed anyway for other reasons (finances, singlehood stretching into foreverness, acute mental illness), so I stopped going to classes and eventually dropped out.
I moved back in with my mom and moped around for a few months. I worked a few stints in retail before landing a job in a call center. After 5 years in that shit job, I leveraged it into a similar (but far less shitty) call center job halfway across the country. It’s still drudge work, but it pays pretty well. I love the area I live in. I’m happily engaged now. I work to live instead of the other way around, and fill my free time with stuff I enjoy.
I regret not completing my degree, but not enough to go back.
Question, if you don’t mind: What was your education and training path to becoming an airline pilot? I’ve always wanted to be one but thought it too expensive and unlikely to happen.
When I was in grade 10 English (which incorporated Speech), everyone had to give a speech on what they wanted to be when they grew up. I knew that if I said baseball player, my teammates in the class would have been apoplectic with laughter, so I said baseball umpire. Actually wound up making a little pocket money doing that in my middle age. One of a list I once compiled of about 40 different things I got paid to do at some point in my life.
The only other one I remember was the quietest girl in the class got up and mumbled a comprehensive summary of a working day as a mortician. Amazing how few of them wanted to sell something – cars, insurance, real estate – but that’s what most of them wound up doing.
From the age of 12 I wanted to be a lawyer.
And thus it was so.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a physicist. I’m now becoming a high school physics teacher. So, not too far off the mark.
Oh, and I’ve also gotten paid to play with Lego, which I seriously would have wanted, had I known it was an option. That’s not really a career, though, just a side-line.
I come from a family of teachers, so I wanted to be one from an early age. RL butted in, of course, and I dropped out of college to actually make a living. 8 years later I sold my company for enough to live on for a few years, got my shit together, went back to school and completed the degree and teaching credential and have been loving my job for the last 28 years.
I wanted to be a writer, a horse trainer, or a veterinarian, until I realized I couldn’t stand seeing animals in pain. I also know now that I wouldn’t be able to deal in an appropriate manner with clueless, stupid, uncaring pet owners.
My father nixed writing or horse training because, according to him, I would “starve.” He wanted me go into journalism (but just until I could find a good man to marry me and take care of me, of course!). My high school guidance counselor suggested I go to law school. I wanted to be a novelist, not write for the newspaper. I don’t know if it was because I was unimaginative or just sheltered, but to me “being a lawyer” only meant arguing in court, which petrified me, and “being a journalist” only meant writing up boring little news bits about the local Garden Club meetings. I couldn’t imagine those jobs as wider and more challenging and interesting than that. Pity. I would have probable been pretty good at them.
I’ve done lots of things since: secretary, administrative assistant, commerical and residential property manager, owned and ran a pizza parlor. I went back to college in my 30s and got a BFA in painting and illustration, because I love art. I’m now, and will be until I retire, a senior paralegal in a state Supreme Court. I do court adminstration and edit opinions, so I get to play with words and be close as close as you can get to working in legal profession without a JD. I realize now that I have what it takes and could have become a judge, if I’d followed the law school path. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
As for the real passion of my life, I have been taking weekly horse riding lessons (in dressage) for six years and have started giving lessons on my own. It is every bit as wonderful as I imagined it would be 40 years ago!
I always wanted to be a writer growing up, but I loved math. Now I work in a factory doing inventory control and running procedures for the shop. I love it! I’ve also (sorta kinda) hit my dream of being a writer and self-published 3 books. My family is happy with the books and I enjoy my writing so I count that dream as fulfilled, even if I never “make it big”. I love the work I do, and I love being able to write my stories and share them with family. Win-win. 
I grew up near Cincinnati’s airport, which is over in Kentucky. The first jet commercial aircraft were just starting to fly there plus there were beautiful prop aircraft like the Lockheed Constellation. I decided that I wanted to be an aircraft mechanic.
So when I turned 18 YO, I joined the US Air Force and worked on or around aircraft for 24 years. I changed my career since then as an IT guy, but still look up at aircraft as they fly by to make sure things like the lights work and the landing gear looks OK.
Reasons law not a good fit for me:
1)Not detail oriented enough.
2)Disorganized, sloppy
Once I get out of rehab, will finally finish BA, enter M.Ed program. Why that program? One upside of the work-study position I did, against my better judgment, I enjoy working with young people. Though my students will be older than those kids from work-study.
And as far as politics: ANY job makes you qualified for political office. 