All I wanted was a daddy. Now I get to be a stripper!

My answer was always just "rich". It's the same answer today. I never cared about what I did as long as I made a lot of money doing it. When I was ten I used to pretend my bicycle was a fast sports car. I'm twenty and a student right now.

 

I wanted to be a programmer. I ended up a database administrator. I consider this a wash.

 

At first, I wanted to be a video game designer, then I wanted to be a filmmaker, then a psychologist, now I'll just be happy to graduate with a 3.0 in psychology and hope that grad schools will consider me after this recession is over. Right now, social work is the flavor of the week.

 

I wanted to be a chemist when I was little. It kind of worked out, if you use "chemist" in the sense it was used 100 years ago.

 

I always wanted a cushy desk job like my dad, and I have one! Unfortunately I make way less money than my dad did... shit.

 

I went through a couple different distinct career phases. From age 5 to 7 I wanted to be a vet. By the age of 8 I was painfully aware of my family's tight financial situation, and since my parents were always bitching about the "rich lawyers in big houses that don't understand working people" I decided that being a lawyer sounded pretty good. At 13, I was told that entry level lawyers work 100 hour weeks and since my parents also bitched about "rich engineers that think they know everything" I set my sights on being an engineer and a know-it-all. So far, so good. I'm 24, in my second job (by choice) as a software engineer and making decent money. The know-it-all part has been a little trickier because it involves owning up to your own stupidity and I am not as smart as my 13-year-old self expected. My goal is full-fledged know-it-all by 35.

 

I wanted to be the guy who operated this:

 

This is kind of a funny question because I went to talk to the career counselor at school the other day about the tests I took. Apparently most of what I wanted to do already or study was in my top career fields. Although I don't do all of them for work, I do have an active interest in all of them.

What I wanted to be as a kid: doctor, scientist, artist, farmer, and chef.

What I actually do: studying to be a scientist (biology and envr sci), looking to also be an RN, I draw and do graphic arts in my spare time, I enjoy cooking for myself and others, I garden in my home and I'm also part of a community garden

 

I didn't really know what I wanted to do until I was 15, and read about a young man who wrote to a car magazine asking for a job, and got one. I read his writing and thought "I could do better than that".

7 Years later... http://www.autoguide.com/manufacturer/isuzu/2011-rossion-q1-review-1538.html

 

Before high school, I wanted to be a doctor. HS taught me I was way too lazy to do what it takes to become a doctor. I enjoyed writing and decided I wanted to be a journalist (thank you, Lou Grant), and started out as a journalism major in college, but I got tired of faculty warping my writing style to the conventions of AP & UPI and constantly telling us how we wouldn't get jobs when we graduated, so I turned to broadcast communications (yeah, I pretty much majored in TV) and decided to go into the advertising business, which I did. I loved my time on Madison Ave., but then moved to the publishing sales side when we moved to New England and eventually burned out.

I remember taking a vocational assessment in grade school. The results indicated I should become priest. The nuns got a good laugh out of that, too.

Now, I'm studying to be a rehab counselor. I didn't know there was such a thing when I was a kid.

 

I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I liked that my father made a lot of money as a CFO, so I went the accounting route out of high school. After one accounting course (which I barely passed), I realized that I absolutely didn't want to be an accountant.

From there, I bounced around from one brilliant idea to the next. I wanted to be a meterologist, a landscape designer, work in turf management, major in philosophy, and finally settled on English--the ultimate "I have no idea what I actually want to do" major.

Where I ended up now is actually pretty perfect. I work for three drastically different companies (I'm the manager of two), doing very different things for each. It fits with my "I don't know what I want to do" mentality because I have the freedom to bounce between the three as I please on any given day and pick and choose what I feel like focusing on.

 

I wanted to be a professional basketball player.

Now I'm on track to be a biomedical engineer. Not quite the same.

 

Since I could remember I wanted to own my own business and have a bunch of employees under me like my dad. I spent 4 years in highschool researching and learning each trade to see which one would would be easier to make me rich. I picked electrician, so I figure by the age of 26 Ill have my masters and Ill start my company then.

 

For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a paleontologist. This probably a goal I held on to until about middle school. Eventually I got old enough to realize that the only way to make money is to beg a University or a rich dinosaur enthusiast to fund your dig. I also can't grow facial hair as impressively as those guys.

 

I grew up in a trailer in the middle of the woods. My dad was a mechanic and my mom was a laborer of one sort or another until she graduated college when I was 14. She was a computer programmer. I had no idea what that meant. I still don't, really. The concept of "I want to be ______ when I grow up." never entered my mind...all I knew was that in order to survive, you had to work. We only had two channels to watch...so it was Who's the Boss, The Cosby Show, and the news. Oh, and Quantum Leap and Star Trek. I had no idea what professional people did in their worklife, except wear clothes that weren't denim, torn, or greasy.

Now? I'm partnered with the climbing gym to run the CrossFit affiliate. I love coaching. I thought about teaching at one point but I fail at politics of almost any sort, because I'm entirely too insensitive to other peoples' feelings. CrossFit's pretty perfect for me in that sense, because I get to demand the best from all of my clients, and I don't have to hug them to make them give it.