What did you want to be when you were little?

I saw something like this in another thread, but didn't want to derail the original topic.

What did you want to be when you grew up? How did you "see yourself" as a kid? How did you identify yourself mentally?

I think before I had any dreams or aspirations I kind of saw myself as some kinda forest nymph. I wanted to be some kind of a bad ass amazon climbing trees all day and exploring the forest. (which is part of why I was horrified of puberty because I didn't want my boobs to physically get in the way).

This despite the fact that I had to go to physical therapy because my muscles were weak and I wasn't coordinated, and sensory issues made the sun hurt. So I've never actually even climbed a tree and staying outside for too long was kind of upsetting.

But hey, I am looking to get in shape and actually try and build muscle so there is always hope for the future! One of these days with enough hard work I will totally be a bad ass forest princess.

 

Paleontologist.

Currently en route. We'll see how it goes!

 

Cosmologist. I literally used that word. People confused it with "cosmetologist" because I was girl-shaped. No, I was just obsessed with quasars and black holes. Then it turned out that I hated physics and chemistry, even though my math was great. I still love Cosmos and the Discovery Channel, though. And I'm ironically-unironically into astrology.

Once I was in college and realized that I had the intellect and work ethic to do it (and no undergrad degree to do anything else useful), I switched my tack to law. I'm really enjoying it so far, even though I never even considered it as a career until I was 19 or 20.

 

I wanted to be an entomologist because I was obsessed with insects and spiders. As a 2-4 year old, I checked out every insect book from the kid section and a couple from the adult section.

At around age twelve, I switched to wanting to be an author because I figured it was something a kid under sixteen could do to make money. Now I'm studying to become a better writer in college.

Up until a couple of years ago, I saw myself as the greatest person to ever live. Smarter, more creative, and just plain better than everybody else.

 

man everything was science this and science that back then for me. everything was an experiment :) i learned to read early and loved (still do) forensics and biology and astronomy and entomology and paleontology , just, How Things Work was and is very important to me. i could never pick one field to focus on long enough to make something of it though, nothing grabbed my interest enough.

i was super into movies too. science fiction in particular. i loved the way they could fool a lot of people into thinking they knew what they were talking about (suspension of disbelief).

i've never had a great sense of self though. i kind of categorized myself and other children as "non persons", because that's how i was treated. kind of a bummer.

 

I always said vet, cause that was the easiest answer for a reasonably smart kid who liked animals well enough, but I'm not certain I wanted to be anything. It was a topic that kept coming up, so I had to know how to answer it, but I think I mostly just wanted to be a kid forever. I remember being genuinely shocked whenever my mom'd bring up me wanting to be a vet, like it was some sort of binding contract and not a word I'd say to make people stop talking at me.

Latched on to construction work when I was in high school, cause it made me happy and it was a lot less stressful to me than book work. Now I'm learning how to weld, which is not what I imagined doing ever, but I like it, so. Whatever.

 

Palentologist or doctor. Also some sort of really cool guy who was so much cooler than my friends that they'd have to say 'wow Hobo, you are so cool.' None of these things happened, haha. I ended up doing biochemistry in uni before switching to microbiology which I actually fucking love (after a 2 year break), hoping to get into lab work now.

 

in second grade i wanted to be a veterinarian but i'm pretty sure it was because i was going through my "Nature Phase".

And then starting around fourth grade until like high school, I had vague unformed dreams of being a mercenary, possibly because that seemed to involve structure but also violence and not being in the town i grew up in. it would have been a soldier, but at that age i Did Not Approve Of The Military because I was weirdly political.
ahh sweet youth.

Now I can only hope to not starve on the streets while doing nonprofit work. It's kind of a career switch from mercenary, but I think the resume-building potential is much higher

 

I Err apparently wanted to be a shape-shifting pyromancer. I was looking through a lot of the old stuff I had written in elementary school(my mom kept a lot of that stuff) and I was always talking about flying or turning into some animal or another. And having control of fire. (probably something that led to my odd kleptocism of my friends lighters. The collection which is currently up to about 10-15 lighters)

 

I was a victim of the animorphs too xD totally looked through the woods to see if I could find the box. And tried to fly, resulting in various scrapes and small amounts of bodily harm

 

I wanted to be an astronaut. Also a chef. An astrochef.

However, the chemistry & physics teacher at my high school was less than sub par (small school, one lady taught both), so by 10th grade I gave up on understanding any science but Biology and turned ever deeper into the world of liberal arts.

Instead I became an English teacher who is pretty decent at cooking and baking even if her husband adds either cayenne pepper Old Bay to freaking everything. Ye gods and little fishes man, this is not a spicy dish, please stop.

 

I wanted to be a veterinarian.
Nowadays I have no fucking clue, and am actually more into psych or anthropology then biology.

 

Decided I wanted to be a Marine Biologist at the age of 4, with a 4yo's understanding of marine biology:
-- Wear SCUBA suit
-- Look at stuff underwater
-- Maybe hang out with dolphins

Now I'm halfway through my first stage of SCUBA training, with the intention of becoming a dive instructor so I can fund my plans to:
-- Wear SCUBA suit
-- Look at stuff underwater
-- Maybe hang out with dolphins
-- Maybe get hired by science-y folks that need someone to dive for research

 

In preschool, I wanted to be a hot air balloon. Not the pilot of one, but the balloon itself. I don't remember why. Then I wanted to be a dinosaur, and when I was informed that all the dinosaurs were gone, I settled for "paleontologist". I was really proud of myself at the time for knowing that word, too. Haha.

 

I vacillated constantly between things people admire that are at least veguely relevant to my interests, and would change to something else when I learned about some difficult thing about each of them. Right now I'm leaning toward artist/writer/illustrator with a strong sense of wanting to make illustrated novels that I would think are awesome.

But I don't really write, and it's rare that I push my art enough. I basically just play wíth world building and philosophy.

 

I also did a lot of "i want to be a _______!"
"Are you sure? Thats really hard, i mean, do you really think you can do something like that?" "Oh, ok, nevermind then." I wanted to be some sort of performer when i was really little--a singer or a ballet dancer or something. Then i wanted to be an author, or a painter, or....*various other creative things*

By the time i went to college i literally couldnt imagine any future for myself but "corpse." I was /deeply/ shocked to see my 20th birthday. Ive done a little bit of lots of things--game art, copy editing, retail, barista, but no real career. Its weird.

 

Sailor Scout, author, possibly fashion designer.

Uhh.

Now I am planning to go to uni for fashion design after having gotten a vocational degree in dressmaking, so, not too bad!

 

I wanted to be a marine biologist. I really, really wanted to be one, but no-one told me you needed chemistry and the school wouldn't let me do make up classes, so I kind of gave up and did a year of fashion design before qualifing from college as a journalist and sub-editor. Never stuck with one job, though - graphic designer, contracts broker, butcher and fishmonger... but I'd love to make a living from art, instead of being a customer services slave.

 

As a really tiny kidlet, I wanted to be a lion lmfao. Then I think in third grade I decided I wanted to be a geneticist. (Third grade me was under the impression that geneticists tinkered and made crazy hybrids of things and I could totally make flying cats and the like if I went into the field. Third grade me was extremely disappointed to find out that this wasn't the case lol.)

Nowadays I'm kind of at loose ends, but I'm thinking about translation. I'd have to get all the Japanese I lost back first, though...

 

I vaguely remember wanting to do all sorts of things, but for a long while my dearest, most secret wish was to grow up to be a mad scientist. That didn't pan out in any sort of way since I had very little access to science-y stuff and no adults interested in exploring it with me. Even science lessons in elementary school were a rare and fantastic thing.

After about age... 12 I think? My dearest, most secret wish was to be a wandering hero. (This is all your fault, Mercedes Lackey.) That lasted for a long, long time, even as I was growing up, because outside of the few, grim prospects my economic class and area held for someone like me, I had no idea what else I even could do. Outside of the categories of retail jockey and various kinds of manual labor, jobs were vague, mysterious, and broad categories. High school basically did nothing to expand my world on that front (I have a theory on why, but that's a topic for another time).

The wandering hero thing also clearly didn't work out. Turns out the only thing I'm really suited to is writing, but at least that's a lot less dangerous than solving problems with a sword.