What did you want to be when you were little?

So I wasn't very original as a kid - I first wanted to be a snake (Kaa from the Jungle Book) so I taught myself how to lisp. When being a snake wasn't a viable option, I had a brief period I wanted to be either Super Girl and solve mysteries (blame the adventures of Lois and Clark for that) or Zorro and solve mysteries. Zorro seemed like the most practical solution because I couldn't fly and you got to wield a sword and wear costumes (I loved costumes).

Then when I was eight it was either vet or doctor: you got to find out what was wrong with a sick person/animal, solve mysteries, and anatomy was awesome! We had lots of medical books at home because Nigeria at thw time didn't have a lot of doctors, which meant we had to know basic care for just in case, and I loved reading them. They were pretty graphic, and I got a morbid fascination for the human body and its workings. That was until my biology teacher in Colombia, who was a vet when he wasn't teaching, thought it was a good idea to operate on a dog in the bio room for class. (Dog was fine, don't worry, she got sterilized that day and we got to watch - it wasn't any kind of creepy vivisection!! And she was fine after) anyways, long story short, I can't stand fear and real guts. So vet or doctor was off the table.

That was when I decided on detective! Also involved figuring things out (solving mysteries!) and fixing stuff. Well... That's when I started reading murder mysteries and watching Inspector Frost. Problem is that murders involve, well, murder, and that wasn't really what I wanted to do.

Funny thing is that the whole "solving mysteries shtick " still kind of stuck to me: for the themes in my art I often take on complicated subjects like economics or politics and I love figuring out all the details and the nitty gritty. so it all came out fine!

 

an undertaker.

I was a very morbid child.

 

I always wanted to be a writer.

 

I wanted to be a mathematician for the longest time: I liked maths, and it was a Good Appropriate Career. Then I realised/discovered that academia wasn't something I could excel in, and that though I love maths, it wouldn't be a good day job for me.

Nowadays it's either musician or editor/typesetter; probably the latter short-term and the former long-term. At least, I hope so.

 

I wanted to be a paleontologist as soon as I knew what that was. I obsessed over dinosaur and fossil documentaries and read everything I could get my hands on. When I got a little older, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to be a physicist, and that stuck. N years of schooling later, I am indeed a physicist, but I decided academia wasn't for me. So now I am flailing around trying to on-the-job train myself into something near the centroid of physicist, engineer, and computer scientist.

My dad completely changed careers at about age 40 (from music to software QA). He's 63 now and says he still doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up.

 

I have a memory of "what career do you want when you grow up" being the theme of an assignment in elementary school. I drew a picture of myself as a zookeeper, because zookeepers get to play with animals, right? My understanding of being a zookeeper was pretty much "Steve Irwin except you stay in one place". Seven year old me was so ready to wrestle an alligator (well, maybe a more size appropriate caiman). Then, I mostly remember being told that 1) zookeeper is a terrible job (it was not really explained to me how that was the case??) and 2) if I want to work with animals I should be a veterinarian. That was the WORST suggestion, because veterinarians have to constantly see sad injured animals and I knew I couldn't do that!! I watched a lot of vet shows on Animal Planet, so I was sure of that.

As for what I wanted to be that wasn't a career, I wanted to be a cat. Or, a shapeshifter, so I could be many different kinds of cats, and also other animals.

I didn't have a very concrete image of what I was at the time, only that I was good at drawing and knowing facts and being angry about time travel paradoxes in cartoons.

 

I wanted to be Sailor Moon, Jackie Chan, and Indiana Jones all in fucking one. Also a forensic investigator. I was an ambitious child.

 

I wanted to be a teacher.

Lo and behold, that is what I am studying to be.

(And occasionally a vet or an artist or a writer or a geologist. I wanted to be a soldier at some point because I thought it would be sneaking through bushes and having a good time.)

 

Apart from the standard (then) idea of being an engine driver (steam train, of course) I never had a clue until one day when at secondary school. We had just learned a tiny bit of algebra, the idea of substituting letters for numbers and I was bouncing with the excitement of it all. I rushed home to tell dad and he didn't understand a word I said. The disappointment was total; this was dad, the man who knew everything, and I suddenly knew something he didn't. How could this be? Well, it soon became obvious that no adult in the family or neighbourhood understood algebra. There's only one solution - I will become a mathematics teacher then everyone will know about algebra.
Part two later if anyone asks.

 

@jaob consider yourself asked!

 

OK, part two:
So, nearly everyone I meet can't do maths. Proper maths, you know, algebra, geometry and other stuff. I'm the only clever person I know - except, of course, for fellow students, teachers and engineers. I leave home at 16, having got a job in a Research Labs. I go to Uni and am suddenly not the cleverest person I know by a long way! Nevertheless, I get to become a proper Electrical Engineer and get a proper job. I am so good at it that I find they are doing things wrong. They don't believe me and give me a different job. I get good at that and ask for a job on their new-fangled computer. Refused. Grumpy. About this time I meet nice lady who was training to be a teacher. I remembered that that's what I once wanted to be and so I gave in my notice and went off to train as a teacher myself. I spent 34 years in one school, retiring in 2008. Needless to say, I taught maths.

 

@jaob That's awesome. I have a ton of respect for math teachers, and was fortunate enough to have some very good ones when I was in school.

 

@jaob I have so much respect for good teachers. Especially good maths teachers.

I am shite at maths (whee dyscalculia that went undiagnosed until literally this year. I'm in my third year of uni, for reference), but when I was in Year 9 I had this absolutely AMAZING maths teacher. Up until then, everyone had called me slow, or stupid, or not trying hard enough. And then I was in the bottom maths class, which I had been since Year 8. They put me in the top class in Year 7 because in my high school entrance testing (not an entrance exam, they just needed to be able to stream us) I was good at English which I guess they assumed meant Good At Everything.

Anyway, on the first day of maths class in Year 9, the teacher said to us, "Look. You're in this class because you're not so good at maths. And that's okay. We're going to go as slowly as we need to, and we're not going to move on from a question until everyone understands it. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay not to understand things. It's my job to help you understand it, and we're all going to work together until each one of us understands how to do maths."

I went from barely passing to being the top of my class. (Top of the bottom maths class, but still.) He took the time to explain things. He didn't yell or criticise. I don't think he ever raised his voice. Even when he did book inspections, he wasn't cruel. My workbook was always messy and he would say, "Now, next time I inspect your book, your it's going to look marvellous, with all the sheets glued in and not so many doodles!" and somehow, I was able to do it because he believed in me, and didn't tell me I was slow or lazy or stupid or not trying hard enough. Even when it was still messy, if it was neater than last time, he praised me and encouraged me to keep trying instead of putting me down. So I felt like I really could make my book neat.

He's my inspiration for what I want to be like as a teacher. If I can make even one kid believe in themselves even when they feel like they can never succeed, then I feel like I will have done my job.

So uh. Yeah. Teaching.

 

Part three:
OK, kids, it's time to do some work on fractions. Oh, no, we hate fractions. But fractions are fun. No they're not; they're boring. Is that not how it starts? Of course it is. So we play around, we draw silly shapes and chop them up, we eat cake, we go outside and measure stuff, we do anything that looks like its not fractions and suddenly it turns out that it actually is. At the end of the week one of the pupils came in with a badge he had made at home: I love fractions. So, @a tiny mushroom , get in there, do your thing, you will inspire hundreds of kids, it's easy. Actually, no it's not, but it's bloody rewarding.

 

i wanted to be an astrophysicist, but it turns out that while my physics is ok and i understand the concepts and stuff, my maths are crap. like. actual crap. im having a hell of a time in tutoring because i have to write down everything, all the process, to be able to remember it, and i cant do anything on my head. Then I wanted to be a doctor and a writer, but being bad at maths discouraged me from med school because the entrance exams are brutal, and being depressed since i was... 10-11 years old crapped my writing to pieces, i cant make anything i find enjoyable anymore.

Ended up in advertising, hated it - and now i'm back in prep school to try becoming a doctor. I'm thinking about going to neuro because neuro is fascinating, or psych because people are fascinating, but im a bit too socially awkward for psychiatry and if i went into psychiatry i'd want to have a degree in psychology too so i can have a more rounded approach to patients and then that's just. way too much time that i don't have.

i also like pediatrics and OB/GYN, but my mom is an OB/GYN and i really don't want to be my mom. also pregnant people freak me out a little.

 

I wanted to design cars and trains and planes and transportation stuff in general.

And to be a dancer, but I never admitted that part to anyone because it was a Boys Shouldn't Want That thing.

 

The very first career I wanted was to be a paleontologist or archeologist. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. I've always been a performer as well and a writer, so I figured I would be a writer too. But mom crushed that dream early. Other careers I have considered: chef, engineer, marine biologist, psychologist, linguist, and computer repairer. I just graduated with my bachelor's in June and am currently unemployed living off of my savings unable to figure out what direction to take life. My flavor of the month for career choice right now is hovering around social worker. We will see.

 

A veterinarian, until I realized it'd mean potentially having to put animals to sleep.

Then a teacher, until I realized I can't tolerate loud classrooms and most children without having extreme sensory overload and meltdowns.

Nowadays I just want to be a house-wife-thing. Like, I feel like that's the shittiest thing I could want to be, and I feel guilty about it, but I just like being home. I like taking care of shit around here. I like cleaning when I have the energy to. And even if I tackled my depression issues I'm not sure I'd want to submit myself to the sensory hell that is most part time jobs and a lot of careers.

Also I totally did have a period as a kid where I wanted to like.. be a dog breeder? Do dog shows? That's not an entirely gone dream, though at this point in my life I couldn't give less of a crap about dog shows and breeding for that. It'd be great to be able to breed functional working dogs or even just very very healthy quality pups meant to become house pets. It'd just be nice to breed for health and possibly working function than you know, unhealthy and crappy standards. Though this isn't even really a 'career' goal, it would probably be something I wouldn't make very much money off of, and honestly I wouldn't care. Just. Animals, and making sure people have animals that won't die of genetic issues.

 

Hey, the world has always needed people to stay home and hold down the fort, as it were. It's been devalued and belittled but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of history and a lot of people's lives have been based on homes that someone managed and took care of. Running a household is important work, and should be seen as such.

 

The first one I remember was wanting to be a kindergarten teacher when I was in kindergarten, so I could stay forever and play with the sand table.


The I wanted to be an architect. I used to make models of the neighbours' houses with popsicle sticks, and draw endless floor plans of dream houses. That lasted probably till the end of middle school.


And then when I was thirteen I got so depressed that I could no longer see any future at all, and no longer wanted or dreamed anything. That never really went away.


The job options in my town were farm labourer or minimum wage part-time cashier. And there was a whole lot of competition for those cashier jobs. So I moved to the city, where the rent was higher but at least there were more part time customer service jobs.


In my late teens I worked as a cleaner at a nursing home, and I wanted to be a pilot, but I couldn't afford flying lessons. I wanted to be a mechanic too, but I couldn't afford that either. I couldn't really afford anything, on my salary.


In my mid twenties, I wanted to be a translator, and I did become one, but I couldn't afford enough education to go very far with that. People think my failure is my fault for not wanting it or not trying hard enough, but what they don't understand is that without money or education or health or ability, the future will not be different from the present. Without those things, you can't fulfill your dreams. And there's not much hope, in small towns.