MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
05 December 2005
What did you really want to be when you grew up?→[More:]A Chorus Line was on TV yesterday. Its hokey and pretty terrible but I still love it. You see, I always wanted to be a dancer -- yup, a broadway dancer, jazz hands and all.
When I was very young, I wanted to deliver mail.
When I was around 10 or so, I wanted to be a vet, but because I lived in rural NZ, I thought that all vets had to deal with cows etc. so I ended up changing my mind.
When I started college, I wanted to do something with my French major.
Half way through my first year, when I switched to pre-med I wanted to be a doctor.
When I started med school, realised that I pretty much hated people so wouldn't be a good doctor (as well as the fact that med school isn't challenging at all) I dropped out.
(best decision of my life, btw)
then I thought I might as well get a PhD. Approx 1 month into it I realised that I had somehow fallen into something I loved. 9 years later, I still love it (despite the fact that I bitch about science and my job here, sometimes).
I remember very clearly the day -- I was around 12-13 years old -- when I realized that I'd been born too early and that there was no way they'd develop personal spaceships soon enough for me to pilot one.
I went through a vet phase and a reporter phase. I left high school wanting to be an English teacher. I left college and grad school convinced I never wanted to teach. I came here wanting to be an editor. I'm currently undecided.
Seriously, for me until my teens it was architect, then literature professor, then writer. Now it's entrepreneur. Yeah, that's the ticket. When I grow up.
A fishmonger, A Chef, An Astronaut, A Sailor, A Cowboy, A Dope Farmer, A Forestry Officer, Some kind of secular Minister or Priest(I can't explain that) and a really good Armed Robber.
A psychologist, which lasted all the way through my third year of college, at which point I decided to become an English teacher, which lasted another 9 years. Then I decided what I really wanted was to be gainfully employed. Which I am, now, but it's just a job, not something I love.
Wanted to be a "scientist" when I was very young. A marine biologist (seriously) late in elementary school. A medical doctor during early highschool, a highschool English/history near the end of highschool.
Somehow I ended up with a BA in philosophy (and biochem/cellmolec & zoology), a MSc in immunology in a month or two, and will be working on a PhD in neurology.
Always did hold out to be a spy covert intelligence agent. Then again, who's to say I'm not.
I wanted to be a vet as a kid, but then realized how much I suck at math and science stuff. Then I wanted to be a lawyer to help people. Then I wanted to be a theatre teacher. Then I realized I wanted to have a job that I could make a decent living at. Then I wanted to do interaction design. Then I remembered the math and science thing.
Now I'm in my second year of poli sci/pre-law with the plan being to graduate law school by the time I'm 30. Back to the helping people schtick.
(Where's ikkyu2? I know he has a great story for this question...)
The only way I would study sharks is on horseback, preferably with me and my six other cowboy homies aiming lever action Winchester .30-30's at those damn sharks, looking for any sign that they intend to leave the water and try to eat us.
The early years: a superhero.
The lost years: I can't remember.
The teen years: graphic designer, cartoonist, writer, photographer, filmmaker, punk rock icon. I expected to be dead by 30.
College first two years: filmmaker, writer, cartoonist.
College second two years: college professor of film, social sciences, STS/CSST, or writing.
Grad School (MA): college professor of film or STS/CSST.
Now: ?
In order, roughly: pilot, architect, writer, mercenary, gunsmith, motion picture director, writer, master control operator, technical writer, analyst, writer. Still getting closer to what it actually is. I think it will involve writing.
Definitely a baseball player. Later on, a baseball player. Now, a baseball player. I haven't played in 10 years though. I was pretty good when I was 11 years old and all. Once I figured out that this wasn't a realistic aspiration, I decided that I wanted to be a nomad. I still want to do that too.
Oh yeah totally still a baseball player, as a matter of fact I am going to try out for the Pirates right about when I hit 65.
Hugh
You could totally have been a faceless superspy battling the Nazi menace and a Heart surgeon, think of all the times you would have had Himmler or whoever on your table and you could have agonized over what to do "One... Slip... of... the... Knife and Himmler's in hell, but the... hippopotamawhatver oath... What would my advisor at Johns Hopkins say...?"
When I was young, I was the typical little girl who wanted to be a ballerina. Unfortunately, ballerinas generally are not (a) busty or (b) totally uncoordinated, and I'm both. Strike that.
Then I wanted to be a marine biologist, specifically one who studied sharks. I wanted to go down in the cages and everything. Once I realized that it required lots of math and science and actual touching of sea creatures, that went out the window too.
Later on I wanted to be a singer (yeah, that'll happen) or a foreign correspondent.
Vet. Farmer. Marine Biologist (seriously--were we all watching the same Jacques Cousteau National Geographic specials or what?). Doctor (dropped after finding out I suck at physics). Did serious assessment of likes/dislikes, realized that the thing I truly love is literature. Had been convinced by scientist parents that lit. was useless, but decided to press ahead and do what I loved, for me, for once. Now working on lit. M.A. the same way I finished my B.A.--very slowly.
And I still haven't grown up. Immature as ever.
(and I never went for the typical little-girl ballerina fantasy because I was chunky and clumsy and knew it.)
Hmm. I'm not grown up now, so I'll ammend my answer to say:
Marine Biologist (never happened)
Architectural Designer (have the degree)
NLP practioner/communication facilitator (saving money for various trainings)
Mom* (still lookin' for a good man)
I wanted to be an astronaut, but my hopes were dashed by being told that you had to have perfect vision to be an astronaut.
Then I decided that I wanted to be an aerospace engineer, until I realized that you had to do math for that, and besides, I really just liked drawing spaceships.
So I wanted to be an artist. And I am one, when I'm not proofreading. I'd also like to be a writer of young adult novels (which I am, albeit unpublished).
A ninja. Still working on that one. Later, I wrote this about the question:
Career Planning
I'd like to be a freelance angel
manufacturing miracles pro bono.
Not a subcontractor or a company man,
checking every detail against
the big functional specification in the sky.
I don't want to be an immortal delivery boy.
And I'm not out to change the world,
save your soul, or bring Lex Luthor
up before the divine DOJ.
Superheroes are passe, anyway, and I hear
the benefits are lousy. I just want to provide
handcrafted smiles, goodwill made to order,
the individually wrapped moment. Or maybe
I should just be a pony.
A writer. Which I am. I'm not the kind of writer I wanted to be, but there are worse ways to make a living than writing for health care journals. (Writing for Bingo Monthly, for example.Or Cat Fancy.)
What I never suspected I'd be is a suburban housewife/mom. It was high on my list of things to never become. But on days like this, full of sledding and cookies and fireside lounging, I rather enjoy it.
on preview: That poem rocks It's Raining Florence Henderson!
Another marine biologist. Maybe we can all team up & buy a boat a la Team Sissou or something. And a vet, and an astronaut, and a rock star (hampered by my total lack of musical ability there) and an actress. And an artist and a writer and a crafter and a museum curator.
And you know what? I went down and took the Kelly Girl test on Friday and I am super qualified to be an $8 an hour office clerk! Yay me! I've achieved a lot for my advanced age! I can hardly wait to start.
The Saint, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Thornedyke, The Thinking Machine (obscure SFX Van Duesen character), Roy Chapman Andrews, and The Man from UNCLE, Robert Goulet in Blue Light(an anonymous superspy fighting the Nazis), the Continental Op and Phillip Marlow.
Then I went into the real world and was other things, including scientist, film editor, videodisc producer, museum designer, alchemist, historian, contractor, tile mechanic and framer (my blue collar period). Then I turned 40, got laid off and became what I wanted in the first place during a five-year sabatical. Now I'll never go back. Given the structure of modern society, the only way to fully relate to the world is as a field intelligence operative.
I suppose I'll have to retire to beekeeping or something.
I wanted to be an Artificial Intelligence architect/engineer.
Then I discovered I don't really like formal math systems, doing math, or otherwise working with alogrithms or formal problem solving. I'd probably be real good at it. I just don't really enjoy stretching my brain in those directions.
Now I do tech support, graphic design (More tech support than anything) and am a wannabe artist.
What a huge difference there is between AI and helpdesk monkey. But there's a lot of analytical similarities, too.
However, I do like helping people learn about computers, and I love solving problems. I get to do all kinds of mungy-hoary seat of the pants guesswork and intuition-following to do quick, effective in-person support and throw away the call-center type scripts besides - all without actually having to do any math.
Getting to work with AI may still be in my life time, either as a consumer, or as an experimenter. One of the things on my master, mental "to do list" is to pick up a few FPGA's and a programmer and some software and experiment with evolved or genetic algorithm code. (FPGA = Field Programmable Gate Array, a sort of programmable microprocessor comprised of logic gates that can be linked or delinked quickly and easily. Feed it a bunch of different random seed algorithms, choose a task and test them at it in a variety of temperatures, choose the the least sucky one, repeat, using the least sucky one as the next seed. Eventually - in theory - you have usable code.)
Sometimes I have fantasies about being an inhumanely good skateboarder - ever since a young age I've mentally projected myself out of moving vehicles to visualize skateboarding along the passing terrain a car speeds. Reading "Snowcrash" and the advent of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has only hyperfueled this fantasy. When I play THPS I could care less about the challenges - I just turn on the cheats and go shred stuff and cruise around, leaping over buildings and fucking up cars.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
