Inspired by this month's picture... looking onward and upward!

What did you want to be when you grew up? Yeah? What did you study in college or school? And what are you actually doing (or did) for a living?

The winner will be the story with the biggest difference between where you thought you'd be and where you ended up.


I'll go first.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a bus driver. I majored in Russian language and literature with a minor in sociology. I wanted to be a photojournalist and work in Eastern Europe. And now? I am a technical writer for a company that makes new-fangled flying machines. Go figger.

Wanted to be a horse trainer.
Did more farming than practicing law.
Back to looking at horses in my retirement.

When I was a little boy, I wanted to be "Wells Fargo" because I was totally in love with the TV show. I guess that sorta qualifies as wanting to be a cowboy.

Then when I was a little older, I wanted to be a banker and be "rich rich rich".

In junior high and high school I was determined to go to Annapolis and become a submarine captain.

In the end, I studied Electrical Engineering. Mostly because my grandfather was an electrician and I thought studying EE was a way to become a really really good electrician.

I spent my working life in the computer industry, split pretty evenly between manager and individual contributor and between support and design organizations.

I had no clue when I was a kid. (Specifically, about what I wanted to do when I grow up. I still have no clue about life in general…)

I had no mechanical or physical skills, and I wanted a career where I worked indoors and they paid me a salary, not an hourly rate. My dad seemed to do OK, and he had some vague title like manager of administrative services at the time.

So, I would tell people like my counselor I wanted to be a business major when I was in high school. By the time I went to college, economics seemed like the snazzier, more upscale version of a business degree so I went with that.

So, I am sitting in one of the required courses for my major, accounting 1, and I am wondering why they even bother to have the class. It’s like they’re teaching you that the sky is blue and grass is green. I look around me, and some people actually seem to be having trouble with it. I did not open a book or do homework for the entire semester. The subject matter was just so childishly easy.

So, at the next break I tell my dad, “I think I’m going to be an Accountant”’. And he asked me if I knew that he was an accountant, having been an accounting major at UCLA and in fact on a path to become corporate controller with in the next year. No, I did not know that. We were not a chatty family…

So basically, as a kid I sort of, kind of thought I wanted to get a job something like my Dad’s, and then I did so by accident…

Let’s see, you said the winner is the person who had the biggest difference between their early aspirations and where they ended up? Well, I thought I was gonna be an economics major but I ended up being an economics major with an accounting emphasis. that’s got to make me a contender, right?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist. Not just for a while, but for many years. I loved the water and boats anything marine. My fantasy life was to be the next Jaques Cousteau - remember him?


When I was 14 we left the coast of Florida for Rochester NY. I drifted away from things marine.

I was good at math and liked it. Dad was an engineer. Like Dan I got a degree in Electrical Engineering.


I interned as a design engineer in electronics at a defense contractor (military radios). Defense is where the jobs were in the 80s.

Then, on a whim, really more for practice, I interviewed with this management consulting firm that came to campus. They would talk to any major, if you met the GPA and a couple other criteria.

After the interview they sent me to Chicago to talk to people doing the work. They were young and cool and fun and flew interesting places and never did the same project twice.

I also interviewed with companies like GE and Motorola. They sent me to cube farms in the middle of nowhere where I met with middle aged guys who had done the same job for a decade or two.

It was a no brainer.

I started out 'cross industry', like most junior folks. I actually worked at retail companies, manufacturers, oil companies, even a hospital system very early in my career. (fun facts: I was at Haliburton when Cheney was CEO, and I was at Apple when Scully ran it and the Newton failed and they had their first ever layoff. My first client, as a 21 year old, was Burger King Corp down in Miami)

Not long into my career I drifted into capital markets, and moved to NYC. For a while I was still a consultant, working in the capital markets industry. But by 2004 I had left the consulting firm to work directly for Wall Street.


My line, which I'm sure I've used here, is that I have a BSEE but in my career I've used the BS much more than the EE.

In eighth grade, I wanted to be a doctor. I still find that fascinating, and I play one at home. I know way more medical jargon than a normal person should.

I studied sociology and women’s studies in college. I had an internship with the Social Security Administration during my senior year, and went to work for them after graduation. I worked for them in the Portland area, and then in Flushing, NY, when Mr. AM took a job with the NY Mets. I stopped working for them when Son1 was 6 months old; he was way more fun. I was an operations analyst at the time, and it couldn’t be a part-time job.

I worked part-time as Christian Education Director at my church for 9 years, beginning when Son2 was in second grade. They asked me to apply. (Side note: Did I send a thank you note for the interview? Probably; I don’t remember. But I remember when they offered me the job, the initial offer was so low I told them I’d rather stay at home than take it! That got revised in a hurry.) It was an interesting job, and because it was a very small office, I was involved in all sorts of stuff besides Sunday School.

All through this time, I always said that I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up.

In March 2008, my world changed. Ravelry, a new online site for knitters and crocheters, made it possible for designers to self-publish patterns and sell them through this platform. I began selling patterns there, slowly. In 2009 I began teaching classes at the local yarn shop.

By the time Son2 graduated from high school in 2011, I finally knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. I quit my church job of 9 years when he graduated, because I no longer needed to be available for mom stuff, and I wanted to devote my time to what had been my side side-gig.

I’m a knitting designer, and I teach at yarn shops, fiber festivals, and retreats. I love what I do. I’m not a doctor, but I’m really good at knitting surgery. I can cut it up, take it apart, and graft it back together!

okay, i think we have a winner ^^

my earliest ambition was to be a ballerina. i studied dance from about age 3 through college.

but somewhere around age 8 i decided i wanted to be a naturalist. i tried to read charles darwin (without much success). my idea of being a naturalist at that age was to take frequent walks in the woods and name the acorns.

not identify the acorns. but name them, as in give them names.

we lived on the edge of a ravine that ended in a swamp and then a river, and my dad and i were out fishing on the chesapeake bay in our little cabin cruiser every weekend. i was in love with the natural world.

concurrently, i decided that if i couldn't be a naturalist, i wanted to be a horse. i think there was an entire year at least of my childhood when i cantered everywhere, tossed my mane a lot, and only answered my parents in whinnies.

i was also a talented artist from the time i could hold a pencil. my parents, especially my dad, thought i should get painting lessons, but they never materialized. it was something that came so easily to me, i didn't think of it as something i might spend my life doing until i was around 17. then my dad told me that was a waste of time because i was obviously not another picasso.

by puberty i had decided i wanted to be an actress. i was quite jealous of shirley temple when i was a kid (never mind that she was an ambassador by then and not tap dancing up and down the stairs any more). i loved greta garbo and marlene dietrich and loved the over-the-top glamour of it all. my mother said actresses led horrible lives and i should think of something else. (notice a theme here?) i did get the lead always in the school plays.

in sixth grade my teacher surprised me by asking me wasn't i going to be a writer? that was news to me.

in college i really could not settle on one thing. i was interested in everything. and i really believed in the value of a liberal arts education. so i devised my own major in the philosophy department that would allow me to study whatever i wished. i took a lot of independent studies in studio art. i also took a lot of natural science classes, like mycology. and by then i was in love with the russian language, so i took those courses too.

after graduation, i got slave wage jobs working for a potter as a glazing mixer, and working in an art gallery. i then went to the alumni career counseling office and they gave me a battery of tests. they came back recommending i become either a musician or a merchant marine.

i went back to school and studied graphic design and worked for a few years in that field. i was good at it, but i hated having corporate clients. i had my own visual vision, and i was not cut out for pandering.

so i decided to become a wilderness ranger.

while living alone in the wilderness i decided i wanted to become a magazine writer. returned to new york, got magazine assignments, got into journalism school, became an investigative environmental reporter.

journalism was a great fit because i would never have to commit to one subject. i could go from project to project. i could enter different subcultures and learn about an entirely different topic with each assignment. it was like getting serial PhDs.

But soon i was specializing too much. the environmental stories all had the same narrative. plus i was getting a lot of hate mail because i was writing about controversial subjects and what i wrote threatened some people's livelihoods. i got tired of the negativity.

i started teaching journalism at the master's program here. then when the dean left the school, he took me with him to help him start an environmental journalism non-profit and recruit other journalists to my research project. that turned out to be something i was really good at--project management, and managing people. i surprised myself. but when that contract ended, i went into my current profession.

i became a memoirist.

Important to being a memoirist is having an interesting life and having lots of interests. still working on that. i have serial obsessions, and each is worthy of its own story.

I wanted to be a jockey. And when I got too tall and heavy for that (at 9 yrs old(, I wanted to be a steeplechase jockey. Outdoors, super physical, fairly dangerous.

I run clinical trials of new diagnostic tests for a living. Indoors, exceedingly sedentary, risky only for the company's bottom line.

I wanted to be a doctor for my entire childhood. I was completely obsessed. In grade 12, as I was was preparing to apply for universities during my Grade 13 year, I was taking biology and HATED it. My mom asked me why I wanted to be a doctor and my only answer was “because that’s what I’ve always wanted to be.” She said, “you seem to like this theatre thing. Why don’t you do that instead?”

I went to Ryerson Theatre School for Theatre- Technical/Production. I had plans to be a costumer. By the time I was done the four year program I knew it wasn’t for me. I considered going back to school to get my masters in History but was shy a few history credits. On day three of my studies at University of Toronto to pick up those credits I found out I was turned down for financial aid. I couldn’t do school without so I left and got a full time job at Indigo Books. I briefly looked at getting into publishing but just as I was starting conversations with a local publisher, I found out I was pregnant.

When Liam was a baby - just under a year old - I got the idea that maybe I should be a teacher. I have no idea where it came from, but by the end of the day I had applied to take my Bachelors of Ed. And here I am, teaching grade 3/4!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be "an astronomer." Of course, I didn't really have much of a clue about what that profession actually was. I grew up during Mercury/Gemini/Apollo and Star Trek, so everything "space" was cool. I was good at math, and had no tinkering/engineering capacity or interest, so physics/astronomy seemed interesting.

Then I got to college and ... never took a physics or astronomy class. I got interested in political theory and economics. The math still came in handy!

I went off to graduate school in economics thinking I would probably go to work for some corporation or bank. The last thing I thought I would do is .... teach. Oh well. You start doing research and teaching, and guess what, you kinda like it.

But, like many things in life, you circle back.

My eldest is the one who has gotten into space, so to speak. He is now working on his Ph.D. in ... planetary geology (Mars). Hanging around our house all his life, he just grew up in a science fiction, Star Trek world!

quote:

Originally posted by piqaboo:
I wanted to be a jockey. And when I got too tall and heavy for that (at 9 yrs old(, I wanted to be a steeplechase jockey. Outdoors, super physical, fairly dangerous.

I run clinical trials of new diagnostic tests for a living. Indoors, exceedingly sedentary, risky only for the company's bottom line.

aha! so that is where your kid gets the horsey thing from! how is she getting along with her riding?

I wanted to be an astronaut from the time I was a toddler until I got to high school and started thinking more practically. I was obsessed with all things NASA and astronomy.

School-wise, I was always good with numbers, but I was really good with words. That changed in high school when I got to algebra and geometry and such, which introduced me to physics. I decided that engineering would be interesting and that it was a better bet than trying to be one of a handful of people who got to be astronauts or concert pianists.

My father expressed some surprise at my choice to study engineering, although my parents were always very supportive and proud. I asked him what he though I should do. He said, "I always imagined you as an English professor."

I started out as a mechanical engineering major at Ole Miss, but the chemical engineering professors were far more welcoming to women and to people with an interest in the environment. (In retrospect, I should have seen this during an interview with the mechanical engineering department chair when I'd already been admitted with a full ride scholarship. Everybody else was trying to sell me on their department but he was pretty rude about my enthusiasm for solar energy. I was only seventeen so I was more embarrassed than angry. I thought I'd said something wrong. His behavior looks different to me now, but I digress.)

Chemical engineering was a good fit. However, after a couple of years, I made the questionable decision to marry a classmate and move with him to western Kentucky, where chemical engineering was not an option. Instead I finished my BS in engineering physics with an emphasis in chemistry. I was magna cum laude and a member of the physics honorary, but I could not even get past the first interview with anybody because it was 1983 and the oil glut was on and the economy was in the tank. My classmates were working at gas stations.

I decided to go to graduate school, so I went back to chemical engineering at Ole Miss and got an MS. My thesis was even environmentally themed. (Take that, chair of the mechanical engineering department!) I wrote a mathematical model (in FORTRAN...yeah...) that predicted the combustion products of coal burned under varying circumstances, funded by an NSF grant intended to find cleaner ways to burn low-quality coal. Since it dealt with combustion products, I suppose it was rocket science-adjacent and thus vaguely related to my childhood NASA obsession.

Did I ever land a job related to my studies? Only vaguely. I taught community college math and physics, had a couple of children, worked as an environmental consultant for about eight years, had another baby, and left the working world for a long while.(Well, I founded and led our church's youth music program for about seven years and was paid a nominal amount, but I was mostly a mom.)

While momming, I wrote in my spare time, and my first book was published when my last child was seven, just a year or two before I found this place. From this point on, you people were with my for my career twists and turns. My thirteenth book will be published in October.

When my last baby was seventeen, I went back to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing. A couple of years later, I took a job that is dang near to my father's image of me as an English professor.

Sometimes the ones who love you know you better than you know yourself.

I wanted to be a jockey. I was light enough but I got too tall. So then I decided I would work for the RCMP. (I was probably 12) I ended up doing art, the horse vet, then art again.

Really enjoying the contest this month. We seem to have more time than the average number of Econ majors in our group.