What you wanted to be; Where you are now

[Angel]

A thought popped into my head today, one that has every now and then: the things I wanted to be when I grew up, and what I've ended up doing so far. When I was really small, my first dream was to be an artist. It stuck for quite a while, and for a long time I didn't want to be anything else. Well, maybe a superhero, and I think I also wanted to be a rock star for a while.

The next thing I wanted to be was a paleontologist. This, again, was my primary career choice for a while, but now there were a few others on the side: actress, singer, construction worker, fruit stand owner. Around sixth grade, piracy also became a viable option, though it didn't last when I found out being a modern-day pirate kinda sucks. (Treasure Island was a great book...)

Nowadays, I work at McDonald's as a cashier for pocket money, and I'm studying in college to be a writer/editor. I have also determined that no matter what I end up doing, music will always be part of my life.

So, what did YOU want to be when you grew up? Did you get there or are you getting there?

[Robbychu]

Besides the phase where I wanted to be a Pokeymans Trainer? Fine artist, palentologist, writer, music star aaannnd Now I'm aiming for a job in the gaming industry. I'm hoping for a job in the artsy portion but I'm going to be learning programming to in order to increase my options.

But first I need to learn all of this stuff. I'll be headed to Midlands Tech this Fall to get the crap out of the way.

[Shachza]

The earliest dream I can remember was to be a famous drummer.  I would be playing a veritable wall of drums, though more realistically it'd be something out of a Pink Floyd concert.  My parents never wanted any drums near the house of course.

I've wanted to write a novel (and still do), to act in movies, to go to space, to be an amazing military General, to be the best video gamer, and a host of other things.



Currently I work in a retail paint store, but I'm in college studying Graphic Design with the intent to go in to 3D modeling.  Maybe I'll get into movies yet!

[Ryudo Lee]

At first I thought I was going to be a computer scientist.  Then that kind of morphed around during highschool and college to computer programmer.  Now I'm IT support.  Not too far off the mark, I think.

[Mao]

I originally wanted to be a commercial pilot.  I did manage to get my glider license and then started on my single and twin engine license when I realized that doing it for a living would ruin my enjoyment of it, however I couldn't afford to fly on my own power.  In the end I chose my second choice:  To be a computer programmer through my computer science degree.  Here I am today, writing code for a multi-national corporation.  It worked out well, I think. ;3

[ooklah]

I first went to school for aerospace engineering for a few years. Some more years after that I'm a Technical Director at a small studio where I program tools, build pipelines and work on cinematics for games.

[techmaster-glitch]

I've wanted to be a robotics engineer/roboticist from 4-6 years old

I'm just getting started on that with basic engineering and basic computer concepts in my first year of college.

[Tapewolf]

Apparently when I was a little kid I wanted to repair cine projectors.  From 10 years or so, I started to write computer games, though.  By 12 I wanted to be a programmer, though I do remember being a little curious about studio engineering.
Curiously, although I was writing games engines as a hobby from about 1986-2006, I never actually wanted to be a professional games programmer - I could write a decent graphics library in C and assembler, but professionally I was more interested in low level OS code.  My year-in-industry was with Digital Research and some of my code is in the DRDOS kernel and utilities.

I took a horrible degree and have been programming professionally since 2000, or 1997 if you want to include the year-in-industry.  Currently I'm doing mobile data software, as I have been for about 8 years now.

[VAE]

When i was younger i wanted to be an agricultural engineer, mainly because both my uncle and grandfather worked in the combines. But, since these days there are a load of unemployed, i changed over to electrical engineering when i was about 15 and managed to get in a college to study now.
so far it looks like i  will stick with that

[bradypodidae]

I grew up wanting to be an "army soldier," however, I ended up setting my sights a lot higher when the time came and became a U.S. Marine, instead. Most gratifying twenty-two years of my life.

[Jack McSlay]

Where I wanted to be? Mars.
Where I am now? Earth.

[Toast]

When I was little, I wanted to be everything under the sun. A veterinarian, a president, a tennis player, a soccer player, a famous ice skater, a dog breeder, a flight attendant, a video game designer, the list goes on. I drew myself in all of these careers and put them on my fridge, thinking that if I drew it, it had to come true.

All of those things got really old, really quickly. The pictures got taken down from the fridge and thrown in the garbage - out of sight, out of mind.

I ended up doing art. Illustrations, freelance web design, and animation. I guess what I wanted as always there, I just didn't see it.

[ShadesFox]

What I wanted to do when I grew up was dick with super computers.
Today, as a job, I dick with super computers.

[GabrielsThoughts]

When I was younger I wanted to be a veterinarian, then I wanted to become an engineer, then I wanted to publish my own book, then I wanted become a comic book artist so I could publish my own comic book, then I wanted to become an animator, after that I decided I wanted to be a part of the production end of game design, and now I don't care what I do as long as I'm happy.

[Turnsky]

and now I don't care what I do as long as I'm happy.

considering you have "sniffing glue" in your sig i'd say you're living your dream right now. 

as for what i wanted to do when i grew up?..... Truth be told i had no clear path to follow, any direction i chose was chased with needless pressure from family members, or just looked down upon.. truth be told? i spent two months living my dream, only to have it curbstomped by a dickish employer... still chasin' though.

[Alondro]

When I was 4, I wanted to be a volcanologist.

But then I realized lava could burninate me, so at 6 I decided to go for biology. 

And now I'm a biologist!   

But in the past decade I have yearned for more... WORLD DOMINATION!!!  And biology shall assist me in this quest... 

[Liatai]

When I was little, I dreamed of being a veterinarian. In middle school, I discovered writing fiction, and then I wanted to be a writer. In high school, I started drawing some of the characters I wrote about; then, I wanted to be an artist. In my first year of college, I rediscovered the sciences; then, I wanted to be a chemist or a biologist.

Now, I'm a biochemistry major going for clinical laboratory certification, who writes fiction and draws comics on the side. So, I've got it all covered, I guess!

[Jigsaw Forte]

Eh... growing up I always figured on being an artist. This migrated to being a writer (after I started investing heavily in the Animorphs series), to comic books after I figured it was just too... easy to write fiction (mostly from writing fanfic and knowing that even as I was pulling stuff out of my ass chapter after chapter, people still ate it up. There just wasn't an incentive to be GOOD at it, y'know? )

At some point this also overlapped with video games (one of my first fanfiction sites was "If I Worked for Insomniac"), which helped lead to my interest in computer science. (Dad being in the general field of computers also helped.)

At this point, I've been working on the comic for... well, it's in the fourth year now, and even though I still sorta feel like I'm waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop, it's already netted me entry into Grad School, on a Computer Science / User Interfaces track... so who knows?

[Damaris]

I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a kid, and actually went to a college and started my degree... although I realized after one semester that:
     1) I don't care what concentric circles mean on a piece of pottery; and,
     2) I really hate getting dirty.

So I went into mass communication instead, and loved it. And now I'm a media relations specialist for a state agency.

[superluser]

Ever since my mid-teens, I remember--vividly--wanting to be one thing: 190 pounds.

Over the past year, I've gotten 90 pounds closer to that.

(I did always want to study physics, but I never really figured out what I wanted to do with that.  One of these days, I'll finish my degree in that, regardless of whether I ever apply it)

[Vidar]

I didn't know what I wanted to be until I was introduced to computers in my early teens. I wanted to be a programmer ever since.
Now, I'm a software-tester who tells programmers off for the junk they deliver, and getting payed rather nicely for doing so. 

[Mrs_A_ZeTavia]

Then: Well, at first I wanted to be veterinarian, but then realized that was a lot of med school..... 
Then I wanted to be a movie producer for awhile and then finally I decided to be a video game designer around early 2004 (I think, I know it was during my first two years of community college.....)

Now: I am currently a Junior attending Columbia College Chicago for my Major in Game Design (Focus: Development) and a Minor in Management. When I'm a senior I'll get to work on the Senior Project, where the entire senior group works together to create an actual game. I'm looking forward to it! 

I have dreams to start my own company game someday, so I look forward to where I'll be down the road. Until then, just one day at a time. 

[Aisha deCabre]

...Eh, what the heck.

Ever since I was ten, I wanted to be a biologist.  Work in the field with animals, study them; my passion was marine biology.  Even today I'm probably one of the biggest animal geeks you'll find.

And that's still what I want to do.  I graduated college with a biology degree, and whence I get enough money, I want to go back to school and get a master's degree.  However there are many brances of science that I've also been interested in around that field, ranging from veterinarian to parasitologist and evolutionary biologist, especially, as I really get thinking when I'm presented with a question on why a critter does what it does.

Today at the moment though, I work as a restaurant busperson and haven't gotten myself completely independent.  But as motivation (or pressure) is causing me to progress, that certainly won't take very long.  I'm bound and determined to do what makes me the happiest.

On the side, I'm also finding that having a hobby as an artist and a writer has quite the possibility along with it.

[Cogidubnus]

When I was -very- little, along with every other child of five, I think I wanted to be a fireman.

When I grew up, I never really gave it much thought, I suppose. Usually my nose was too far into a book to see over the pages, so I didn't have time to really wonder what I was I was going to do when it came time for me to actually start paying for food or what-have-you. When it came down to it, I started asking myself what I was good at. I seemed to be good at reading.

Hence! I embarked upon the path of the English major. I'd like to teach, maybe. Or work at Starbucks. I think you can get that kind of job with an English degree.

Having a few difficulties in college right now, one of which is being piss broke all the time. Well see if I manage to make the cut and graduate. I'm hoping that I do.

Been looking for work since about January (worked for my parents for the last two years of college or so. Jeez, it's been that long.), hence part of my broke-ness, but I just found some work running pizzas around. Doesn't pay much, but it's not exactly hard work.

[Escher]

I think it would have been impossible for me to fulfill my childhood dreams. See, it wouldn't be until about third grade when I'd realize that "squirrel" is not a good answer to the question, "what do you want to be when I grow up?"

So I switched to "Arctic fox."

In all seriousness, after that, I guess I wanted to be some sort of criminologist. I remember watching episodes of Bill Nye or something equally kiddy and scientific and thinking "Cool!" So... yeah. Not too far from what I'm doing now: studying for a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. Right now, I pull a part time job as a graphic/web designer for my uni's student technological services (which, honestly, needs a huge revamp), but... yeah.

[Brunhidden]

when i was a kid, like LITTLE kid, i wanted to be all kinds of things. i cant even remember most of them.

when i was an adolecent and a teenager my family had already crushed any sense of self worth and pride i had in myself, so i had already resigned myself to finding 'a trade' such as glassblowing, tool and die, or being a priest (entrance examinations are getting pretty low for that)

and just today i entered the ranks of people with a name on my shirt.... although, the name just so happens to be on a badge. today i am officially a private security guard that two days out of the week i guard a hidden power plant and the other three i wear a blazer and 'greet' people who want to kill the residents of a call center. day one and ive already been guaranteed that i will deal with a minimum of one bomb threat a year.

hey, at least im out of the factories before i lost some fingers

[Sicill]

When I was a child I planned on becoming a physicist. My idea of a physicist was somewhere between researcher and engineer.

I managed to get into a community college before I was 17 and took some college level courses before I left. My first fall semester in the four year university revealed that I had apparently managed to forget everything I had learned in a previous calculus class, and when I withdrew from that math class it threw a wrench in the whole program the university had lined up. I returned to the community college where I took calculus again, passed that class, took every math and physics class the community college had to offer and passed most of them with most grades at least a B+.

Now I have an Associates in Math and Science and am looking to transfer into either Michigan State University or the University of Utah.