What did you want to be when you grow up?

aja

What did you want to be when you grow up? Did you achieve it? Or are you never going to grow up?

I want to be an Engineering lecturer at university and own a consulting firm. I am still in the planning stage whereby I leech information/tips from other people who have made it big ?

Squonk

Wanted to be a Doctor, but a whole bunch of teenage rebellion sunk that idea.

Not thrilled at what I am doing at the moment, but it supports the family.

And yes I am refusing to get old or grow up...

pietersaayman

I wanted to become an actuary, but then in High School I picked up a camera and decided I want to be a photographer, so that's what I am, and I love it.

I've been told by a few ladies that I need to grow up, so I suppose I'm not there yet ?

Seventhson

I wanted to be many things.

Egyptology,programmer,hotel owner.

So far I am heading down the programmer road?

Explorerlover

I wanted to be a game farmer, and it's still the case.....As Squonk put it, not thrilled with the current situation, but it does buy gear

IceCreamMan

Pro footballer ......

did not pan out cos frankly i were not good enough but a bike accident put it beyond any doubt.

right now , wannna be a rock star .....never too late is it ?

aubs1

When I was about 5 or 6 I wanted to be a Truck driver. At about 8, a teacher. At 12, a singer in a rock band. 14-15, I wanted to be the next JH.
Then an artist, but a could'nt draw ....... hahahaha...... so I did photography ..... ?

Grow up??? ..... never, I think that's boring. I can still get away with lotsa crap, and blame it on being immature....!! ?

Tonedef

I wanted to be a stand-up comedian but everybody laughed at me.

6x9base13

As a youngster I want to be a tech mogul like Bill Gates or Larry Elison. Ended up in my own business in telecoms so I guess close enough.

It's changed over the years though, one day when I do grow up I'll play golf and guitar ?

A friend of the family, Uncle Ray told me with a twinkle in his eye that when he grows up he wants to drive a train. This was at his 50th wedding anniversary after having been an aeronautical engineer , diamond cutter, game ranger and carpenter already during his life.

Mmm, perhaps it's time to dust off my high school business plan for hot dog stands in the Seychelles !

flatfourfan

I wanted to run my own pub........and basically wanted to run the kitchen.............I still do actually.

But I'm not going to bitch, I have a great job working for a foreign embassy, been here 11 years, they pay damn well and I have a great working enviroment with greta people.

vic

They say..."We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public." and that you become more wise and knowledgeable with time. For example..Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. ?

No, I have not achieved what I wanted to be......a fireman, or a policeman, or a prime minister or.... the Springbok coach... ?

Ray

Really nothing. But my parents had a lot of high hopes. But me, really nothing. Never achieved that, I becasme nearly nothing. But I'm making progress.

strataxe

Pilot , professional windsurfer. Really wanted to follow in the steps of Robbie Naish. But ya...
Not anywhere near where I am today.
As Ray says, parents had a lot of plans, "study, become a doctor, bla bla bla..." and I didn't like those plans. ☹
Always wanted to do stuff in sports... and my family didn't like sport.

singemonkey

I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Like most of these things, being an amateur turns out to be more fun. Modern fighter pilots almost never see combat, and if they do it's usually firing an AMRAAM missile from 25km away and watching a blip disappear from your radar screen.

I on the other hand have this:

Flying a BF109 was always more exciting than flying an F15 anyway.

Bob-Dubery

A journalist.

But for various reasons (including skiving off at school) I was unable to go to university to do all the training and so slid into working in electronics. I'd been a bit of an electronics dilettante in my early teens and new a capacitor from a resistor so why not? Didn't like it, but it kept the wolf from the door. Then I got a crack at doing freelance journalism.

WAHEEYYY!

I sucked at it and the pay was crap (and irregular).

Back to electronics, fixing cash registers and such.

Now when I was at school some team from some government department came around and put us through tests to identify what sort of career we should follow. I was told cryptography or computer programming. There were only about seven cryptographers in the world at that time (or so I thought) and not a lot more programmers, so those didn't seem promising. Anyway, I wanted to be a journalist and I got crap marks for maths.

Fast forward 20 odd years. A friend of mine leaves one of those old-fangled home computers, a Commodore Vic-20, with me for a few months. There's a book in the box - how to program your Vic-20. I read this book. This stuff looks like fun. So I mess around with this for hours and amaze myself at what I can do (which, with that machine, wasn't that much). Damn! Those teacher people were right. I enrolled at Technikon, night school, to study for an IT diploma.

Changed careers. What fun. For a decade or two anyway.

These days I think the best thing to do is to earn a good salary, provide for retirement, and to have some money to do the things you really want to do. The last few years I've seen some fabulous performances and places that will stay in my mind for a long time.

Some people are lucky enough to have a job that they enjoy just as an activity. Another way to look at it is as a way to fund the things that you really want to do. This was explained to me years ago by a guy who was my boss when I was fixing computer power supplies - he said that he didn't want to do this, he wanted to ride motorbikes, but most people who want to ride motorbikes can't make a living from it so he worked at what he did so that on the weekend he could ride motorbikes.

There's a Ewan MacColl song, the Manchester Rambler, which has this chorus

I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way
I may be a wage slave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday

guidothepimmp

my folks kept saying engineering but i didnt want that. even turned down a bursary for it.

i wanted to be a master brewer. even studied in that field.

not brewing though so i ddnt achieve my goals. my job is good and supports the lifedtyle but i dont really enjoy what i do.

if had a take 2. would have done elect. engineering

should have listened lol

Malkav

I wanted to be a marine biologist, then at about age 16 the guitar bug hit and now for some strange reason I'm convinced that I will always have to be involved in music somehow. I realise this is a poor carreer decision and I'll probably never be in a position where I'll be earning anything close to a decent salary, but I'm just stubborn like that...

My love for the ocean has not died though, at home I have an enormous marine tank (2mx1mx0.7m or there abouts) and I have now started diving regularly. I just feel really at peace in the water and I love playing with all the fishes, crustaceans and sharks ?

Warren

I wanted to be a test pilot. Unfortunately I have crap eyesight, and South Africa doesn't seem to have a rip-roaring F-22 test program of its own ?

Second up: game programmer. I actually wrote a bunch of little game engines when I was a teenager. Eventually ended up in IT, where I earn a good salary but wouldn't exactly call this my dream job. I don't hate what I do, I just find it a bit uninspiring sometimes.

I see that WITS now offers a game programming degree too. Such a pity they didn't have that available with I was there in 1997.

Still, I'm always on the lookout for new stuff to get into.

singemonkey

Remember kids:

[deleted]

When I was veeery little, I for some reason thought being a policeman would be a good idea. Some one who rights wrongs. Then it dawned on me at about 12 that music would always always take precedence. Just accepted it. So then I had this idea of combining the two, when I was a little older, and thought of being something of a music teacher, but more of a provider of solace through music. So far I'm providing myself solace and security through music and art and maybe one day when I'm big it will blossom into a big fun music/ art extravaganza. In the mean time I go about righting wrongs at the nursery school!