I don’t normally post things here that I post over at Blogwhore: the Webgame because you really should be there reading the posts. We are down to the final 5 and tomorrow there will only be 4. I’m still in the game, but it’s getting close and the race is truly on.
I liked this post though – I wrote it in response to Nancy’s question, asking us what, back when we were kids, we wanted to be when we grew up. I still wonder too what it is that I want to be when I grow up. Let’s see where I’ve been:
:: I wanted to be a banker. I was young (like 4-5), I have no idea where I got that idea from. Maybe Mary Poppins?
:: I wanted to be an airline stewardess. The travel would be cool. Then I realized that I didn’t want to be a waitress in the air, and Barbie got a new job so I did too.
:: I wanted to be a lawyer. For a long time I wanted to be a lawyer, and as a Libra I can argue with the best of them. Hell, I can argue with myself! I over analyze everything until it reaches the point that I have beaten it into the ground and killed it. When I grew up I discovered that lawyers have to go to school for a long time and have to pass the bar and … screw that. Find something new.
:: Then I wanted to be a teacher. Little did I know that the classes to earn an elementary education degree are so absolutely mind-numbing that I wouldn’t bother to go. I have this little problem – if something isn’t a challenge I’ll just blow it off. That’s what I did with my college classes – so in spite of the fact that I earned a 3.75 one semester, I ended up tossed out on the streets after 2 years because Texas A&M doesn’t give out a degree to those of us who major in Aggie Tradition and minor in the Dixie Chicken. Oops. (More on the college years below and the huge irony of my life.) In this process I also learned I have absolutely no patience for stupid people and trying to teach someone anything frustrates me to no end. Elementary Ed was NOT a good choice, because when you’re in third or fourth grade you simply don’t know that much, and teachers can’t be really mean until kids are in high school.
:: After leaving college behind, I became an Army wife. It is a career in and of itself. We moved to a small base in Germany (Peyton Place for all practical terms, the biggest rumor mill you’ve ever seen) and I traveled while he worked. It was a pretty ideal life in a lot of ways … why the hell did I ever get divorced? I tried to find a job while we lived there, but I was overqualified for everything, or I was white. Yes, reverse descrimination does exist and it sucks when you can’t get a job because they have quotas to fill. Whatever. Married white women don’t need to work too. Ok.
(Fast Forward a few years over little trivial jobs that don’t matter in this post)
:: Worked for a law firm (wow, went full circle!) first as a receptionist, then moving in to the Litigation Support department … where I worked on databases and was the protege of the Network Admin who had me surf the Internet back in 1995 so I could tell him when the firewall crashed. After two years I said to myself, “why don’t I have a web site?” and I learned to hand code HTML … moved in to developing Extranets for our clients … left the law firm, made & sold soap full time (through the Internet, of course!) and eventually went back to work in the real world selling websites to people.
And that’s where I am today. I enjoy it and I imagine that I’ll stay working within the Internet field for years to come. I want to go back to college, but have no idea what I would major in now. Something related to programming? Or go with the marketing/sales side of things? Double major? Or just keep doing what I do now? Hmmm…
OH! You were waiting for the ironic story, right? Ok, here it is.
1987, freshman orientation at Texas A&M. I’ve already taken 2 years of computer programming in high school but Pascal kicked my ass and I don’t know that I could handle a full course load of that stuff. Mom asks me, “Why don’t you major in computers? You really liked your programming class last year.”
My response? “Why would I major in computers? What would I EVER do with THAT degree?”
Yeah, that jokes on ME in a big way. Oops.
So … what did YOU want to be when you grew up?
12 replies on “I Want to be a Toys-R-Us Kid…”
This is probably worth a post of its own, but I wanted to be a truckdriver when I was little because I couldn’t see anything else out the car window but the big rigs – hee 🙂 Your post is great!
Haha, I’ve run the gamut – for a long time in high school, I wanted to be a doctor until I realized that I have a morbid distaste for blood and “icky things.” Freshman or sophomore year of high school, I discovered that I enjoyed playing with computers and have pretty much stuck with them since, though in the past year or two, I’ve really discovered a love for writing that I didn’t know I had before. So yeah, it’s pretty much always been the creative dream 😉 I’m always afraid that interviewers will ask what my “ideal job” would be because honestly, as long as I can create graphics, write, design layouts, edit, or just in general be creative, I’m happy. Ya know? Sometimes you just get lost in something 🙂
aha! aha! you see where Donna said ‘this is probably worth a post of its own’???
if she and you had trackback, she’d hit her bookmarklet and write that post. and it would ping this post and a discussion would be on.
this post is an ideal example of something that would be great for trackbacking.
i’m not obsessed, honest.
what did i want to be when i grew up? *sigh* i was obsessed with office supplies. i wanted to be a secretary. pathetic, yes?
My mom honestly says the first and only thing she can remember me saying from early childhood on is “when I grow up I want to be a mommy“. So far that’s the one thing medical science and finances haven’t allowed us yet, but I still haven’t given up hope. And as far as schooling goes — I always wanted to get into the Secret Service and then politics (even in late grade school). A prerequisit fluke at OU prevented me from graduating with a Poli Sci degree without an extra year of schooling that I was unwilling to take at the time, so I flip-flopped my major and minor my junior year and graduated with a History degree — and well, my health kind of ruled out the Secret Service. But I still hope to double-degree one day (I was only 12 hours short) and get in on a grass-roots local campaign behind the scenes.
It’s funny you should mention this, because it’s the finale scene in Mr. Deeds. 🙂
Just think, if you listened to your mother you could be laid off like the rest of the computer industry employees(myself included) wishing there weren’t 400 other applicants FOR EVERY JOB YOU APPLY TO because you all do the same thing and you’re all UNEMPLOYED
woo that sounded a lot worse than I meant it =) Unemployment rocks…yay
Well, if I listened to my mother there is also a chance that I would have been making a lot more money the past 7 years that I have been working with computers, instead of being stuck in a “you didn’t finish college” pay scale range. I’ve been fortunate enough to make it through layoffs – well, I was part of one, but I had a new job 3 weeks later!
urm, kd? yes honey. obsession is your middle name. but we love you anyway. 😛
what did i wanna be? a musician. a journalist. a domestic engineer. i haven’t made any career plans past that point. perhaps full-time bloggah?
Robyn, your mom and I have a lot in common. Christine, my answer was way to long for your comments section, so I posted it as today’s entry. ;o)
I was gonna say the same thing as KD about the Trackback thing. Honestly, you of all people need that function! Your posts are often group discussions just waiting to happen! Do it!
Coming soon, Tess – I promise. Coming soon! 🙂
Let’s see… I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid. Then when my brother majored in Mechanical Engineering, I wanted to do that too… until I got to college and realized that required less drinking and more studying. F– that! 😉 So I became an art major – eventually got into graphic design – and the rest is history.