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View Full Version : Are You What You Wanted To be When You Grew Up?



XubuRoxMySox
May 24th, 2009, 02:27 AM
The question is for adults, of course...

Are you what you always wanted to be when you grew up? If so, what obstacles did you face, and how did you overcome them? Did it turn out like you always imagined, or not like you planned? Any advice for kids wondering about the future?

Thanks!

HappyFeet
May 24th, 2009, 02:56 AM
I didn't want to be anything when I was growing up, and I am nothing now. So yeah, it worked out for me.

0per4t0r
May 24th, 2009, 02:57 AM
But I'm still at the wee age of 12.

Neheb
May 24th, 2009, 03:01 AM
Never was any one thing I wanted to be for long when I was a child, only thing I can remember is that at some time I wanted to be chef, but atm I am a taking programming classes, so it turned out better than what I wanted to be (at least I think it did).

loell
May 24th, 2009, 03:05 AM
I didn't want to be anything when I was growing up, and I am nothing now. So yeah, it worked out for me.

yay! for nada! :D

pwnst*r
May 24th, 2009, 03:05 AM
advice? yep, get your degree.

Newuser1111
May 24th, 2009, 03:11 AM
I voted on the poll by mistake.

Mr-Biscuit
May 24th, 2009, 03:30 AM
......

Kingsley
May 24th, 2009, 03:36 AM
I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I was in my second year of high school. There's no guarantee that I'll reach my goal, but things are going very smoothly and I'll take a major entrance exam - the PCAT - in a couple of months for it. I'm trying to become a pharmacist.

MikeTheC
May 24th, 2009, 03:37 AM
No, not at all. Wish I had another chance.

I'll revisit this and discuss it further when I have a couple spare minutes.

MikeTheC
May 24th, 2009, 04:32 AM
To start off with, let me list the positive things I have gained from leading the life I've thus-far led:
I am an independent thinker and speaker who does not look to "the in-crowd" for acceptance;
I have learned how to learn;
I have learned (I know this is going to sound vaguely political, sorry) the notion that "peace at all costs" is a pile of crap and an utter fallacy.

Let's start off at the actual beginning, and that would be my parents.

My parents graduated high school in 1950. They met and married later in life (mid 30s) and were 40 when they had me. I was born in 1972 and, to put it bluntly, the world (especially the U.S.) had radically and irrecovably changed between 1950 and 1972. As neither of my parents were into being trendy and keeping up appearances, or "hanging out" with lots of folks or into the whole, oh, I dunno, "1960s scene" they were substantially ill-prepared to prepare me, when I came along, for how to deal with other children.

This is also against the backdrop of living in a neighborhood that really had no (nearly no, I guess) other kids. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad worked as an electronics technician at NASA. When I was born and grew up, I learned how to interact with adults, but when it came to children, I was very, very far behind. It was a gap I was never able to bridge throughout my K-8 years.

During this time I was subjected to continuous harrassment and mental abuse by the other children, and came to have a completely screwed-up world view and self image. I truly believed myself to be retarded and incapable of doing very much. I actually thrived on proving how stupid I was, and can clearly remember wanting to show the world how successful I could be at being a failure. I didn't get a driver's license until age 20, since (now, mind you this is after high school where the kids didn't pick on me for 4 years) "Why should I bother trying to get a license since I'm not going to be able to drive anyhow?"

It has taken me literally years and years to overcome the mental state I was in, and while I'd gotten to mostly where I should have been after high school several years afterward (and now I'm obviously quite a number of years beyond that) the things I didn't do in my late teens and early 20s -- such as going to college, getting into some kind of career, etc. -- still haunt me to this day.

I still have, in comparitively trivial ways, some self-confidence issues, but at this point it's more a matter of I'm older than I should be for where I am in life.

The reason I listed above that "peace at all costs" is a fallacy is that -- and I dearly wish I'd understood this as a child -- you have to stand up for yourself, and there are things which are definitely worth defending and fighting for; and chief amongst those is one's self-respect. I would get bullied but I wouldn't fight back because I believed, at the time, that fighting back would be mean and that I might hurt someone else, and that it would be a sin and wrong for me to do. I'd totally internalized the "turn the other cheek" concept. The problem is that, just like with concerns about violence or other mature subjects shown on tv to kids, I didn't understand how to properly deal with that.

I've often thought about what I would do if I could go back in time and have a chance to tell my younger self the true facts of life. What I've decided (and maybe this might sound extreme, but understand this is told from within the context of my own life experience) is the following:
I would absolutely tell myself you have to stick up for and defend yourself; and that in particular you can hold no ideas nor ideals if you are not willing to fight for them;
I would instruct myself to beat the living hell out of anyone who crossed my path and was disrespectful;
I would tell myself that neither of the two private schools I went to were worth my attendance if they wouldn't support my rights as a person;
I'd hand myself a copy of, for instance, David D'Angelo's "Double Your Dating" and say that this was a pretty good roadmap for handling the opposite sex;
There's a number of teachers I would have told myself to basically point-blank tell to go $^#&* off;
I would have made a point to educate myself in sports and get involved in them;
I would have instructed myself not to avoid any fights, and moreover to cultivate a reputation of being someone not to mess with, ever;
There have been several employers I would have either avoided getting employed by in the first place, or whom I should have quit (also possibly after a very verbally violent telling-off)

Some of you may read that list and think "Oh my God, he just wants to turn himself into a mean, violent person." Nope, that's not it at all. I want to give myself a backbone and spine at various points in my past when I could have desperately used it. If you still don't "get it" then the only thing I can suggest is go watch the Star Trek Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" (1x05) and put me in Kirk's position.

Anyhow, just because you asked...

HappyFeet
May 24th, 2009, 04:47 AM
Whatever.:roll:

MikeTheC
May 24th, 2009, 05:00 AM
Whatever.:roll:

Of course, if you haven't grown up yet, then you can't yet be what you want to be. :o

pwnst*r
May 24th, 2009, 05:02 AM
Whatever.:roll:

what? Mike's post was pretty good and revealing. bravo for posting it, i say.

kc3
May 24th, 2009, 05:02 AM
Well, still working on a career, only 21 BUT in a few years if this thread is still actualy going I'll be sure to vote :P

HappyFeet
May 24th, 2009, 05:14 AM
Of course, if you haven't grown up yet, then you can't yet be what you want to be. :o

As far as I'm concerned, growing up means not having to share your whole life's story with a bunch of strangers. :-k As if they care. This is supposed to be stuff you would talk about around the water cooler. Read at the top of the page. "The Community Chat area is for lighthearted and enjoyable discussions, like you might find around a water cooler at work."

pwnst*r
May 24th, 2009, 05:19 AM
As far as I'm concerned, growing up means not having to share your whole life's story with a bunch of strangers. :-k As if they care. This is supposed to be stuff you would talk about around the water cooler. Read at the top of the page. "The Community Chat area is for lighthearted and enjoyable discussions, like you might find around a water cooler at work."

yes, because everyone takes that very literally.

and seriously... "happy feet"?

pbpersson
May 24th, 2009, 05:22 AM
I once told someone who was graduating from high school:

"Find what you truly enjoy doing and that you are truly gifted at, and then work to be your very best at it."

It is my belief that if you are gifted at it AND you enjoy doing it, you will not mind spending hours at it and you will pass others like they are standing still.

However, finding this special "something" is the difficult part. People quite often take their gifts for granted. They do not even see them as gifts.

I have worn the following "hats" in my career:

electronics technician
computer operator
systems manager
senior programmer/analyst
network administrator
web developer
systems analyst

I have developed software in the following languages:

BASIC
C
Pascal
COBOL
VB.NET
Java

So to answer the original question, when I was in high school I wanted to design robots that were capable of emulating human thought. Silly me, I thought that meant I should design integrated circuits so I studied to be an electrical engineer. Everyone told me I should be a programmer but this was in the days of punched cards and no thank you very much. ;)

Studying electrical engineering was boring, I dropped out, and became an electronics troubleshooting wizard, tearing apart and rebuilding radios, stereos, and televisions. My attraction to all things technical eventually lead me into computers when they were more advanced (the punched cards were history).

My current goal is to start creating applications that are platform independent using Java. No, I am not designing artificial intelligence algorithms that can emulate human thought.....but my life is not yet over. ;)

Anyway, I am having a blast. :D

lisati
May 24th, 2009, 05:24 AM
I was going to do a little piece speculating on whether or not I'd grown up until I read this:


Whatever.:roll:

All I'll say is this: Know us before you judge us.

mustang
May 24th, 2009, 05:26 AM
To start off with, let me list the positive things I have gained from leading the life I've thus-far led:
I am an independent thinker and speaker who does not look to "the in-crowd" for acceptance;
I have learned how to learn;
I have learned (I know this is going to sound vaguely political, sorry) the notion that "peace at all costs" is a pile of crap and an utter fallacy.

Let's start off at the actual beginning, and that would be my parents.

My parents graduated high school in 1950. They met and married later in life (mid 30s) and were 40 when they had me. I was born in 1972 and, to put it bluntly, the world (especially the U.S.) had radically and irrecovably changed between 1950 and 1972. As neither of my parents were into being trendy and keeping up appearances, or "hanging out" with lots of folks or into the whole, oh, I dunno, "1960s scene" they were substantially ill-prepared to prepare me, when I came along, for how to deal with other children.

This is also against the backdrop of living in a neighborhood that really had no (nearly no, I guess) other kids. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad worked as an electronics technician at NASA. When I was born and grew up, I learned how to interact with adults, but when it came to children, I was very, very far behind. It was a gap I was never able to bridge throughout my K-8 years.

During this time I was subjected to continuous harrassment and mental abuse by the other children, and came to have a completely screwed-up world view and self image. I truly believed myself to be retarded and incapable of doing very much. I actually thrived on proving how stupid I was, and can clearly remember wanting to show the world how successful I could be at being a failure. I didn't get a driver's license until age 20, since (now, mind you this is after high school where the kids didn't pick on me for 4 years) "Why should I bother trying to get a license since I'm not going to be able to drive anyhow?"

It has taken me literally years and years to overcome the mental state I was in, and while I'd gotten to mostly where I should have been after high school several years afterward (and now I'm obviously quite a number of years beyond that) the things I didn't do in my late teens and early 20s -- such as going to college, getting into some kind of career, etc. -- still haunt me to this day.

I still have, in comparitively trivial ways, some self-confidence issues, but at this point it's more a matter of I'm older than I should be for where I am in life.

The reason I listed above that "peace at all costs" is a fallacy is that -- and I dearly wish I'd understood this as a child -- you have to stand up for yourself, and there are things which are definitely worth defending and fighting for; and chief amongst those is one's self-respect. I would get bullied but I wouldn't fight back because I believed, at the time, that fighting back would be mean and that I might hurt someone else, and that it would be a sin and wrong for me to do. I'd totally internalized the "turn the other cheek" concept. The problem is that, just like with concerns about violence or other mature subjects shown on tv to kids, I didn't understand how to properly deal with that.

I've often thought about what I would do if I could go back in time and have a chance to tell my younger self the true facts of life. What I've decided (and maybe this might sound extreme, but understand this is told from within the context of my own life experience) is the following:
I would absolutely tell myself you have to stick up for and defend yourself; and that in particular you can hold no ideas nor ideals if you are not willing to fight for them;
I would instruct myself to beat the living hell out of anyone who crossed my path and was disrespectful;
I would tell myself that neither of the two private schools I went to were worth my attendance if they wouldn't support my rights as a person;
I'd hand myself a copy of, for instance, David D'Angelo's "Double Your Dating" and say that this was a pretty good roadmap for handling the opposite sex;
There's a number of teachers I would have told myself to basically point-blank tell to go $^#&* off;
I would have made a point to educate myself in sports and get involved in them;
I would have instructed myself not to avoid any fights, and moreover to cultivate a reputation of being someone not to mess with, ever;
There have been several employers I would have either avoided getting employed by in the first place, or whom I should have quit (also possibly after a very verbally violent telling-off)

Some of you may read that list and think "Oh my God, he just wants to turn himself into a mean, violent person." Nope, that's not it at all. I want to give myself a backbone and spine at various points in my past when I could have desperately used it. If you still don't "get it" then the only thing I can suggest is go watch the Star Trek Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" (1x05) and put me in Kirk's position.

Anyhow, just because you asked...

I'm a wee bit younger than I you but I can sympathize with wanting to have a backbone when I was a kid. Interesting story and good advice.

kernelhaxor
May 24th, 2009, 05:32 AM
Whatever.:roll:

Whenever somebody shares their valuable insights and experiences, I would either see how I can learn and benefit or just shut up and ignore and not make useless comments.


As far as I'm concerned, growing up means not having to share your whole life's story with a bunch of strangers. :-k As if they care. This is supposed to be stuff you would talk about around the water cooler. Read at the top of the page. "The Community Chat area is for lighthearted and enjoyable discussions, like you might find around a water cooler at work."

The questions asked by the OP in the first post are pretty serious questions. If you are using that argument, then this whole thread should be under the question.

lisati
May 24th, 2009, 05:40 AM
If I was able to turn back the clock to when I was younger and somehow retain what I know now, I'm not sure if it would be wise (or possible) to do anything different to avoid the difficult times.

HappyFeet
May 24th, 2009, 05:40 AM
My apologies to all. Let's move on.

samjh
May 24th, 2009, 07:42 AM
...

SLEEPER_V
May 24th, 2009, 08:15 AM
Yes. I remember when I was 13. I was outside pitching into a backstop, working on my curve and slider and had an epiphany. I decided right then that I didnt want to be a major league pitcher. I realized that being a fat barely employed peon geek that has been married for 12 of his 30 years is really what I wanted. The only thing that makes up for it is a great son.

stwschool
May 24th, 2009, 08:44 AM
I wanted to be a programmer, bear in mind I was writing games of not-that-far-from-commercial-standard at the age of 12 back in the days of the Atari ST. I managed it, getting into a very lucrative and enjoyable web dev career and enjoying that for a good few years. The IT industry in the UK died on its ****, and I'd been hopping from company to company as they kept going bust (not my fault.. I think..), and thought 'sod this for a game of soldiers' and went to do some teaching (IT of course, all that industry experience made me very employable). I quickly found that while I could teach in college without a degree, lacking one would hold me back, so I got a degree, during which I still found uses for my computer skills as I set up my own business, which turned out to be remarkably successful and very profitable.

Then a holiday to Thailand got me talking to people out here about teaching and here I am, teaching kids how to do stuff in Linux, teaching some to program PHP, and building systems for use in the school, so really still being a programmer, but getting a much more rounded experience.

In a way, my story's quite similar to Mike's in that I had a crappy childhood dealing with bullies and a lack of social skills, but thankfully I eventually got where I wanted, and the move away from computers towards more people-oriented stuff I think represents a graduation from geek to human. Ultimately, I still enjoy sitting at a PC writing software, but these days I need the human side of things more, in a way that I didn't as a kid, so really, my needs now aren't the same as they were then. The kid achieved his goals, and the adult is still trying to work his out but is enjoying the ride.

gn2
May 24th, 2009, 08:47 AM
I'm 47 and I hope I never grow up.

The job I'm in I landed by accident.
It's not one I ever would have chosen, but I've been doing it sixteen years now and wouldn't change it.
I love being a railway signalman.

mister_p_1998
May 24th, 2009, 08:50 AM
No... I wanted to be an astronaut...

Steve

glotz
May 24th, 2009, 11:20 AM
Be advised that this is a public poll: other users can see the choice(s) you selected. :lol:

walkerk
May 24th, 2009, 11:46 AM
When I was younger, I wanted to do anything with computers. I dabbled in programming, design, networking, etc. Now, at the age of 25, I work for GDIT as a Systems Engineer. Out of highschool, I chose the Military because in my opinion, I wasn't mature enough for college. Still to this day, I have not gone to college. However, I do have a long list of high level IT certifications that seem to get me consideration for any IT job I apply for...

Just pointing ou t that there are different paths to success. A degree is proven, but it's not the only way...

koleoptero
May 24th, 2009, 02:33 PM
Wow, this is the first poll in these forums I can't vote, since I have not and never will grow up. :o

nobodysbusiness
May 24th, 2009, 03:40 PM
Jobs I remember wanting:
Age 5: Palaeontologist (I loved dinosaurs)
Age 9: Helicopter Pilot
Age 14: Tool and Dye maker (Have an uncle that does that)
Age 17: Computer Engineer

Luckily, my grades weren't good enough to get into my top University's Computer Engineering degree program, so I went into Computer Science instead. I say "luckily" because I now realize how much I would have suffered if I had gotten into CompEng. Computer Science is so much better.

Current Profession: Software Developer

Ultimately, I'm glad I didn't follow my childhood dreams, because my childhood dreams were kind of... childish.

gnomeuser
May 24th, 2009, 05:13 PM
I wanted to be an engineer for as long as I can remember, probably because that is what my dad does and I got adversely affected during childhood.

However that has not panned out, I did go to school to study Information and Communication Technology Engineering but had to cease due to health issues. I have since attempted a Computer Science degree but again was shot down by my health.

Till such a time as medical science finds me a drug that will work or a cure then I am unemployed currently seeking early retirement due to being handicapped.

Not the life I imagined, I am not bitter but I wish it turned out differently. I definitely did not end up the way I expected or wanted at any state of my life.

swoll1980
May 24th, 2009, 05:26 PM
I wanted to be a fighter pilot, or an astronaut, when I was a kid. It didn't work out though.

Garudi
May 24th, 2009, 06:57 PM
I wanted to be superman... so nope. I'm not that.

blairm
May 29th, 2009, 01:58 PM
I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, aside from having passing phases of wanting to be a lawyer, doctor, soldier, fireman etc.

Turning out I fell into a career in journalism and I've been quite happy with that for 15 years... never knowing what will happen from day to day (or in the case of our website from minute to minute) keeps boredom levels low!

Therion
May 29th, 2009, 02:18 PM
Are you kidding me???

ALL I ever dreamed about as a kid was growing up and having a crappy paying, 9-5, soul-crushing career as an office manager to collection of loopy artists in an underfunded, aging, podunk community college... So yeah! I'm pretty much right on track!!


Therion@desktop:~$ sudo apt-get remove hopes dreams --purge

Bölvağur
May 29th, 2009, 02:23 PM
I wanted to be an architect... Im a programmer... I guess you could see the similarities if you get hit on the head.

XubuRoxMySox
May 29th, 2009, 03:32 PM
Maybe I'll just be a "professional" student all my life, lol. I love learning! I wonder if it's possible to make a living just being a perpetual schoolboy.

-Robin