As a kid, what did you want to grow up to be?


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As the title suggests, this topic is meant to share what you wanted to grow up to be when you were a kid.

A few of mine: 

  • When I was around 7 or 8 years old, a teacher asked me what I wanted to be as an adult. I panicked a bit because I didn't know what to say; I didn't have anything made up in my mind at that point. In the heat of the moment, after struggling to come up with what I was going to say, I randomly said "a florist". :P
  • News anchor - Around the age of 10, I was obsessed with the NBC News anchor Brian Williams and wanted to take up a career in TV journalism. 

What are yours?

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I was never really asked what I wanted to be when I was younger, it wasn’t something anyone was ever interested in knowing so I never thought about it. I loved math in grade 5 and really believed I could be a mathematician. That flopped once I realized how bad math started treating me. 

I also loved science and thought there was so little to it because we only learned the basic stuff. I guess I really wanted to study physics. As I grew older, however, I found that I had no job in mind and was extremely confused at what I wanted to be. To be completely honest, I still don’t know what I want to do in the future. 😅

There was also a huge part of me that wanted to be exactly like my mom. Maybe that's what I had in mind when I was younger. :P

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I always wanted to be Gary the mailman when I grow up. 

 

Haha I’m kidding lol. I was always fascinated about the medical field, so I’ve had this vision that I was going to be a doctor someday. However, things happen and new passions were developed so I decided I wanted to go into academic counseling. 

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The evolution of what I wanted to do over the years

At...

  •  6 years old

I think the first things I had in mind was "Doctor" because it sounded like a cool title and I heard you had to be smart for it. I quickly lost interest when I realized I couldn't stand the idea of blood. Yes, the idea. :P 

I didn't give much thought to the future at this point, I just did what I loved to do, reading books mostly on animals and I learnt so much about them, I thought I would become Steve Irwin or something. 

  • 8 years old

Animals still my favorite topic, I thought I would get into science and become a scientist (just the general word, nothing more specific I knew then lol). The idea of making stuff sounded cool too.

  • 11 years old

Finally got an internet connection and I got into a web of YouTube videos on time travel and that's when I got sucked into physics, mostly theoretical physics. Man, this was probably my favorite phase of my life. Learnt about general relativity, special relativity, string theory, quantum mechanics etc over the next few years.

Also I began playing Pokemon (you'll see why this is useful later)

13 years old

Pokemon became a big part of my life again after I played the games so much and I had my own ideas for games. In order to learn how to make them, I realized I would have to know to code so I began a long slow journey towards just playing around with basic code. Looking back, this may have been a waste of time. If I had someone to guide me at this stage, I might have actually picked it up then and I might not even have had to go to college. 

Physics was still a big part of my life and I began finding patterns within the universe and computers. I began thinking about reality from a philosophical perspective and made all these connections between my two favorite fields. 

I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living yet. 

17 years old

i had to make a choice for college. Would I study physics and work on time travel or study CS and build a billion dollar company? I was interested in business but didn't consider studying it in college because that sounded pretty redundant. Business is doing not answering exams. Looking back, I should have extended the same analogy to CS. CS doesn't need a college degree, you just need time and dedication. Physics on the other hand is not so simple to master. But I went with CS because

  1. I decided that CS will allow me to do the stuff I really care about much quicker and in a more direct way (impacting the world/making it a better place)
  2. CS = Money whereas physics while you can make good money in physics too, you're usually not directly in charge of the money you can make. Entrepreneurship + CS are mad skills together. I need the money if I want to do what I want to, right?
  3. I can always come back to Physics later (it's easier to come back to  CS but then, I can reach that point faster if I started with CS).

 

General

I kinda always wanted to make a lot of money, that's been a passive interest all this time though. I am more aware about the world now and money is pretty much a top priority. You cannot do much without money.  Since I was little, I had this idea that I would eventually be rich one day.  I remember coming up with a big afforestation plan to reverse global warming. Obviously that would need a lot money (I recently found out that apparently the plans would cost much more than 100 billion dollars lol) 

And while I wouldn't exactly call myself an entrepreneurial kid, I did always figure that I would be a business guy even when I wanted to be a scientist. 

 

Thing is, I've now realized that I don't want to be known as a programmer or a physicist or anything in particular. I want to do whatever I want to and I'd like to be known as Shawn. I know this sounds very far-fetched but I really want this lol. I cannot see myself working the same field forever. 

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The first actual dream I can remember is to become a game developer. I slowly lost interest in that though, as I realized that making games is not the same as playing games and an interest in one of them doesn't mean the other's for you too. 

I've had various changes of heart since then. Now I just wanna be a rich man lol

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6 hours ago, Matt said:

I always wanted to be a scientist after seeing all the cool stuff in Dexter's Laboratory.

I also wanted to be a commando(well i still wish to be lol) 

You wanted to live without underwear? That's odd but I won't judge you

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my earliest career dream was a pilot. then i watched mayday (a documentary show about plane crashes) and my pilot dreams went awry. then, for most of my childhood, i wanted to be a vet, but then i realized i couldn't handle seeing animals in pain, or having to put them down. then, i focused more on my art and realized that an arts based job is what i really wanted to do. i wanted to be a cartoonist in late grade school (7 or 8), but that eventually evolved into being a concept artist for video games, which is what i'm learning to do in college right now.

Edited by Emfoofoo
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I have wanted to become a scientist ever since I was little. I can't remember how I decided it or when, this ambition just has always been there inside me. I have come to decide that it is Physics that I wish to study. I am still in Class 12, so let's see if I make it or not.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/15/2019 at 1:45 AM, Jazlyn said:

I'd always wanted to be an Astronaut 

but someone told me that astronauts had to be at least 5'7

and then I gave up.

Ugh, it sucks to have restrictions you have no control over for a career you love

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/5/2019 at 6:01 PM, Grant said:

I was obsessed with the NBC News anchor Brian Williams

When are we going to get the full story behind this?

I remember I always wanted to be famous... Probably as an actor or writer. At eight I used to write short stories, and by the age of ten or eleven I had a concept in my mind for a cartoon I wanted to produce. That's about the same time I got super into computers -- mainly because of forums. I thought I loved all things technical, so I grabbed onto anything my dad -- a telecom engineer -- could show me about computers, like how to open the cmd prompt on Windows. From there I learned HTML, CSS, Javascript, eventually PHP, BASIC, Java, and so on... Started my first website at 12 and from then on I always wanted to be a computer programmer. I was also pretty big into this animated TV show called Code Lyoko at the time which featured kids scanning themselves into a virtual reality world. All the tech on that show contributed to my desire to go into Computer Science and develop scifi-like technology.

Which is still a very cool thing to me now, as an adult computer programmer. I do *not* work on the cutting edge technology I thought I'd be working on as a kid, but I do enjoy my work and am involved in bringing innovation to some degree at my company.

Technical matters aside, in college I finally realized that what drew me to computers over the years was the social aspect of the internet and message boards. For that reason as an adult I've thought it would be cool to shift into a more people oriented job... Such as public diplomacy.

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2 hours ago, Gramps said:

When are we going to get the full story behind this?

I remember I always wanted to be famous... Probably as an actor or writer. At eight I used to write short stories, and by the age of ten or eleven I had a concept in my mind for a cartoon I wanted to produce. That's about the same time I got super into computers -- mainly because of forums. I thought I loved all things technical, so I grabbed onto anything my dad -- a telecom engineer -- could show me about computers, like how to open the cmd prompt on Windows. From there I learned HTML, CSS, Javascript, eventually PHP, BASIC, Java, and so on... Started my first website at 12 and from then on I always wanted to be a computer programmer. I was also pretty big into this animated TV show called Code Lyoko at the time which featured kids scanning themselves into a virtual reality world. All the tech on that show contributed to my desire to go into Computer Science and develop scifi-like technology.

Which is still a very cool thing to me now, as an adult computer programmer. I do *not* work on the cutting edge technology I thought I'd be working on as a kid, but I do enjoy my work and am involved in bringing innovation to some degree at my company.

Technical matters aside, in college I finally realized that what drew me to computers over the years was the social aspect of the internet and message boards. For that reason as an adult I've thought it would be cool to shift into a more people oriented job... Such as public diplomacy.

I just remember around the age of 9 watching him on the NBC Nightly News and being like “wow, that guy is slick”, after a long day of playing the SNES version of SimCity while wearing a business suit.

That was a long time ago; I’m not like this now.

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1 hour ago, Grant said:

I just remember around the age of 9 watching him on the NBC Nightly News and being like “wow, that guy is slick”, after a long day of playing the SNES version of SimCity while wearing a business suit.

That was a long time ago; I’m not like this now.

Somehow, your answer just made me have new questions.

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