When you were a kid what did you dream of becoming?

[Micaela]

 When you were younger let’s say 12-15 what did you want to be. Did your plans change and what have you ended up doing or planning on doing and why did it change and are you happy with what you are doing now?

[amanda franklin]

im 14 right now so im going to say when i was younger i wanted to be a teacher... last year that changed and know im fully focused on the idea of being an accountant... there is a lot of math and the pay is good...

[Annarchy]

I used to want to be the Queen of England and build my own palace with my bare hands. Then I realised that would involve (1)Marrying a royal and (2)Building a palace by myself. Then there's just the little issue of me being Australian.
In a year 4 Autobiography that I wrote about myself, I wanted to be an Olympian and a Vet. LOL.
My next ambition was to be a forensic scientist. I blame CSI. Then I realised that it involves science and maths, neither of which I am much good at.

Now at 20 I have 2 ambitions: Be a Lawyer and be a published Author. It turns out the second one is a lot more difficult to accomplish than I first thought. But I AM in Law school, so that's a plus. I want to make a difference in digital copyright and fight unfair piracy law.

[Lucy]

When I was very young, around five I think, I wanted to be a bus driver. By 8th grade that dream had changed many times and ended on marine biologist. I'm an English major now.

[Ashley Huddleston]

When I was around 7 I really wanted to be a singer/actress. I was going to go to college in New York and be on Broadway. Then when I was around 10-13 I really wanted to be an author. I loved to write so much, and I was really good at it! When we were doing book reports in 4th grade all of the other kids' reports were riddled with spelling/grammatical errors. And they were barely a page long. I had perfect grammar and spelling, and my shortest book report was 3 pages.
Then around 14 and up I realized the chances of me getting published were slim to none, mainly because I would always get half-way through novels and then read over them and decide they were a lost cause. I kept telling myself that it was no good, and I might as well quit.
I took a break from writing, and then picked it back up around 15. I'm still writing, but now I'm going to go to Harvard, and major in psychology. I know I'm smart enough (I have the highest grades/test scores in my school.), and I know I can do it. It's just a matter of trying not to quit, because I'm a perfectionist. Always have been, always will be. I beat myself up for every little mistake, but I'm not going to do that, I'm going to follow my dreams. And then become rich and marry someone who's also really smart and we'll have brilliant babies who will take over the world!!!
... Umm... Yeah, anyways, those are my plans! :]

[Lori S.]

Delurked to answer this because I'm the odd person who ended up being exactly what I wanted to be. I can remember being about 12 and telling my grandparents my future plans: I was going to go to college, get married, go to grad school, and teach English part-time at a university so I could be home with my kids the rest of the time. It's twenty years later and that's pretty much how it all went down.

Overall I love what I do. My father's motto was always "If it was fun, they wouldn't pay you" but it turns out he was only half right; if it's fun, you might get paid, but just not that much. I love teaching, I love my students, I love that they actually pay me to talk about reading and writing with a bunch of interesting people, I love deciding what will happen in the classroom, I love working part-time and having most of my time to myself.

But, even though I'm doing what I always wanted to do, I don't think I have any more sense of satisfaction or fulfillment than other people I know who ended up doing something they never planned on doing. I still have a list of things I want to be when I grow up: writer, midwife, homesteader, FBI agent, theology professor, sheep farmer, mathematician (some of which are more realistic than others).

My son met a little girl the other day who told him that she wanted to be a nurse after she was finished being a princess, which I think may be the best career goal ever.