I know most of the people here on baut are adults who already have a life long set career. I would like to know what you wanted to be when you grew up, what you became and how you choose that career.

I am looking to see the process of how school affected your choice and what you did to reach that goal, in hopes to shape my own future.

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Common sense isn't so common

I want to be a lion tamer!

Seriously, my first memory is of wanting to be a cook (8 or 9 years old). I don't remember caring much for quite a few years after that. I did spend a good amount of time around trains and thought they were very cool. Took 6 years off school before heading to college, with no clear ideas of what I would focus on; just knew that I wanted to use my brains and not by back to make a living.

Ended up getting hooked on Geography, PoliSci, and Economics. Makes sense I would end up in a field where study and analysis of spatial relationships was big. I'm very good at the observation, analysis, planning, and execution cycle. Don't do much execution anymore. (Kind of like the UPS commercial where they present a plan to the client, who likes it very much and asks when they can get started. The consultant replies "We don't actually DO anything).

Formally, I'm a Principal Operations Consultant. In plain language I participate in a wide variety of projects related to web self-service, computer-telephony, contact center technologies; as well as a couple non-tech things like language services & cultural competency. As a volunteer I coach kids sports teams and present a program of my own design (with a few stolen ideas) called Models for Effective Living.

This all makes perfect sense and is in line with my traits and attributes, or as one of my favorite sayings goes . . .

Your life is the perfect manifestation of what you believe to be true.

Or as modified for process analysis . . .

Your processes are perfectly designed for the outcome they are producing.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Martian geologist / prospector / chemist... career went down the dumper with the space program.
Software engineer (failed experiments wasted my time but at least didn't ruin expensive equipment or parts).

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Sue ikki
mi hatenu yume no
hotsure kana---Choko
(This final scene, I
I will not see to the end.
My dream is fraying.)

As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut (Still do actually). I got all the degrees I needed to do it and took the first entrance test/exam twice. The first time my glasses were old and my eyes weren't corrected to 20/20. The second time of my eyes was measured at 20/300 uncorrected, so I didn't make it. Now NASA has raised the limit to 20/300, but now after Columbia my kids have asked me not to apply anymore and I won't, plus I think I'm a bit too old (44) to make it.

I work for a NASA contractor making space hardware, so I'm very content. It's like not even having a job.

I never really wanted to be anything when I was a kid, except to be a kid. I wish now that I had dwelled upon it more as a child. When I got older (read: on my own and out of high school) I thought I would pursue a career in music education or perhaps even music performance, because at the time this was what I was best at and the thinking was that it would be the easiest path to the most money.

However, I soon learned that after eight+ years of college, the chances of making good money with a music degree was very low. In music, good money (at least, my perception of 'good money') is mostly made in producing or being a performing artist -- teachers don't get paid much no matter what they teach. As a performer, I was good, but not that inspiring when compared to my peers, and not motivated enough to overcome my shortcomings. Thus, a career in music fell by the wayside, even though I still actively play and have never quit my musical pursuits. I did, however, ruin any chances of getting any further financial aid for college during this time.

Thereafter followed a time of fast-food and factory jobs. At any given job, I would quickly rise through the ranks, but would always hit the top soon and become frustrated at my lack of forward motion. Eventually I got a job in a toy factory making tiny versions of real cars for toddlers to drive around in your yard. (Think Power Wheels.) I thought I would actually get somewhere in this plant, because of its setup and my background, and I also knew the right people. But they announced one day, and quite suddenly too, that they were going to shut down the whole plant and ship operations to Mexico. (Which was ironic because about 40% of the plant's workforce was composed of migrant mexican workers, there for the express purpose of cutting tobacco at the harvest season, then working out the rest of the year as a seasonal emplyee to get through Christmas rush until the next harvest.) Frustrated once more.

I thought I was getting the filthy end of the stick again, but for me the outcome wasn't so bad. The whole reason the plant moved is because of NAFTA. Part of that act mandated that anyone perversely affected by NAFTA would be eligible for retraining benefits. Eureka, my path back to school!

I would receive enough benefits to get through two years of school free of charge, and free from the need to hold down a job while I did it. So the only question was, what did I want to do and where did I want to learn about it?

Enter the process: First I took aptitude tests that are designed to tell you what types of work you are suitable for. The military's version is the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), and there are others for civilians which I can't remember right now. (Contact your local career center -- or if you must, the unemplyment office *Uuugh*.) I assembled all of the occupations that the tests suggested for me, then made a list of what I wanted out of a job: I wanted the opportunity to be outside, I really didn't want to work directly with people anymore (6 years of restaraunt mgmnt. will do that to you), I wanted to exercise my brain (i.e. no more menial tasks), and I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something worthwhile, like I was building something (rather than providing someone's food and/or entertainment). I wanted to feel good about the work I do, and to be able to look over my work and feel like I had finally contributed to something. A pretty tall order, really, when I think back to it.

I compared my list of wants/desires to the suggestions presented to me by the test results. It turns out that one of suggested jobs was engineer or engineer tech, and Civil Engineering technician fit the bill perfectly. I obtained the degree, and now hold down a job, in that field, that embraces all of my 'wants and desires'.

I actually do a lot of heavy thinking for my job, including design and computer drafting, as well as inspections and site visits. I still have to deal with people, but not on such a difficult basis as fast-food management, and these people are not your average drive-through customer. They are council women/men, engineers, judges, etc. and so dealing with them is quite different and much more bearable. I take part in the design of public utilities that benefit every person equally, and I feel very satisfied with my work at the end of the day.

This is a process I have repeated anytime I wanted to make a decision that was minimally influenced by my emotions, because I can be impulsive and that can lead to making poor decisions. For instance, anytime I move I make a list of what is important to me in a house: # of elec. sockets, windows, condition of carpet, # cabinets in kitchen, etc. I copy the list onto an index card, one card for each house I'm intersted in, then go through each house and rate everything on the list on a 1-10 scale. I keep the ID of each house separate from their respective cards. When I've done all of my visits, I look at the cards and compare them, rather than the houses themselves. The card with the highest rating wins, and in the event of a tie, then I fall back to what I thought about the house, what my impressions were, and the whole emotional side of things. I never know what house I picked until I go find out which house belongs to which card, and I have not been disappointed since I started doing this.

A little long, I'm sorry for that. But I hope that perhaps I have lent some insight to your endeavor.

I wanted to be an astronaut, but I was born in the wrong place. The pie in the sky turned out to be miles and miles too high. Now I just live, and try to make the most of my insignificance.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

What is this growing up of which you speak?

In second grade, I wanted to be an astronomer. Then I went through geologist, mathematician, and meteorologist, where I stuck for a while. I also considered psychologist and librarian at some point before I discovered computer programming and found I was both good and it and enjoyed it.

But my real ambition is to be a science fiction writer!

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Where would be the right place for an astronaut to be born?

p.s. - I think 90% of the population try to make the most of their insignificance. (This is a futile endeavor). Another 9.99999999% do not worry about such things. The remaining .000000001% are the few who are significant in the long run (or at least something more than the short run).

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

The USA?

You bet it.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I think you are just looking for ideas, because you haven't decided, yourself, yet.
Just kidding -- that's an old joke from a comedian's schtick (but I can't remember who).

Seriously... I knew I was going to be an electrical engineer (electronic designer) from when I was in the 4th grade. I don't know how, or why. My father was a civil engineer (municipal water department, and civil defense), but I don't remember any particular influence from him. One day I picked up the "Boy's First Book of Electronics", and was "hooked".

I took all the math and science classes that I could, and vocational type "shop" classes in High school were electronics, not woodshop or auto-shop. Fortunately I had a high aptitude for math and science, so they were relatively easy.

In college of course, I majored in electrical engineering.

But now after practicing EE for 25 years, I am starting to get burned out.

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http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats...033/prj:6/.png

The one thing that interested me as a kid was weather. If I gave any serious thought to "what do you want to be when you grow up", the answer was "a weatherman". I was even a member of the Gordon Weir fan club; he was the chief watherman on ch 4 in Los Angeles, and had a fan club with bumper stickers & stuff. My parents bought a toy weather station and I used to go out and measure the weather all the time, measure the rain. It was fun. In general, I was a science fan as a kid and that never has changed.

In Jr. high & high school I ran into the usual list of adolescent problems, and did not excel at anything except getting A's in all 4 years of French language. While I like science, my real talent, if I have one at all, is for languages. And I was a pretty good chess player, for a kid in the 60's. I did worse in college, eventually flunked out, and wound up joining the Air Force, as a primary means of avoiding becoming an infantryman in Vietnam (I had already been drafted by the Army, but could enlist in another service if I did so before my induction date).

In the Air Force I managed a successful tour at the Defense Language Institute, at the Presidio of Monterey (I really enjoyed Monterey and go back there all the time, though it is much changed now). I passed the Russian language course, and passed the exit exam in both Russian & French. I went on to advanced technical school as an Air Force linguist, and remained on the school staff until my military tour was over. I did not re-enlist.

My decision not to stay in the Air Force was a big one, because in the outside world I had flunked out, and had to fix that. I knew that, and had to interview with the physics department chairman at Cal State L.A. to get back in. I did it, and things were much better after that. My grades were never spectacular, but they were good enough. I managed a B.S. in physics in 1978, and an M.S. in physics in 1985.

In 1981 I joined the Radio Astronomy Group at JPL, thanks to a recommendation from my graduate advisor, Dr. Roland Carpenter, who was a former member of the group. I have been at JPL ever since, first as a contractor, and since 1984, as a regular JPL employee. My first job was modeling the chemistry & radiative transfer for gas giant planetary atmospheres (Gulkis, et al., 1983). I have also done studies of the synchrotron emission from Jupiter's magnetosphere (Bolton, et al., 1989), and I worked on software & system management for the old NASA SETI project. I have done extensive atmospheric radiative transfer work for the ASTER project. For the last several years, I have been back in the astronomy business, working at the Center for long Wavelength Astrophysics at JPL, analyzing images & science data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (i.e., Stapelfeldt, et al., 2004). It is ironically interesting that much of my professional experience is with planetary atmospheres (including ours); I have never lost my childhood interest in the weather, and took the time to study climate & global warming when I worked for ASTER.

I got into the Radio Astronomy Group primarily because Roland recommended me. Most groups like that, despite "public" job announcements, only hire on personal recommendation, so it is necessary to make inside connections somewhere along the line. I was lucky in that regard, that Roland was teaching not at a famous school, but at CSULA. Roland was the first to measure the rotation rate of Venus with radar, using the DSN antennae (i.e., Goldstein & Carpenter, 1963; Carpenter, 1964; Carpenter, 1970)

My own standard advice, for what it's worth goes like this. If you know what you want to do, do it. But most people don't know (I didn't). In that case, if you at least are interested in the physical sciences, then go into an undergraduate program in physics. I am admitedly biased, and consider just about everything to be nothing more than applied physics; all forms of engineering, geology, meteorolgy, chemistry & etc. A bachelor's degree in physics gives a good, solid foundation for all of that stuff. Then you can specialize in grad school. The up-side of doing it that way is that you bring a far deeper foundation of understanding the basic principles. The down-side is that there will be a bunch of specific, undergraduate material in the other field, that you have to go back and cover, if you want a graduate degree outside physics, and that makes it take longer. And in graduate programs & job hunting, who you know counts.

That's my sordid story, cleaned up for a PG rating.

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Don't try this at home - We're what you call "professionals" - MythBusters.

I wanted to be President at one point, but I realized fairly quickly that they were never going to elect me given my mental health problems. Also, my interest faded.

From second grade on, I've wanted to be a writer, though what kind has shifted over the years. As far as I'm concerned, the reason I'm not published yet is also in part my mental health problems--they rob me of a certain level of concentration that's kind of required when it comes to sending work to publishers, editing stuff to get it good enough to send to publishers, etc.

In reality, this chosen profession requires no schooling--at least, none beyond learning how to write at all--any second grader ought to know enough to be a writer. However, the main thing is reading a lot so you get to develop your own style, find out what styles others have that you don't like so you can avoid them, and a whole slew of other things. This is where the degree in English literature comes in handy, though I finished writing my first book the summer after high school. (Why it isn't published is a long, involved story.) I've read a lot of great literature, and it's generally agreed that it improves my own writing.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

What about Mr. Knowledge Seeker, what's on your mind? Are you trying to decide what to be? What to do? Is there something that is especially interesting to you, that you might want to do professionally some day?

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Don't try this at home - We're what you call "professionals" - MythBusters.

Me?

I want to be an aerospace engineer.

I'll get back to you in 5 or 10 years and tell you how it works out

When I was five I wanted to be an astronaut but I gave that up as unrealistic as I couldn't see very well. At the age of 12 I had a job peeling potatoes where I was constantly electrocuted by faulty wiring. That wasn't a great deal of fun. Later, at one point I became a writer on account of how my capital consisted of a pencil and some paper. Oh, and I also worked as a model which has very low capital requirements. You don't even need a shirt on your back to do that. Anyway, I got a job preventing people from learning things and that paid okay so after six and a half years I had enough money to retire and so I did. Now I'm back to writing again, although I now use a more expensive type of paper.

I grew up? When did THAT happen!?

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Well my dream is to be director of NASA and oversee the mission to mars, and thats all. If that will not happen i guess i will try toward the corporate path and get an MBA which im told is the business degree. I dont know the specs of a business person, but i wonder why you need a degree to become one. But NASA is still first choice - hopefully, if funding will ever increase.

So since im starting high school this september thats why i started this post so i have an idea of what to do in high school to become what i want.

P.S. GO MYTHBUSTERS!

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Common sense isn't so common