======= Date Modified 30 23 2009 17:23:05 =======
Hey folks! Hope you all had a fab Christmas!

I was chatting to some pals in the pub last night, and we were talking about what we aspired to be when we were little. I am intrigued....what did you want to do when you were little? Was anyone sitting there at the age of 5 wanting to do a PhD? Or did we all drift into it amidst a giant wave of uncertainty and cluelessness?!

Here's my path to PhD-ness: First I wanted to be a detective (think Secret Seven, Famous Five and Point Horror books!), then it was a vet for year and years. Then I withdrew my vet applications and decided to do biology. Then I didn't like the course and after 18 months switched to psychology. Then I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. Now I want to be a clinical research psychologist...finally I am there, I know what I want to do for ever!

How did everyone else end up here?

Best wishes for a Happy New Year all! KB

I knew at the age of two years and 5 months that I wanted to grow the largest pair of man breasts known to mankind.

What a lovely post! I wanted to do everything when I was little.
I was going to be an artist of some kind: cartoon drawing, sculpture, painter, singing, acting, directing, product design, poetry... and so on. I always knew that I was gonna go to uni though (from the age of about 6), and I remember being so proud of myself for knowing how to spell the word UNIVERSITY. :-) So funny and sad at the same time.

I loved the secret seven and famous five. I never wanted to be a detective, but I always wanted to go on adventures.

My subject is now literature, and when I've finished my phd I'm going to spend the rest of my life dreaming and creating things, such as stories, poetry, plays, etc... :-)

I too went through the vet phase, but at my junior school a teacher did the collapsing can experiment, and I wanted to be a scientist. I discovered I was very good at cooking, I used to have a weekend job in one of the local posh hotels and eventually used to help develop dishes, and decided I wanted to teach this, only to find that the place I wanted to go to didn't accept left handers :-( so I went to another teacher training place, which was probably the biggest mistake I ever made, I stuck it out for 2 years and then left. I went back to science and ended up doing research which I loved, but then it didn't fit in with family life, so after working as a volunteer in my daughter's school for a while I decided to try the teaching thing again, only to discover they wanted someone to confirm I could write an essay, which I thought was rather strange, how did they think I obtained my fellowship - by drawing pictures? Anyway I went into adult teaching, which I followed up with a cert. ed. then MA, and now I'm doing this. My next thing is to change the world - gonna join me on that one????:-)

I remember clearly doing the "what do you want to be when you group up" work at primary school. I was going to be Prime Minister during the week and a pop star at the weekend!
Picked my GCSEs as though I was going to do art/design
Picked my A levels to do medicine
Applied to uni to do Psychology

Spent 4 years after graduating dithering between clinical psyc and research and ended up in research. Soetimes I think this is what I want to do and sometime want to get out of academia. Having met a lot of doctors am so glad I didn't do medicine. Not met any PMs though....hmm maybe a move into polotics should be the next step!

From the time I can remember I wanted to be a mad inventor. I have managed the inventor part and I am now working on the mad part with my PhD!

bioinformatician

Shit, Barny, you really had it narrowed down at a very young age!

I wanted to be a ghost, in order to pass through walls and scare people I didn't like. Best of all, I'll get that wish one day. I just hope that Dereck Acorah isn't still about because he'll be doing the same to me, and probably insult me by making me rock 3 legged tables and calling me some ye olde name like Titus or even Doris.

I wanted to be a model until I realised that I was teensy-tiny and that you had to be a giant! :$ Then a hairdresser, a fashion designer, fashion buyer.. A social worker in school, a secondary teacher when I started uni.. now a lecturer / researcher. What a change! :p

This is a cooooool thread. Here's mine:

As a real nipper I went through various phases and wanted to be a traffic warden, witch, nun or princess; then at the age of ten my class tutor set us individual projects based around what we most wanted to do when we grew up, and I wrote a history book!

I was very academic; however, school went pearr shaped during my early teens for various reasons and I left with zero qualifications, and as a creative, but unqualified, girl I was ushered towards a city and guilds dressmaking qualification - they promoted me to the more creative and prestigious B-Tec HNC course (for which you should really have GCSEs) because they thought I was really good at designing, that was a laugh and I got to hang out with my cool school friends who were also doing the HNC. On finishing at 19, I had various fashion posts and ran my own business for a while, but my heart was not in it, at all. So, at the age of 24 I embarked on a programme of GCSEs and A'Levels, ummed and ahhed between studying fine art or studying film (theory and criticism) and at 26 began a degree in the latter. My PhD is, basically, a history of film which challenges various historical givens about my chosen area, so, I'm getting there! And I teach fashions students which I also love, because they are a laugh - most of the time. Thanks for reminding me about all this kean X

I wanted to design aircraft which could move either through space or water.  I designed and built my first helicopter when I was 5 out of an old Lancaster bomber air fix kit. Made an airport to go with including Terminal, hangars, control tower, runway, etc etc - all to scale. 

Like most of my aspie friends I haven't achieved anything like my potential and probably never will now.

Good luck to everyone else in 2010.

I have wanted to be, variously, an Olympic swimmer, a Radio DJ, a high-powered businesswoman with seven children, a biochemist, a medic, and a researcher.

I have a few still to go, including Yoga instructor. (That's my current back-up plan, if this scientist thing doesn't work out...)

I love topics like this - interesting responses as well!

When I was younger, my real ambition was to be a doctor, when I learnt to read I was obsessed with reading about how the body worked and about illnesses - that ambition carried on until my GCSE years when I realised I was ok at biology but really not good enough at chemistry to do medicine so considered nursing/midwifery instead. I chose to do my 2 weeks work experience at a major London hospital (friend's dad is a top consultant there) and loved it, 'helped' in a variety of the departments and even got to help deliver a baby - will never forget that, still remember her birthday nearly 6 years on! But then I decided I didn't really want to be a nurse as I kind of saw that as settling for second best when I really wanted to be a doctor.

I was working as a saturday girl in a hairdressers at the time and then considered hairdressing as I really enjoyed it - got all the prospectuses for the top places to train in London but my parents insisted I went to university and got a degree, that was their plan for me. I still started my training but never progressed to cutting, can colour though! I'm a receptionist part-time in a different salon now and often think how things could have turned out differently, and I'm so glad I listened to my parents!

Didn't really know what to do at university, my A-level tutor suggested psychology as I was good at it, so thats what I did and I loved it, was so surprised to find something I was genuinely good at and interested in, now I'm hoping to do a PhD and hopefully have an academic career - nobody is more surprised than me and I can't imagine doing anything else!

======= Date Modified 30 Dec 2009 23:34:29 =======
Hmmm, this is going to make me feel really old. :-)

In chronological order:

ship's captain
archaeologist
ship's captain
psychologist
doctor (chose A-levels accordingly)
anthropologist
development worker (my first degree - trying to save the world ... oops, never quite managed it)
agronomist (masters, played a few years at working in agronomy research, now feels a bit like wasted years!)
long period of no-idea-what-I-want-to-be (& concentrating on being a mother)
midwife
psychologist

Am now heading towards a PhD in (sort of) psychology with a touch of midwifery thrown in. :-)

Life is definitely strange. 8-)

:p