What did you want to be when you were younger?

[onlinebacon]

Hey,

I'm coming up to that time in my life where I have to decide what to do with the rest of my life - If that makes sense. In year 11, and the GCSE exams are coming up . I was wondering, what did you guys want to be when you were younger?

Right now I am looking at going to the Welbeck Defense College, want to be a helicopter pilot (Apache) in the British Army (Just because I know someone is going to say you have to be really smart to do that, I have got A*'s on my last science tests )

Just curious, because I know there is a lot of options out there that I havent even seen.

Thanks
James

[Antiriad2097]

I can honestly say, I didn't have a bloody clue.
Good luck to you with that one though.

[Frank Chickens]

I wanted a job where I can do nothing all day, play games and get paid well for it.

Currently working for Royal Mail which meets all the above conditions!

[P-Head]

When I was 15 I had no idea at all what I wanted to be. I was super-directionless for most of my childhood TBH. Good luck with the Apache job, are you in the Air Cadets or Army Cadets by any chance?

[OriginalJax]

From early on I figured I'd end up in the games industry. Many years on, I'm still doing it, although the fun has certainly diminished from 'the old days'.

A helicopter pilot sounds like a cool job. A helicopter pilot in the military does not. Have you not watched the news, recently?

Anyway - good luck in whatever you choose - it's a bit cliched but you're at the time in your life when all of your options are still open! Pick something good!

O-Jax

[Shin_Gouki]

I wanted to be a fruit and vegetable farmer when I was about 10.

It's probably a good idea I didn't follow this path given Australia's current climate - worst... drought... ever

[Antiriad2097]

A helicopter pilot sounds like a cool job.

We have regular heli flights out to the rigs from here. Pilot is just a glorified bus driver with a really dangerous bus. Most flights are an hour or more of tedium in a straight line, followed by 5 minutes of sheer panic as you try to dump it on a tiny platfrom in bad weather.

At least in the military there's more variety and you get big explosives to play with. And your life.

For a while at school I thought I wanted to be a draughtsman. That decision was largely based on Tech Drawing class being a doddle.
I did eventually slide into that career somehow (fluke) but bailed out after I'd served my time. There are only so many cranes or fuel tanks you can design before your brain melts.

[Dudley]

To paraphrase Ant, most jobs that sound glamourous really aren't.

So right now the only really good advice I can offer is.

Do A-Levels.
Go to a reasonable university (i.e - one with a town in its name that has nothing to do whatsoever with Brunel) and do a science based course of some description (i.e - not Golf Course Management, Film Studies or Surf Science).

Do that, pull that off and you'll have a great time (when they say school days are the most fun of your life, they mean uni) and you'll come out the other side broadly equipped to do whatever the hell you like.

Virtually everything you could do now, short of professional ballerina, you can do at 21 with a degree. The crucial difference being if it turns out badly or you hate it, you're well equipped to do something else.

[Sputryk]

Until the age of about 13 (1983) I wanted to be an Astronomer. Upon finding out, I balked at the qualifications required (5 A Levels - Maths, English and all 3 science and a 6 year University degree course). I was good all through school at both maths and english but sciences were a mixed bag. As for Uni, I figured school was long enough without doing any more. Towards the end of my time at school I realised the error of such judgment.

I ended up working for the insurance world, primarily Broking and now specialise in Claim Investigations. I still enjoy Astronomy as a hobby, but a fair amount of science leaves me completely lost. And probably always will.

If only...

[FatTrucker]

Funnily enough I always wanted to be a Journalist or a writer, then after I finished college, I took a gap year and was on my way to Uni.....until I quite unexpectedly became a father, knocked it on the head, got a job, and here I am (Lesson here, never.....ever.....have unprotected fun if you have plans to the contrary).

Can't complain too much though. My current job is pretty good, really good money, low hours, no weekends. I own my house, we have 2 (relatively) decent cars and both my girls are doing well at school and growing up into the kind of kids you hope for (and are also fairly mean gamers ).
Overall I have a good quality of life considering I've only just hit my thirties but it has been more luck than judgement if I'm honest.

Paradoxical though how you spend your entire childhood and teenage years desperately wanting to be older.....then you hit Thirty and want nothing more than to be 16 again.

[felgekarp]

I always wanted to be a programmer and now that I am a programmer I'd rather be doing something else.

[bolda]

At first I wanted to be a fireman - we'll always need firemen, right!?

Then, during A-Levels I became interested in space exploration/astronomy so was quite keen to get involved in that sort of thing. I went to uni to study Computer Science and then got a job for a large american company called TRW, who had a space and defence business and did contracts for NASA. However, I found myself working in their automotive electronics business and through a combination of laziness and job satisfaction, I'm still doing the same job 8 years later! Still, it pays the bills, keeps me out of trouble and is pretty interesting most of the time.

Like someone already said, if you get decent A-Levels and a degree, by the time you're 21 you can enter pretty much most professions and if you don't like it after a year or 2, you can switch careers quite easily. Or if it turns out how it did for me, you'll get it right first time and be happy!

[Shaun.Bebbington]

I wanted to write for computer magazines - specifically ZZap!64 or something more techincal like Commodore Computing International, or be a football player - Bryan Robson was my childhood hero.

It's a shame about the ZZap! thing. At least I had a small part to play in the YS revival issue who'd have thought it? Still, I can keep dreaming.

Regards,

Shaun.

[Sureshot]

I wanted to be an F1 driver when I was really young

Other than that, I always wanted to do something relating to games. One of those things was a games tester (you think that sounds AWESOME as a kid), which I've already done. The other thing was to write for a magazine, so hopefully I'll get a crack at that at some point. Nevertheless, I've managed to stick around in the games industry for a couple of years now, so I'm happy with that. Hopefully it will be for many more.

[circus_of_horrors]

I wanted to be an artist... however I seem to have ended up working in a secondary school, still.. 13 weeks off a year paid leaves plenty of time to paint and play videogames.