What do you want to do or be when you grow up?

I've never had an ambition, or a goal/s in life, at 63 I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I don't know if it's because I was never encouraged to do anything when I was a child, although I was often discouraged. If like most little girls I said I wantd to be a nurse, I was told that I wouldn't really want to that as it would involve carrying used bed pans around. A wish to be a hairdresser was met with disgust.

We had no careers advice at school, or at least not until we'd made our exam choices and it was to late to change anything. Some of the teachers said there was no point in educating us as we'd only go off and get married and have babies.

After leaving school, I was asked what I wanted to do and could never answer, I simply didn't know, I remember being told to search through a filing cabinet of folders about possible careers and found nothing, I was just overwhelmed. I think it also didn't help that a "career" was a fairly new thing, for people of my class, we's always had "jobs", which was a very different thing.

How did you find the thing you wanted to do, or do you still not know?

Do you do the job you trained for? 

Parents
  • How did you find the thing you wanted to do

    I was a bit of a propeller head at school and wanted to be a rocket scientist and got my degree in Applied Physics, worked on some cool research (including explosives) but eneded up bored as hell.

    I then dropped out and worked with computers (the first real office desktop computers - 286 processors being the hot thing. I found I enjoyed working in support and made a 32 year career out of it.

    Work has always really been about making enough money to have the life I want outside of it though. Luckily I've been able to do all the big things I wanted through the years so don't feel I have missed out but there has always been a high price to pay in terms of stress.

Reply
  • How did you find the thing you wanted to do

    I was a bit of a propeller head at school and wanted to be a rocket scientist and got my degree in Applied Physics, worked on some cool research (including explosives) but eneded up bored as hell.

    I then dropped out and worked with computers (the first real office desktop computers - 286 processors being the hot thing. I found I enjoyed working in support and made a 32 year career out of it.

    Work has always really been about making enough money to have the life I want outside of it though. Luckily I've been able to do all the big things I wanted through the years so don't feel I have missed out but there has always been a high price to pay in terms of stress.

Children
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