Friday Five – Childhood Career Dreams

We missed our first Friday Five in months last week, these things happen. But fear not we’re back again this week with our picks for childhood career dreams. You’ll notice that most of us were pretty unrealistic in what we wanted to be when we grew up. As always let us know your picks in the comments, and if you have any ideas for future Friday Fives feel free to share those too!

Eric

1. Paleontologist – DINOSAURS! I love them! Anything that involved dinosaurs was instantly my favorite. When I first saw Jurassic Park I knew I wanted to be a paleontologist. There’s just one problem. . . I hate being outside!
2. Astronaut – This kicked in after my dinosaur stage. I thought space was the coolest subject of all times, and hence why I began to enjoy science class so much in grade school. I still love gazing at the stars and learning all I can about outer space, but I don’t see myself ever making a career out of this hobby.
3. Power Ranger – Seriously, who didn’t want to be one? Total badasses with giant robots! The dream I say!
4. Scientist – Generic? Yes. I had no idea what I wanted to specialize in because I didn’t know there were specializations. All I knew is I wanted to create awesome things and wear a sweet ass lab coat!
5. Game Designer – This is the latest of my childhood career choices. It came to me in high school during one of my parents “Life doesn’t revolve around Video Games” lectures. This was my genius idea to be creative and shove it in their face at the same time. While this career hasn’t picked up to the level that I’d call successful, it’s the only one of my childhood careers that I still reach for. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll see One-Quest designed games on the shelves of your local GameStop!

Shahed

1. Super Saiyan – Cause seriously, who didn’t want to make loud grunting noises with veins popping out of your neck glowing gold. You would have the power to save the world and that’s pretty important.
2. Fire-Man – Cause who didn’t like peeing out fires as a kid?
3. Ninja – It was either this or Jesus. I just wanted to walk on water.
4. Doctor – Okay…this was driven into my skull by my father for quite some time. So much so that I did my own research and got into the human anatomy. It’s interesting stuff…but I don’t want to be in school for 8 years with a crappy 4 year internship.
5. Game Designer – I mean ultimately, that’s what I wanted to do. It’s what I still want to do, but as I got deeper into it I felt it was a bit vague and needed to be more specialized. That and I wanted something to fall back on in case it didn’t work out. Went with degree in Computer Science that gives me the knowledge to develop games and I can work pretty much anywhere….plus I love to code. Hopefully we can start making some progress on our first game and release something awesome for you all to play. Awwww yeah.

Chris

Though most of the jobs people mention are all things that would be cool, I never really wanted to be an astronaut or fireman or any of those standard things kids want to be. I thought science was cool but never thought about doing anything with that. I knew ideally I wanted to work on computers in some fashion, but as a kid I always had dreams of doing more. . . far fetched things as you’ll see below.

1. Ninja Turtle – I know it doesn’t make sense for me to be a Turtle, why not just a ninja? Well as cool as ninjas are, a Ninja Turtle was way cooler. I would have even been alright with being a sidekick like Casey Jones or Keno from the second movie.
2. Pokemon Master – I’ve been a pretty big Pokemon fan since it started in the US. I use to watch the cartoon every day and I played the hell out of the original games. To this day I think I own almost every version that’s come out. Or at the very least one main game and the extra like Yellow, or Platinum. Because of this fandom as a kid, well pre-teen really I thought it would be awesome to have all these creatures that I could run around and do battle with. In hindsight it’s fairly screwed up, but still a fun series.
3. Ghostbuster – Ghostbusters made ghosts not scary for kids, especially the cartoon. I remember having friends with the toy Proton Packs and running around pretending we were actually Ghostbusters.
4. Video Game Creator – Like most of the folks on the site I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember. And as games got more advanced and I grew older I thought it would be more and more fun to get into creating them, whether it was writing the story or programing the game I just wanted to be part of that.
5. Comic Creator – This is a lot like games for me, I read comics as a younger kid and didn’t really know what I was doing but I thought it would be awesome to get to do that for a living. Years later when I actually starting reading them and stuff for real that still seemed like a great career. The biggest obstacle is I can’t draw at all, I could probably write but it’s damn near impossible to break into comics unless you’re an artist, and a damn good one. Or you self publish your own book, but for that you’d also need an artist.

Shannon

1. Dancer – Well, I don’t know if I actually wanted to be a dancer, but I do remember that I asked my grandparents to pay for dance lessons. They bought me customized bath towels with ballet slippers and my name on them and then I told them I didn’t want to do it anymore.
2. English teacher (in Japan) – I actually have a couple of friends who accomplished this, but I’m awful at learning other languages. I started to learn Japanese and then realized it was never going to happen.
3. Cosplayer – Not something people really make money from often, but it’s something I thought about regularly. After getting into anime when I was younger I started growing my hair out so I could dress up as Sailor Moon (my first anime) and Ayeka from Tenchi Muyo. At one point I got my hair to look like Ranma’s too.
4. Artist – Ok, so this one sort of came true. I have been into art my whole life and I knew I wanted to do some sort of art later in life. I don’t work at a studio or for any type of company, but I have made money with my photography.
5. A mom – This one definitely came true. Being in long relationships makes you think about what you want out of life, so I started thinking about this stuff fairly young. I had names picked out (one that has been used) and everything. This is probably the best job ever, I just wish I got paid in money in addition to love.

Drootin

1. Athlete – I could cheat and put like 5 different sports I would have loved to been a pro athlete in but I’ll just keep it general. I was an athletic kid and still like to be competitive at things and live for sports.
2. Scientist – Eric summed it up pretty well in his 5. I loved science as a kid and I still love it today. I didn’t know that there were so many different kinds of science as a kid, I just wanted to do experiments.
3. Sports Commentator/radio host – I grew up watching sports and listening to sports radio and like I said I live for sports so this was just a natural progression from athlete.
4. Fireman – But not the kind like Shahed mentioned, I wanted to be the Fahrenheit 451 kind of fireman. I read the book in 6th or 7th grade so I’m getting a little liberal with the definition of being a “kid” but Eric picked something from high school so its close enough. For those who don’t know (you should read this book now!) the firemen in the story start fires to censor books, yeah thats right, their job was to burn stuff, how cool is that!?
5. Sports coach – This is still ideally what I would like to get into someday if I can ever find the time to go back to school. I feel I have a good knowledge of many sports and once I realized I was nowhere near athletic enough to ever be a pro athlete this is what I’ve tried to focus on.

Walnuts

Man Shaheds the only cool one with the great career ideas. Mine are epic.

1. Ninja/Samurai – Seriously who didn’t wanna be a ninja or samurai when they were a kid. Get to run around with epic swords and maybe even run on water. I mean come on.
2. Power Ranger – Yeah when I was a kid I wanted to save the world!!!
3. Pokemon Trainer/Digimon Master/ Yugioh Card Dueler – Being able to go to world championships, be the best, and have a companionship with my monsters as I do so.
4. Astronaut – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVn1oQL9sWg That sums it up.
5. Jedi – Lightsabers, The Force, aliens, and this, who didnt wanna be a jedi in the Star Wars universe.

Audra

This is pretty difficult because as a child I never wanted to grow up and have to work. Of course teachers would always pose the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I defaulted with “a teacher”, but to be honest, never had a desire to do so. Here’s the best I got…

1. A Cashier – Did anyone ever have those cool little registers as a child? My babysitter turned her small basement into a little grocery store, and for some reason that was the most fun ever. But NOW, having sold my soul to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for a good 5 years has filled any hole of longing for that career.
2. Veterinarian – I love cats. Love, Love, Love them. But it turns out as a vet you will only see sick or dying cats. Its bad enough when that damn “arms of an angel” commercial comes on!
3. Chef – I was actually really into the food network when it was actually real cooking shows. But then I realized the life of the average chef is extremely stressful and I’m not so down for that. Plus I’m a vegetarian and while I’m okay with watching people cook meat on tv, sometimes it gives me the he-be ge-be’s.
4. Model/Actress – What girl didn’t have this 2 minute dream. Getting paid lots of moneys by just standing there and smiling.
5. Hair Stylist – I have definitely spent a large amount of time on the styling of hair. Not so much recently, but I would spend 8-9 straight hours braiding my hair or a friends into into individual braids. I would also straight up take a regular iron and board and iron my sisters hair straight. …hmm, thinking back on it, that took a lot of trust on her end… or ignorance. 😛

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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