What Did you Want to Be When You Grew Up?

When I was in kindergarten, we had to dress up one day as what we wanted to be when we grew up. I was taking ballet when I was little and all my friends told me they were dressing up as ballerinas. I told my mom, and she decided that I needed to dress up as a nurse. She thought it would be cute if I wore what nurses wore “back then” when my great aunt was still a practicing nurse. So we scoured the area looking for a cute white outfit with matching cap so I could look as authentic as possible. Those caps and uniforms had been essentially abandoned in the 1980’s, as nurses now wore scrubs, as any person who went to a doctor on a regular basis would be aware of.

I remember my teacher thinking it was adorable, that I was very creative (or something close to that) and it seemed perfect. I can’t remember what anyone dressed up as during career day, but I was beaming. It was a few years later I progressed to 2nd grade and discovered dinosaurs. Those, now those were the most amazingly cool creatures to ever walk this earth and I wanted everyone to know about it. I quickly found that someone who studies dinosaurs is a paleontologist. I was hooked. My life plan set itself in play, and long gone was the made-up nurse dreams. I would be a scientist sitting close to the dirt in Montana (it was always Montana) and slowly unearthing a fossil.

This career goal of “scientist” rang through until I hit chemistry in high school. I was so ridiculously stoked to graduate from high school and head told a college where I could somehow graduate with a degree in paleontology. No one really understood, and my family members always got a good laugh at the youngest daughter who still liked dinosaurs. My mom still wanted me to be a nurse, she wanted me to go into medicine, since both my brother and sister opted out early into their college careers. I realized paleontology wasn’t a major at any of the universities near home, and that if I wanted the job, I should expect an abysmal salary, long hours, and very little if any recognition. I faltered. Maybe science wasn’t the way to go? Maybe I should sit tight and let that dream fall. And I did.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder why my mother was so adamant I dressed up as a nurse, and one day she told me a story. Her boyfriend during high school didn’t think she needed to go to college. My mother wanted to go for nursing, like her cousin was currently studying at William and Mary. It amazed me how sad she looked as she thought about what she missed out on. It clicked, but still made me very mad. I wanted her to be able to go back to school now, go for her dream. But she hadn’t been in school since graduating from high school. It was too late.

When we are little, what we want to be is often heavily influenced by what we are told by our parents, and what we see in the media. Although I was the anomaly, the weird daughter, that just goes to show that no matter what, young women are pigeonholed into “normal” career paths of nursing or teaching. So I ask, what did you want to be when you grew up? How were you influenced?