When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was quite young (at the age when every kid wants to be a fireman, doctor, or president) I wanted to be an architect. I'm not sure what I want to be now.

A forest ranger.

I think when I was younger I wanted to be a dancer. Then a teacher. Then a cosmetologist. Then an electrical engineer. Then a technical writer (which is what I am today, and I enjoy it, for the most part). My stepdaughter told me several years ago she wanted to be a teacher or a mother or the president or the lady who dances with the monkeys in the circus. Sounded like she covered the gamut to me....;)
*steve - it turns out as I played catch-up with SC, I hid a lot of questions once I'd answered them so they'd get out of the way. I just discovered if you do a search, you can't see hidden questions in the results. mea culpa. same with the teacher questions.

A grownup

I had planned to be a mathematician at one time & somehow ended up doing computer programming (Fortran) for the Air Force & now I'm playing with computers in a library. I guess it all goes together.

Different things at different times, mostly overlapping.
Some major ones include:
Father; I've mostly given that one up fairly recently.
Cognitive scientist; gave that one up halfway through college.
Physicist; gave that one up early in college.
Lawyer; gave that one up in high school.
Mutant superhero; gave that one up at some unspecified point in my youth.

a fireman, i think.

I have always wanted to be an actress. I still do.

as a young adult(teenager) i wanted to be a professional tennis player.

In order: scientist (in third grade this was some generic scientist with no field of specialty), teacher, priest, college professor, bookstore owner, and now I just want to be retired.

***Reality: you mean the rocking chair on a porch, shotgun, and bassett hound named Aristotle?

***Bill: I agree with your re-mark to Jody. Repeat surveys are completely valid. The pool of users changes, and people change over time. The way I answer one survey today may not be the same as six months ago. New information comes out, people change.

I wanted to be a writer and an actress. Then real life crept in and I realized I didn't have the courage to persue either. Pathetic, aren't I?

I wanted to be a doctor. Later, when I realized how much work it was to become one, I took another career path that turned out to be no less difficult (that would be scientist)

Lots of stuff. I went through periods of wanting to be a ballerina, a choreographer, an architect, a pediatrician, a lawyer, a diplomat. I still want to be a mom someday, but at the moment I'm still casting around for a job. I actually think that the identification of ourselves with our careers is a negative thing and puts too much emphasis on our professional lives, to the detriment of our personal lives. I think it also encourages pigeonholing, of ourselves and others. But it's possible I just think that because I don't have what I'd consider "a profession." What am I? Mostly a good friend, I think.

***Bill, I've kind of accepted the inevitability of repeats, but if you think this, why don't you have older surveys time out?

I wanted to be a "builder of everything" when I was five. It took me twenty years to figure out that this meant "generalist" instead of "architect". This is a repeat answer to a repeat question.

Shall we censure bill, or his admission that he was wrong good enough? ;)

I swear I did this survey myself ... 'away from my mother' :) A scientist, really. Biology.

Bill: I have my selection set to "all modified" - I see it even when new users go back and answer old surveys. Which many do! I don't think they're a wasteland, I still refer to them in conversations sometimes when a topic comes up that we discussed.

Phi: Did Bill use a cigar??

an artist, a musician, a writer...

I wanted to be a pilot, actor, doctor, engineer, and astronaut.

someone who wasn't quite as sarcastic as I am now... (and I wait for the plethora of repeat survey comments).
I don't think I had any great plan for the future, then again, I can't remember.
*jjg: you can't forget your retirement requirements...
*jjg: true. then again, I am still sarcastic.
I have an idea which I will submit to Bill.......
*bill: didn't we have a survey where people claimed sanity or insanity? I don't know about you, but I think we are a bunch of loons.....
actually, closing surveys doesn't seem that good of a solution either, that would cause more repeat surveys when people find they can't comment on an old one. but then again, I will try to be more understanding and accepting of repeats.

I wanted to serve humankind by abolishing repeat survey questions from the earth. Jody: survey #504, by lisashea, "When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?" bill: you're right, new users who want to make a survey shouldn't have to go through 1000 questions, but they should be able to use the search feature to find out if their idea has been done before. I was able to easily find the original survey. Also, a distinction should be made between topics on which people's opinion may have changed, and topics such as this, where the answer should be the same.

Taller

jer

Been through a lot. OF course the veteranarian thing, the archeology thing, the mad scientist thing....I finally settled on kids and biology. Combine them together and you really only have two choices, science teacher (I hate teaching) or pediatrics :)

An ice skater, a writer and then an actress.

Scientist or Astronaut
* Jody, I take full responsibility for SC's search doing that to you. It's wrong for it to do that. Also, ignore the "this is a repeat" remarks - things change. 500 surveys ago the user base for SC was different. Old surveys are a wasteland that we shouldn't dwell on.
** hunter , I am currently planning on making surveys that are 3 months old "closed", that is you can't vote or comment on them anymore. Perhaps "archived" is a better word for it.
*** lisashea, I've noticed that as well, but still it's rare and most people ignore those old surveys. I feel that de-emphasizing old surveys has many values (lessening the burden of a new user [having to go back to answer 1000 surveys in order to be a good citzen is insane], performance improvements, and keeping SC "fresh").
**** reality, it's going to happen (people are going to create repeat surveys, I can't stop it). I think all of you are just going to have to get over it, the doging doesn't seem very effective or useful.
***** elijahblue, there's a link for searching on every page and when you create a new survey, the first "tip" says to search. That's the best I can do. Given that the system already does these things, I don't see the value in complaining about repeats, wouldn't it simply be better to hide or ignore the survey?

When I was a really little, I remember wanting to be a housewife and take care of a daddy and have babies of my own. Wow has that changed! Then I thought I'd be a big time fashion designer. Never panned out though.

I wanted to be a scientist who doged endlessly about repeat surveys, and lo, so I am!
***But I like doging!

Surgeon. In my juvenile delinquent period I wanted to be a welfare mother. After I got over it I thought I'd be ambassador to Great Britain.

Santa Claus. Actually, I'm still younger, and I still do.

a con artist. really.

An animator involved in television or movies. Then, when video games came around, I wanted to be an animator/artist for video games. Hey, it worked. That's what I'm doing. However, I'm an art MANAGER right now, which is NOT what I wanted to be.

in 1976 our grammar school buried a time capsule (to be dug up in 2001). my second grade class was asked to draw a picture of ourselves in 25 years. i drew a picture of me in a lab coat mixing multicolored chemicals with two beakers. i always envisioned myself as a scientist of some sort.