I wanted to be awesome when I grew up...

... and I am.

I wanted to be the shortstop for the Boston Redsox from 3-12, then a rockstar from 12-25ish. I am now 40, a high school English teacher in Wash DC, and when I grow up I want to own a rock club.

When I was growing up I considered being an actuary, a teacher and running a day care. In college I found planning (land use planning) and decided that was for me. I ended up getting a law degree and then becoming a planner. Then I gave up planning for practicing law. Mostly criminal defense, but it's a general practice. I was much happier as a planner.

I wanted to become a famous pornstar and master of the universe.
Lucky for me I'm both.

Mine was better hellalt.

When I was five I wanted to be an astronaut. Then a doctor, business tycoon, prime minister, actor and then by late teens a rock star.

rlumley: wow, I wrote mine without reading yours. Great minds think alike I suppose.

Saying that you're the master of the universe just sounds silly, hellalt.

Whereas rlumley sounds aptly arrogant and maybe a little bit funny.

it's silly if you are not.

True, but not everyone considers your messy bedroom to be the only constitutive element of the universe.... sorry. ^^

hey, perhaps a small universe, but still master of all he sees

JC-Do you have a specialty in crim defense? I'd say about 40% of my practice is juvenile defense. It doesn't pay me half what I was getting doing real estate work in downtown Chicago, but at least I'm not doing real estate law any more.

When I was a small boy I wanted to be a train driver. In my teens, I wanted to be a journalist. I did actually manage to have a short career as a local newspaper reporter, but found that although the work is often interesting, the hours are anti-social and the pay is awful.

I ended up becoming a local government officer. I quite like it.

So you mean you are a fucking bureaucrat aka a lazy bastard. :P

BG-No specialty. We're a small general practice firm. The core of the business is real estate, but I don't do that unless we're overbooked (like for the end of the first time homebuyer tax credit). But I'm on the list for indigent criminal appointments (misdemeanors, felonies and juvies). Unfortunately, that list provides enough work for many attorneys around here.

@Jamiet99uk: local government officer, is that like a cop? Or like an office worker for general government operations?

@ hellalt: Fuck you. I work hard at my job, thank you very much.

@ jcbryan: "Local Government Officer" is a generic European term meaning someone who works at officer level within local government - ie a local council. If you want specifics, I am a Procurement Officer at one of England's largest Local Authorities, involved in running tender exercises for a variety of contracts, as well as contract management and supplier engagement ;p

Well I'm still only 16... but at the moment. I'm thinking History Teacher. In the past I've wanted to be a few things, archaeologist, 3 Animator for video games, around a week where I was considering being a session musician.

when i was younger, i would always tell my mom that i wanted to have a big black truck with tools in it to go fix stuff for people. true story.

now, i'm looking into engineering(robotical, preferablly), maybe culinary school, or writing. i'm leaning toward a major in engineering, with a minor in either writing or language(russian, italian, or german. lol.)

JC-

Are you a partner in your firm, or an associate? And how much does appointment work pay in your jurisdiction? In mine, we haven't had a raise in rates authorized by the legislature since 1977, so we're stuck at $40/hour for Public Defender appointment. At least county appointment is within shouting distance of reasonableness at $70/hour.

associate. my state pays $75/hr for appointment of private counsel . Some districts here have public defender offices, but most don't. Cost of living here is a lot lower than cook county too, i'd imagine. The state judiciary got some major budget losses this year from the legislature, but rumors are they'll take it from IT. If they do hit us, it'll either be delaying our checks (they've done that before) or dropping it down to $70/hr.

I haven't read all of the thread, so someone may have said this - but don't rely on personality tests to give you any idea of what you want to do. You might be good at those things, sure, but doesn't mean you won't be wishing away every day at your desk all the same...

The only one of these I did said I should be a careers advisor, so you should listen to me ;)

@Bob - $70 an hour... Is that 1099 based I guess? Cause if that were W-2 based, holy crap! I usually bill about $70-$100 depending on the client on a 1099, and about $35-$50 on a W-2 basis if the client would rather go that way. It all depends on the client and what they want me to do. Shit jobs of fixing someone else's mess at a big firm costs more than stuff I'm passionate about for small clients trying to get off the ground.

@Draugnar-Yeah, it's 1099. It's a flat contract rate the county pays to attorneys to represent the indigent who aren't quite indigent enough to qualify for public defender representation, and that the defendants are expected to pay back to the county. And, to give you an idea of the standards for public defender qualification, I've been county appointed to represent a part-time employee at KFC who averaged about 25 hours/week of barely over minimum wage work, because they earned way too much money to qualify. Essentially, you have to have had no real income for at least a year to qualify for a public defender.

It's a far cry from when I was doing real estate work in Chicago, charging $225/hour and getting paid by the title insurance companies to act as attorney agent in transactions wherein I represented the buyer.

@jamieuk: way to represent the local govt route. I'm a budget officer for a city here in the US. It's great work, planning for the continued operations of the bedrock of civilized life and all. I tip my cap to you.

Barack Obama

I'm strongly considering pilot (think I'll apply in a couple of months), but if not guess I'll go find a real job involving numbers and stuff :P

Maybe Yahoo or Google need paid Mods for their chat rooms, Fig.

@Draugnar: are you self employed? what kinda computer work do you do?

Semi-self employed. I use recruiting consulting firms and subcontract, sometimes on a W2 basis and sometimes on a 1099. I went corporate for a while after 9/11 killed off all the contract work, but am back doing what I love.

I'm a software developer. Many languages and environments, But primarily n-tier enterprise business apps in Java, C#.Net, or ASP.Net with either C# or VB as the language. I've recently gotten into MVVM, WCF, and Silverlight as well.