When I Grow Up...

Children typically go through several different phases as far as desired occupations go. And I was no different. The first career path I can remember wanting to follow was that of a teacher. I was forever lining up my dolls and stuffed animals and lecturing them on this, that, or the other. I had a notebook that I made into a roll/grade book. I would take attendance and collect "homework." I was such a little nerdling that I actually did the homework that my "students" would turn in to me, then I would grade it and hand it back!

There was a very brief time when I wanted to be a singer. My little kindergarten friends and I were quite the performers. We had assigned seats on our bus, and the two girls I sat with and I had this whole dance routine worked out to Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now. We kept the high schoolers behind us thoroughly entertained. I could still do the entire song with all our moves...maybe we'll break that out for a reunion (or not).

For a while all I wanted to be when I grew up was sixteen. I wanted to drive and date and be in high school and wear makeup and go to concerts and just be the coolest sixteen year old in the world forever! Oddly enough, I hate driving, did very little dating, went through high school rather ambivalent toward the whole thing, rarely bother with makeup, and can count the number of concerts I've been to in my life on one hand (if by concerts you don't include choral performances - and the coolest sixteen year olds in the world rarely do).

In high school I decided I really liked science, so I thought I'd like to be a doctor. I actually enjoyed anatomy labs, in part because of the demented minds with which I shared the class. An image that will forever be etched in my memory is that of our senior class president parading around the lab with a cat's head on a stick. Sick, I know. And not really related to my desire to be a doctor. But the most vivid memory I have of high school science.

By the end of my senior year of high school, I had decided that what I really wanted to be was a housewife and mommy, but since my mom was dead-set on me having a degree to fall back on in the event of an emergency, I chose nursing as my intended college major. What I really wanted to do with that was work in the hospital nurseries, rocking babies all day long. My second semester of college chemistry changed my mind about nursing. The medical profession would have been a lot easier to shoot for if it hadn't been for all the science.

That's when I went back to my first love - teaching. I spent one semester as an education major (though I never officially declared that one) before I realized just how much busy work the education department put on their students. It was time to re-evaluate my goals (again).

Well, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I dont' really enjoy children of all ages. The older they get, the more annoyed I tend to get with them. So preschool seemed like a pretty good place for me to stop. I settled on the child and family studies degree, changing my mind 3 times over whether to go the extra step and get the teaching licensure (I ended up deciding that I really did not want to deal with the education department if at all possible, so I opted for not). And that's how I got where I am today.

But honest and truly, when I grow up I wanna be a little old granny sitting on the front porch swing with Hubby yelling "No!" and "Stop that!" to the grandkids in the yard.