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not a job, but i remember one of my sons pointing out in a picture book "I want to play that" and he was pointing to a specific detail in a specific illustration of an orchestra and he pointed to the piccolo player. He did not even know what it was called. we just thought it was strange. He was about 4 years old. A few years later, in middle school there was a "pre-band" class and he told the teacher in no uncertain terms he was going to play the piccolo (by then he knew the name of it). we still thought it was strange. So did the teacher. she said, you can't play the piccolo until you learn to play the flute first, he said without blinking an eye, OK, i'll do that then. And he did. He learned the flute and as soon as they allowed him to, he played the piccolo. He played for many years in band and then orchestra. Of course everyone by then thought he just did it so he could be surrounded by pretty girls in the flute section. but we knew that well before then, when he was just a tiny little kid looking at picture books, before he could even read, he had announced and decided he was going to play the piccolo and he did.
strange. we were not a musical family, we did not have instruments lying around, we did not go to recitals or symphony. the only music in the house was what we played on the radio and tapes in the car and on the stereo.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 02-21-2020 at 01:51 PM..
I am a teacher , I think I knew when I was about 14/15 when I first knew I wanted to teach people.
I'll let you know when that happens. I'm over 60.
I had dreams when I was a kid, but I was born in a era when girls didn't have careers, and did little else besides get married & have kids. At least in the south. An occasional girl did something extraordinary (this usu. involved moving away). But most of us had no aspirations, money goals, or the like, unless your family raised you specifically for that. Mine did not, since my mother didn't believe women should work. Case in point: I was watching on tv a documentary with Jane Goodall decades ago. It was fascinating. My mother walking through the room commented, "Look at that young woman wasting her life doing that." She meant, of course, that Goodall should be married, cooking & housecleaning & having babies, instead of "wasting" her life alone in a jungle.
(For the record, Goodall did get married, and cont'd her work with primates in the jungle. I think he worked in the jungle for a while, as well. They had a son. I think they eventually got divorced.)
not a job, but i remember one of my sons pointing out in a picture book "I want to play that" and he was pointing to a specific detail in a specific illustration of an orchestra and he pointed to the piccolo player. He did not even know what it was called. we just thought it was strange. He was about 4 years old. A few years later, in middle school there was a "pre-band" class and he told the teacher in no uncertain terms he was going to play the piccolo (by then he knew the name of it). we still thought it was strange. So did the teacher. she said, you can't play the piccolo until you learn to play the flute first, he said without blinking an eye, OK, i'll do that then. And he did. He learned the flute and as soon as they allowed him to, he played the piccolo. He played for many years in band and then orchestra. Of course everyone by then thought he just did it so he could be surrounded by pretty girls in the flute section. but we knew that well before then, when he was just a little kid, he had announced and decided he was going to play the piccolo and he did.
strange.
I teach flute, and that happens a lot: children have very clear ideas about what instrument they want to play. They get upset if you try to talk them out of it, even very compliant children.
Last edited by DigitalHumanities2020; 02-21-2020 at 03:05 PM..
I knew I wanted to be an actress when I was 8 but the worries about money got to me too much for me to fully commit to it. I still think about going back to it sometimes but I'm afraid I just don't have the passion and motivation like I used to.
I was in high school and decided to take a career class because it seemed easy, since I was a senior and wanted to coast. Part of the requirements of that class was to visit businesses and places that might be a career choice in the future. The first business I went to was a mortuary, and after that visit I thought this class would be useless, since I had no interest in embalming. I had the same expectation of the second visit, to the county courthouse to visit a judge and a courtroom. After that visit, I fell in love with the idea of litigating, and eventually went on to law school on a different coast and followed my passion and dream that was rooted in that random visit in a high school class that I took for an easy A.
The mother ship never sent me my orders. My parents weren't much help in guiding me. I wasn't one of those kids who "knew" what they wanted to do in college.
I did go, got good grades but dropped out when I scored employment with NYC. Nothing glamorous, not what I really wanted, but it afforded me generous time off, and the ability to pursue my hobbies, and invest money. Now I'm retired, and collecting a nice pension. I have the time and freedom and finances to pursue my interests.
That said, we try to expose our children to many different career paths. As well as cultivate their own desires. Instead of telling them "you can't do this or that". I was lucky I found a job that paid well. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up, but at 50 I think I've done ok.
I once heard that the most interesting people that you might come across in your lifetime are the ones who don't know what they want to be in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.!
apparently when i was 4 or 5 i was telling people i was going to write books, and was having trouble deciding who to dedicate the books to. i remember wry comments from family members "maybe you should worry about writing the book first." i remember getting really depressed at age 14 when i found out an author i liked wrote her first book when she was 12. i felt like a failure because i was older than that and had not written any books yet. i published a (hilarious) hand written newsletter about events in our family when my brother went to band camp (what the stuffed animals said to each other, that sort of thing). then i started writing for newspapers and magazines (real ones, not family ones). one of my favorites was a parody edition of our high school newspaper, which looked real. it too was hilarious.
around age 34 my books started getting published and sure enough i did fret about the dedications. by then i had three children, and i worried about dedicating a book to each but what if i only ever published one book would the other kids feel left out. so i ended up dedicating one of the books to all 3 of them. i did end up publishing three books but you don't know when you start how many will get published. more angst around the dedications than the writing of the books themselves.
About the bolded part, why is that? Danielle Steel, a very famous author, always dedicated her books to all of her children. I think that's nice.
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