By Emily Bowman ’17
The eternal question – what do you want to be when you grow up?
When you were in kindergarten, a teacher might have asked you to draw a picture of what you wanted to be when you grew up. You probably whipped out your pack of crayons and drew a doctor or a police officer or, if you were an attention-loving-five-year-old like me, a famous movie star. As you got older, your answer to this question likely changed pretty frequently. Maybe after Take Your Daughter to Work day you wanted to be a lawyer like your Dad, or maybe after your baseball team won the county championships you wanted to play professionally. Deciding what you wanted to be when you grew up was as much a fad as Silly Bandz and Tamagotchis. But I think for most of us, we’re still trying to find the right answer.
So, how can we start to figure it out?
When your younger self wanted to be a dancer or an astronaut, you didn’t have a true affinity for these careers, you were seduced by adventure and excitement. Very few kids dream of working at the DMV when they grow up because it doesn’t hold that same allure. Basically, your career should live up to the standards of five-year-old you – consider positions that challenge you and reward you and impassion you. If you do that, you’ll be on the right track.
