When I was very young, my career aspirations changed on a weekly basis. One week I wanted to be a horsetrainer, the next I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and then I wanted to be a horse-trainer by day and a ballet dancer by night. As I grew older, though, my goals became much more specific.
When I was 11, my dream was to be a veterinarian. But not just any veterinarian. I would be a veterinarian who lived on an abandoned schoolbus in a Walmart parking lot. My reasoning here was that I would save so much money on living costs that I would be ridiculously rich. I didn't have any plans on what to do with this money. I supposed I would eventually set up my own vet clinic ON the bus.
When I was 12, I yearned for adventure. My dream was to drive away some day without telling anyone where I was going. No one would ever be able to find me! I could do whatever I wanted! I could become a vet and live secretly on a bus and then take all the money I saved and go rock climbing in Colorado during the summers like in Vertical Limit (but, since I would be climbing alone, I wouldn't have to risk being devastated by watching members of my family fall to their dooms). I don't know why being untraceable was such an important part of my plan, but for some reason it was. I didn't realize that this plan could possibly be upsetting to any of my loved ones until the day I waxed poetic about my Disappearing off the Face of the Earth plan to my sister and she became inexplicably upset by this and told me to please warn her before I vanished. In fact, she didn't want me to vanish at all! I was confused, but sincerely promised (with my fingers crosed behind my back) to not disappear as soon as I graduated from highschool. Clearly she did not understand the point of that adventure. I'm not sure I understand the point of it anymore either, actually.
When I was 17, my plans took a turn for the plain and fairly normative. I found out that Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are all needs-blind schools. This means that if your family makes under a certain income, they cover the costs of your schooling. In some cases they even pay for you to fly down to visit your family every few months. I wanted in on this sweet all-expenses-paid action. So my dream became to attend an Ivy League. We all know how THAT turned out*.
When I went to Dal, my goal was to become a cultured, contributing member of society, who went out to art shows and attended protests all the time. I would become a member of the vibrant Halifax music scene. I was even going to be part of a hypothetical underground band called the 50% Off Toasters***. I spent the next two years eating low-quality, high-starch foods, fighting over whose responsibility it was to recycle the tuna cans, and procrastinating from writing essays on Romantic Poetry. My greatest aspiration became to stay out of the rain as much as possible.
Now, my career goals are much more realistic. All I want is to be an award-winning children's book author who owns a farm that is part dog-sanctuary and part cupcake-war grounds (you know, like a paintball range, except with cupcakes). You know that myth that parents are supposed to tell their children when they have to have the dog put down, the one where the dog is actually being sent to a great big farm somewhere where the dog will be far happier and will be able to spend the rest of his days running around chasing rabbits and having his belly scratched by the farmers' loving children? My farm will make that a reality (the belly-scratching children are optional)! And I will support my dog sanctuary with a combination of my book sales and admission sales to the cupcake-war shooting range. It's gonna be great.****
*interesting side-story: after I was rejected by all three universities, had gotten over my disappointment and stopped caring, I met a particularly heinous breed of aspiring Ivy-Leaguer at a birthday party. I did not like that man. He flirted with me until he found out I had applied to, been rejected by, and then given up on the Ivy Leagues. Butwhy? Why would you give up on your goal? He wondered, to which I shrugged. Meh. He immediately turned his attention to the girl sitting next to me (who was, unfortunately, a good friend of mine), and ended up dating her for an excessively long amount of time instead. By the time he ran off to Harvard, I was in the middle of constructing some sort of liquification-ray gun in order to dispose of him with ease**. If my target hadn't transferred countries, I could have submitted my new (and proven to be fully working) invention to Harvard (or maybe MIT). I would have been a shoo-in! But then I would have ended up being stuck in a class with an even more excessive amount of similar Ivy League snobs. Dodged a major bullet on that one.
**I kid, I kid. Disposing of a liquified human being is surprisingly difficult, actually.
***The posters for our shows would look like fliers for kitchen appliance sales. Only our loyal fans would be able to interpret these posters and actually track us down. We were gonna be so underground.
****I actually know someone whose sister has a cow sanctuary. No joke. She adopts old cows and takes care of them so they can die a peaceful, natural death on her farm. And she supports her endeavour by selling miniature houses called Possum Huts and Cowches: Couches in the shapes of cows (and with each Cowch is included a free hand-made rat!!!). If she can support cows through the sales of $500 life-sized cow pillows, I can support adandoned dogs through cupcake war sales.
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