I wanted to be a translater at the U.N. and be able to speak seven languages. It turns out I have absolutely no ability to master another language. :-(

I wanted to be the lady that worked in the gift wrapping department in a large department store.

First grade told my teacher I wanted to be a missionary! :o)

Did not make up my mind until I went to college and majored in home ec (that's what it was called back then) Taught school for 30 1/2 years. Took early retirement at age 54 with no regrets.

I was horse happy and wanted to make my living being an equestrienne.

At age 5 I was not very realistic ... have you ever heard of a lumberjack ballerina? My grandmother had sent me a postcard of a ballerina in a graceful dress, and we'd visited an old time lumberjack camp on vacation. But I had no desire to actually dance, and I wanted to play all day in the forest, not cut down trees! so my early job inclinations came to naught.

I love that HU-955941711. To be truthful, I don't recall thinking about what I wanted to do or be when I was five years old. I think I was pretty happy doing and being exactly what & who I was 😁. Later, for the longest time, I wanted to be just like my Mom who was a stay at home mother. I didn't end up doing that but I still think that's the hardest and most admirable job.

When I was a kid, I loved engines. I wanted to design engines or be a mechanic, however, living in poverty on a small farm, my choices and view of the world was small. In high school, I thought that electronics was great and took a correspondence course for radio and TV repair. That was all about vacuum tube circuits, HAH! I graduated from HS in 1954 with no thoughts of attending college - no money - I had no idea that by 1965, vacuum tubes would be dinosaurs. My future lay with the draft board. I was almost certain to be drafted later that year. That summer, an opportunity arose. A program opened at Rock Island Arsenal that offered qualified students to work their way through college. I took the exams and entered that program and never looked back. Upon graduating from college, the need for Ordnance Engineers had reduced and I left the Arsenal to enter industrial product development. I now hold 2 degrees in Mechanical Engineering and am retired. It been a long, hard pull, but I did get a job I liked even though it was my second choice.

Doctor. I was always taking care of my brothers. Life happened, dad died when we were all under 18 and college wasn't really an option.

I don't think I ever envisioned a job at age five, but several years later I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist. Probably due to the Egyptian discoveries in the 50s-60s. Interviewed a real archaeologist for an 8th grade social studies assignment related to jobs we would like to pursue. My desire was dampened only as I grew older and realized I would have to be out in the elements in hot weather in full sunlight -- not my cup of tea! I now avoid the sun as completely as I can, being a gardener, and hot weather has me indoors blessing the person who invented home AC. Still drawn to archaeology as an interest, just no longer want to DO it, lol.

Oh - I also wanted to be Nancy Drew.

"I wanted to be just like my Mom who was a stay at home mother. I didn't end up doing that but I still think that's the hardest and most admirable job."

My mother graduated college Magna Cum Laude in a day and age when most females didn't even go to college, unless it was to find a husband. She gave up her career when my older sister was born, and remained a stay-at-home mom raising the four of us. She died at the age of 53, when my brother, the youngest of the four of us, was barely 14.

When I was 5, I was in the first grade. I don't remember thinking about a future career when I was 5.

I didn't give it any thought when I was 5 but I started my first "novel" at around 8. 😃

I wanted to be a teacher and enjoyed a lifetime of teaching in and out of the classroom. I also wanted to be a mommy and realized that dream too.

I don't remember exactly how old I was but my first career choice was being a "kept Woman" which to me meant having beautiful clothes and lots of jewels. I was somewhat vague on the details of what the job entailed otherwise and I have no idea where I even heard of such a thing but I do remember announcing the fact to a room full of adults and having them all laugh. It was one of those what do you want to do when you grow up questions. As a total tomboy I am not even sure why I wanted the clothes and jewels.

I'm a cowboy. Where would you like me to deliver these cows?

I wanted to work in an office where I could type. I did in fact do this for many years before and during university studies. Then I became a librarian which was a lot more interesting and rewarding than office-type work.

This will sound sad, but I am just me and that’s ok! At5 and many years after I just wanted to be better at something then my two sisters . ( and no I have never been)

Greenshoekitty, it's tough having to live up to someone else expectations. I'm glad you have come to peace with that. There will always be people who are oblivious to the pain they cause others. Being OK is better than fine under those circumstances!!! 《HUGS》

I wanted to travel to other worlds. When older, to be an astronaut. Loved science fiction even back then.

Have no idea what at 5 I may have thought that I might have wanted to do when I grew up ... probably Mom, Dad or one of thee grandparents might have heard whatever idea I had.

Dad had a large farm in southern Ontario, later sharecropped then bought a farm in Saskatchewan.

As a preteen I think that I thought that I'd probably be a farmer.

What do I do now? Been retired for 20 years!

ole joyful

When I was 5, I wanted to be an artist. When I was a little older, I wanted to be an animal trainer in the circus. Then I wanted to raise horses, and I did that for a little while after was married. When I first got married, I shrimped a little with my husband, but I ended up being the one who ran errands...picked up parts and net supplies, etc. He worked long hours, usually 7 days a week, so that way I was home when he was home. From 1968 to 1997, I took care of my mother. My daughter was born in '80 and I was home with her and volunteered 5 days a week when she was in elementary and participated in her activities. Then from 2002 to 2010, I took care of an invalid friend. Now I take care of an invalid husband and collect pitiful horses....and raise waterlilies as a hobby.

I wanted to be an attorney, my brother was, I worshipped him. I grew up and realized what a horrible human being he was. I became a teacher instead.

I wanted to be a doctor, married to a fireman with 37 kids!!

Well, I'm not a doctor, (unless you count doctor mom)

I'm not married to a fireman

And I don't have 37 kids (thank goodness!!), only 4. ;)

I was an imaginative child. i didn't really think about careers at that age. I just wanted adventure. At age five I wanted to be an Indian (preferably the chief), a fireman, a hobo riding the rails, and a mommy. I also wanted to be a boy. Not because I wanted to be a different gender but simply because boys had more freedom, had more fun and didn't have to wear shirts or swimsuits with tops in the summer.

I did become a mommy and I still take off my bra at first chance and in my sunbathing days I just wore bottoms in high privacy fenced backyards.

In real life I only found horses in my old age. It wasn't a childhood dream as it is for so many kids. I ride twice a week now and wish it could be more. Now I can't see my life without them. I sometimes wonder how my life may have been different if I had them in my youth. Better in some ways I'm sure but probably far less interesting in other ways. But i know I appreciate them much more and the older horsewomen and men I meet now than I probably would have as a kid. I have them now because I need them. Life has it's twists and turns.

I also was a tomboy and although my dream changed many times through my childhood and teen years, I vaguely remember wanting to be a female version of Tarzan at 5. Swinging through trees and communing with chimps and elephants was my idea of the good life. LOL! I'm just trying to envision that now!

I just wanted to have enough money to have some land and ride horses with my sister; I never really aspired to an occupation. In high school I decided I loved science and so off to university as pre-med. I have an aptitude, but not a love. I wish I'd loved it, or known that I loved law studies as much as ended up loving it. I still get contacted from Emory. I'm too old to start over ;)

Judging by the photo of me at age 5 in full cowgirl outfit, I wanted to be out on the wide open range. That never happened, but I do recall wanting to dig for rocks, be an explorer, and wanting to be a surgeon. Ended up an engineer and had a great and interesting career, traveling to a lot of interesting places and meeting good people. I do love to be outside, hiking, jogging, gardening, whatever, and seeing our National Parks and other sights in the world.

I had no options to think of a future at 5. By six I took care of my 4 month old sister during the summer.... and at 8 I had two children to take care of.

Fast forward, I came to the US, got married had two daughters. No "high school diploma". I wanted to have something before my daughters, and got a GED. Now, feeling empowered I wanted to go to college, and become a home economics teacher. My husband nixed that.... said we could not afford it.

After the divorce I just needed a job, but that was hard to come by, as I had "no job skills". Ex did not want me to work.

I worked at Home Depot (in the garden department), which was very hard on my body, and then in a school kitchen, which ended up just as hard on my body.

I quit at age 62 and am now retired, and feel really good about myself.

Moni

Veterinarian. But ideally I'd be a zookeeper. : )

As a kid, I wanted to be a zookeeper also. If I hadn't gotten 'stupid' and got married right out of high school instead of going to college, today I would be head of the reptile division of the San Diego Zoo.

I wanted to be an artist like my mom. By junior high I'd narrowed that down to fashion illustrator--pretty funny to me today because fashion is something I almost never think about. Good thing it didn't pan out, because "fashion illustrators" are photographers most of the time now.

Architect. I started drawing floorplans with my brother when I was about 4. Became a technical writer instead, but am now a "Snoop" of open houses more for layout than decor. And I love hanging out over in the Building a Home forum, I learn so much!

I mentioned this thread to DS21. He reminded me that he wanted to be a "chef on a train". He's not. Do they even have chefs on the train anymore?

When I was really young, I wanted to be a police officer, like my daddy. I wanted to drive a police cruiser with flashing lights and a siren, and arrest bad people. Then I wanted to work at an orphanage, so I could play with the children and hold the babies, who were waiting for families to find them. (I ended up studying law, and left the policing to my father, husband, sister, brother in law and nephew!) When I retired, I worked in a Daycare Center to satisfy my wish to work with children, until my grandchildren were born.

When I was five I sure did not think about things like that. I ran around and played and rode a pony that was my uncle's and then when I was 9 I had my own pony, and at 14 my horse and my pony. I never had dreams of what I would be, I just went with the flow.

Sue

Never wanted to leave the farm and still live there now, but work at a small college as a photographer, which I loved also...

a nurse because I liked the white shoes they wore and the little caps on their heads.

At five I didn’t think about being anything but being a kid. If asked, I might have said a mommy. Well that came true! Once I was older I wanted to either be a missionary, during my brief religious phase, or an airline stewardess. Airline stewardesses were very glamorous back then and we certainly were not encouraged to be doctors or lawyers. I also had a time when I wanted to be Miss America. I remember a very serious conversation with my father concerning what my talent would be. Never got to be a missionary, a stewardess or Miss America.

I'm pretty sure I had no career aspirations as a five year old. Was pretty isolated from the adult world so would've had very little knowledge of what jobs even existed.

Interesting that the one thing I never wanted to be was a mother. I can remember the feeling of relief when I learned you could be married without being a mom. Nothing against moms. I diapered and fed, watched and washed siblings. Been there and done that. When my friends had babies and would wail about how much work it was I would smile as in Oh yeah? I never resented looking after my sibs but I didn't want to do it the rest of my life.

At 5 I just wanted to have babies to take care of. A little older I wanted to be an archaeologist

Sometime early I wanted to be an archeologist, because I really liked dinosaurs. A little later I found that archeologists mostly deal with pottery shards and other early human artifacts, and that the job that dealt with dinosaurs was called a paleontologist. But then by early high school, we got a computer, and I would spend hours and hours playing games, and writing programs and even writing my own games and playing them. When I found that companies would be willing to pay good money for me to do something that I did for fun, my future course was set.

Although there was always the dream that I could be paid for writing computer games and a major focus of my college degree was computer graphics which of course could be used in computer games, I fell into a different niche of professional computer programming. When I moved here 20 years ago, a local game company was hiring, I interviewed and got my dream job. After a year the company was bought by a large international game corporation which shifted us in different directions, multiple times, and then based on a fit of personal pique from the CEO of our division, we were shut down, and were all laid off. Two new local companies were started by those who were laid off. I worked for one for about a year until they ran out of money and closed up, and then worked for the other for about a year until their funding was cancelled and they closed up shop too, and then worked for another year doing private consulting for a game company from Boston, which was good money, but I realized that the chasing down gigs portion of that wasn't something I'd be good at, and the 80 hours a week at "crunch time" wasn't something I'd enjoy.

So for a while I had my dream job, and I'm glad to have done so, and I'm proud of some of the work I did there even though none of it ever really made it out into the world. But when a former-co-worker who had become CTO of a different game studio repeatedly offered me a sweet, mostly-work-from-home deal to come to work there, I was wise enough to resist the siren call and stay with my boring-but-stable job programming for the university library -- a few years after turning him down for the last time, the same large international game corporation bought the company he was CTO of, and subsequently they shut his company down too.

I wanted to be an artist. I am an artist.

I actually loved baking at 5. I remember getting one of those baking sets with the mini cake mixes, icing mixes and utensils. Was pretty excited! 🤗

i either wanted to be an astronaut or a veterinarian ...

I don't think I had an awareness at 5 of a career being an option. But a few years after that, a new neighbor moved in and opened a beauty shop in her home. I LOVED going there and watching her or getting something done to my hair, so that was the first I ever decided I wanted to be a hairdresser. That was in the day when lots of girls were kind of pushed into beauty school because there weren't many other choices for those not college bound. But it was all I ever wanted to do, so I did for many years.

Older than 5 when we drove to airport to watch planes come in. Oh how I wanted to be one of the beautiful stewardess that would walk off the plane ,looking at their attire , thought it would be such a glamorous life. Then I would spend hours taking our old phone books adding the numbers . Pretending to take payments adding and subtracting. Wonderful opportunities came to this farm girl and was able to complete college and my CPA degree. I think back to my high school years , being a farm girl, I wanted to take future farmers course , but they would not take girls. If I had been allowed wonder if I would have continued to farm. Loved my work in accounting,but upon retirement, farming became my hobby. Never know where our dreams will take us.

I just wanted to be a mommy...fun life, make and take care of babies, stay home, especially when there was bad weather and I had to go to school. Daddy goes out and makes money to take care of us all. Easy life you know (well really at 5 I didn't know)...there was 2 boys and 1 girl, me. My children were also 2 boys and 1 girl...my grandchildren, 2 boys and 1 girl.

I wanted to be a nurse just like my Mother. So that's what I did and am now retired RN after working 45 or so years!

I used to be annoyed that teachers always wanted us to decide what we'd like to do when we were grown. Having said that, I always knew I wanted to teach.