What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

When I was little my parents and my grandmother asked me all the time, "What are you going to be when  you grow up?"  I'm sure the answers kept changing as I got older.  I don't recall all the responses, but I do remember that at one point in my life, I wanted, more than anything, to be an astronaut.  That was my dream until I discovered that you needed 20/20 vision -- that automatically ruled me out.  My goal then changed from wanting to be an astronaut to being anaerospace engineer.  By golly, if I couldn't fly in the shuttle, I was going to design the durn thing!

And so off I went to Stanford with that goal in mind.  I took several engineering classes and decided that maybe what I really wanted to be was a mechanical engineer.  At the beginning of my sophomore year, I searched for summer internships that would enable me to use my mechanical engineering skills.  I landed an internship with Exxon.  I thought I was going to love it.  I hated it. It was a fun assignment, but the actual engineering part of it was boring.  That same year I had  taken the class  "An Introduction to Computer Science" and had fallen in love with it. I was fascinated by the proofs and logic required to master the subject. Once again my goal changed.  Now I wanted to be a computer scientist.  I loved all my classes on this subject so I graduated from Stanford as a computer scientist.

I worked as a computer scientist for a few years and decided that although I enjoyed what I was doing, it was missing something.  It took me a while to figure out what that something was, but then I realized that it is important for me to work at something that was helping to change the world and working for Exxon in their systems department was not moving me in that direction.  

So I applied to the Kennedy School to become a policy analyst. Upon graduation, I worked for the state in a strategic planning capacity in their information technology division.  I thought I had found my calling and then...I had kids.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, having kids rocks your world to the core.  I decided I wanted to focus on my kids for the next few years and I did and I loved it, but there is still a part of me that feels I should be doing something to help change the world. IK is going to start preschool in the fall.  I will have no baby to care for at home then.  What am I going to do all day? Clean the house? Uh, no.

So here I am.  Wondering myself what I am going to be when I grow up?  I am having a hard time deciding.  It would be so easy (I think) to go back to do what I was doing before I decided to stay at home, but I remember how seemingly incompatible that job was with being a mother. Do I want to go through that again?  I don't know.  Maybe if I get a sitter things might not be so crazy.  My goal in life is not to become a millionaire so that opens up my options.  Do I want to teach?  Do I want to work for a non-profit?  A friend suggested working in the Texas House for a few months just to get that experience under my belt.  It is a very demanding job and the pay is not really there, but it would definitely be good experience.

How does one decide what's the best course of action????  I feel like I should make a chart and list all the things I am looking for in a job and see how these different options compare.  Maybe that's a good way. Maybe I should just apply to jobs in every area and see what happens? Maybe I'm being too cocky thinking I'm going to get any job I want because that's always been the case in the past.  

Maybe I'll sleep on it...

TTYL.