Did you fulfil
Becoming a journalist is an ambition for many kids, but I wanted to be a vet, writes Jane Bradley
What did you want to be when you grew up? I dreamed of becoming a vet, after a summer visit to my aunt and uncle who live on a horse farm in the US and run a veterinary hospital. Age six, watching my Uncle Lenny stick his gloved hand into a horse to check on the position of a soon-to-be-born foal seemed somehow to be an unimaginably glamorous career path.
Combine that with a love for the 1980s TV series All Creatures Great and Small and the scene was set: I was going to be a female James Herriot with a successful small animal practice in the Yorkshire Dales.
There was only one problem, which I didn’t really admit to myself until a few years later – I didn’t really like animals that much. I was also, though I hated to acknowledge it, a little scared of them, particularly the ones with big teeth. I would have made a terrible vet. I later switched my allegiances to the written word and by the age of ten, had decided my destiny was in journalism.
Unusually, apparently, I somehow seem to have stuck with it. A report out this week listed journalism as one of those professions which people ranked as their top ambitions when they were children – along with fashion model and private investigator – but which they quickly ditched in favour of a more “sensible” career when they grew up.
The survey, from jobs website Indeed, also found that horticulturalists, wine tasters and wedding planners make the list of things that young people thought they might do, but that were quickly ditched in favour of more practical options as they got older.
Some, of course, such as my colleague Kevan – who put journalistic dreams on hold from the age of 16, but finally got his first newspaper job aged 37 – have been lucky enough to end up working in their chosen profession. My friend Tamsyn based her teenage career choice on fellow Scot Anna, a character in 1990s TV series This Life, played by Daniela Nardini – and stuck with it.