Day 8: My First Job, and The Ones I Secretly Wanted

I wrote this post a lot later in the day than usual, but it's still May 8 on my side of the world! 

My first paid job was at Mervyn's the summer after I graduated from high school. It took a month after being hired to finish orientation, and then I worked for another month at all weird hours (6am-1pm on day, 4pm-10pm the next). Then very unceremoniously, I quit because I was moving across the country for college. It was really satisfying to get a pay check, and the work wasn't terribly stressful, but I definitely learned a lot. 

One of the Saturdays I worked the register, I learned all about the craziness of sales, the importance of working quickly, and the embarrassment associated with forgetting to remove a security device. I worked hard but I didn't care so much about the company and put the customers first. For example, there was a $15 off $75 purchase newspaper coupon, but I would give the customer that discount even if they didn't know about that coupon. I always worried that someone from Mervyn's would find out what I was doing and report me. ;) 

Thinking about my first job got me to thinking about the jobs I secretly wanted. I was pre-med in college and then developed more of an interest in education, but to be honest I always had lots of potential careers and life paths that interested me. Since I'm still relatively young, a part of me still thinks that I might be able to integrate my favorite parts of these jobs into my winding career path.

And so, presenting "The Jobs I Secretly Wanted": 

1. Sports Journalist who covers the Olympics

(via Wikipedia)

Traveling to amazing places, reporting on special events that bring the world together, and being able to share the stories of athletes and the places they come from, I always thought that reporting on the Olympics would be the coolest job ever. Whenever I watched the Olympics as a kid, I watched the in between segments about the athletes and loved how they spotlighted these special people. It's funny, I'd never been anything special in athletics myself, but telling other people's stories seemed really cool to me. 

2. Tour Guide 

(via nativeforeignermag.com)

When I was a kid, family vacations were fun, but many times it was just my mom, dad, and me. Being an only child meant that I didn't have to share the backseat, but also that there weren't many people to share my vacation with in general. I thought being a tour guide would mean I could travel to lots of cool places and automatically have a bunch of people to enjoy it with! 

3. Roller Coaster Engineer 

(via www.fims.uwo.ca)

I grew up just a short drive from Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Six Flags, and Sea World. Southern California is truly an amusement park haven, and since so many of the parks are movie or TV-themed, I used to watch movies (especially animated ones) and translate movie sequences into possible amusement park rides in my mind. I couldn't draw to scale to save my life though, and quickly nixed any career that included drawing.

4. Elementary School Teacher 

So this isn't so secret now that I actually work in an elementary school, but when I was younger I wanted my own classroom and my own students and teach them lots of cool things about math and history and science and reading. And now that I'm older (and actually have a classroom to influence), I've really wanted to encourage my students to be interested in learning about the world and to be interested in traveling around the world. 

5. Freelance Photographer

Not that I ever had the right equipment, but if I went for the creative life, it would have been via this road. It totally goes with my traveling journalist/tour guide musings as being a photographer would enable me to travel and see the world in many ways. 

6. University Administrator 

(via alumni.brown.edu)

Again, this isn't so secret now that I'm planning to go to grad school for higher education administration. And I'm not exactly secretly hoping to become a university president like Ruth Simmons. I've toyed around with ideas like working in student activities, special academic programs, diversity initiatives, among others...so I guess it's still a secret to me where exactly I'd like to work in a university.

It is also a bit of a secret though, that if I become an administrator at a college or university, I truly hope and believe that I will be able to make a positive and important impact upon the community and its students. Even with the ups and downs of the post-grad life, I still have to believe that my life and my work and my efforts are meaningful. So wherever I end up, or if I don't end up any single place and have many destinations through my life, it's going to be driven by this desire. And I certainly hope it will be adventurous and exciting throughout...and based on the last few years, so far so good I think. 

To my friends that know me, did any of these jobs surprise you?

For everyone, what were your secretly desired careers?