A childhood dream may reveal that you are driven but a grownup choice shows what you have to do when you meet that fork in the road.
When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?
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I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. All my relatives and close friends would buy me doctor’s kits for birthdays. I remember all sorts of them. Once I even got a real stethoscope. I liked the idea of helping people. Plus I felt official with my doctor’s kit. The dream began to change once I hit about 6th grade and then middle school. I saw a few filmstrips and tv shows with blood, real blood. That made me a little gun shy. The career that once seemed all about helping people made me realize I might not be strong enough to help that way. In the early days of cable tv, there used to be medical channels that would show open heart surgery. I think seeing that was the clencher. From there my career choice started to go blank for a while.
Playing music in the 4th grade talent show got me thinking I might like to perform for a living. I played and sang Kenny Rogers’ “The Coward of the County” for the school. 
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsI got a little taste of the attention and the limelight and that created a hunger to entertain that would continue throughout my teens, twenties, and even thirties. Now in my forties, I’ve had my fill of that. My present career as a teacher happened more or less my accident. Upon finishing my BA in 1995, age 25, I still didn’t know what to do for a career. I was working two food service jobs and had never made more than 12,000 dollars a year. I decided to be a college professor because I thought the female students would be hot. I was single, what the hey.
I applied to a graduate program and started subbing K-12 to make a little more money. I had no intention of teaching kids, college English teaching was my focus. One day I walked into a School District lobby to apply for Summer teaching. They liked that I spoke Spanish, I had studied it in college and even spent a Summer in Guadalajara studying as a foreign exchange student, and they liked that I was about to have earned an MA. They offered me a 5th grade teaching position on an emergency credential, this was 1997 during a time of sever teacher shortage. I would have to attend night school for almost 3 years to clear my teaching credential.
Those were challenging days and nights, teaching in Santa Ana. I remembered my childhood desire to help people and heck, it would be nice to finally pay some bills that were stacking up. I believe my first teaching position paid 35,000. Now, in my 17th year teaching, I make around $80,000. I’m not sure the exact number because my wife handles all our finances. Teaching fit me and in a way it is connected to my childhood dream of being a doctor. More than my pay however, the chance to be a dad to 3 wonderful kids and a husband to the most amazing woman has been the real payoff. Teaching is 184 work days a year. It’s a wonderful job for being with your family and that’s been the best part of my life since that first job in 1997 at 27 years of age.
