{"id":20960,"date":"2011-05-06T18:24:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T00:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=20960"},"modified":"2011-05-06T18:24:26","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T00:24:26","slug":"thought-for-today-what-i-wanted-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/06\/thought-for-today-what-i-wanted-to-be.html","title":{"rendered":"Thought for Today: What I Wanted to Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.<\/p>\n

— Lily Tomlin<\/strong> (b. 1939) American comedian and actress
\nSaturday Night Live<\/em> (22 Nov 1975)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a school of thought that says you can make of your life whatever you will, be whatever you want to be, achieve whatever you have the will to achieve.\u00a0 And there’s a school of thought that says that, at most (though most people don’t realize even this), you can only control your reactions, how you cope with what the world makes of your life.<\/p>\n

Growing up, at various times I wanted to be a scientist, a computer programmer, a lawyer, a teacher, a journalist, a history professor.\u00a0 Remarkably enough, I actually managed a couple of these.<\/p>\n

I got into computers inadvertently, offered a post-graduate internship as a systems programmer at the college<\/a> computer center. I’d written some help files on how to use the mainframe text editor as a word processor (at a time when such wasn’t common for the students, and, in fact, most professors forbade reports turned in on dot matrix printers).\u00a0 I needed to find a job to earn some money to be able to pay for graduate studies in history.<\/p>\n

After not much success at various interviews at the career center, my girlfriend at the time noted there were two one-year internships at the new college computer center — either the head of the student help desk staff (“senior consultant”), or else systems programmer.\u00a0 I figure, what the heck, and applied for the help desk job.<\/p>\n

And got offered the other, as they already had a candidate for the senior consultant job. I pointed out that I didn’t know nothin’ about being a systems programmer, Miz Scarlet, but they in turn noted that was why it was an internship<\/em>. And, besides, they really wanted someone who wasn’t a math or science major to be involved with the computer center, and I was one of the few that met those qualifications.<\/p>\n

And so I ended up learning how to wrangle a VM\/SP system on an IBM 4341 mainframe<\/a> — which included doing an upgrade to SP2.\u00a0 And that got me into a job doing much the same the following year …<\/p>\n

My teaching experience was more direct.\u00a0 I saw in the paper that Los Angeles Unified had a big shortage of teachers, and was hiring them on under “emergency credentials” — pass some basic knowledge tests, enroll for your credential somewhere, get a crash course in classroom management, and teach while you learn.<\/p>\n

And I went for it.\u00a0 My mom was a teacher, and it had been one of those things I’d wanted to do.\u00a0 I figured I’d apply as a high school social studies teacher, hitting my favorite subject\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

… and was informed that was not in a shortage, but I could be a high school math teacher, or an elementary school teacher.\u00a0 I chose the former without giving it much thought.\u00a0 (I’d done well in math right up\u00a0 to when we hit trig, but I’d never had a passion for it.)<\/p>\n

And I ended up teaching for two years at Farmdale Elementary<\/a> in East LA — the first year thrown into a bilingual 2nd grade class (I team-taught with an actual bilingual 1st grade teacher), the second covering a 5th\/6th combo.\u00a0 And I discovered it wasn’t for me (or, rather, I didn’t feel up to putting into the job what I thought it, and the kids, deserved).\u00a0 And I headed back to computers, only now it was about “PCs” and “networks” and “email” and “dBase” and …<\/p>\n

So no real lessons there, I guess, except that life can be serendipitous sometimes — and sometimes something you have to make a conscious decision to change.\u00a0 I’ve been lucky, very lucky, in the opportunities and employers I’ve had. Yes, I also worked hard, and life was not always skittles and beer, but I don’t have any significant regrets to date — especially, love or hate my job at any given time, my job <\/em>has never been my life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I want my job to be be something worthwhile for 40-odd hours a week. I like feeling professionally fulfilled, and getting a decent paycheck and all that.\u00a0 But (cue “Five O’Clock World<\/a>“) my real<\/em> life is that I get to spend the rest of the time being myself, being with my loved ones, and\u00a0 my friends, being a husband and a father, playing games and reading books and pursuing hobbies — being someone who does stuff like that.<\/p>\n

Which, ultimately, is <\/em>what I really wanted to grow up to be.\u00a0 So maybe I’m even luckier than I realize.<\/p>\n

And that’s the truth, <\/em>ptttppht!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas. — Lily Tomlin (b. 1939) American comedian and actress Saturday Night Live (22 Nov 1975) There’s a school of thought that says you can make of your life whatever … Continue reading “Thought for Today: What I Wanted to Be”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-job-jollies","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/lily-tomlin-snl-1975.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11039,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/19\/tom_baker_says.html","url_meta":{"origin":20960,"position":0},"title":"Tom 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And God knows these guy are all pretty damned busy.Reshared post from +Les JenkinsI would prefer a full season\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28168,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/07\/an-x-men-reboot-i-would-definitely-read-watch-whatever.html","url_meta":{"origin":20960,"position":5},"title":"An X-Men reboot I would definitely read\u00a0\/ watch \/ whatever","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Jun-12 12:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Reboots are hard, but this one hits all the beats -- changing stuff in a way that provides for new and interesting stories, while retaining core elements that made for the initial success of what it is you're rebooting.Sounds easier than it actually is, I suspect. \u00a0(h\/t +Scott M. 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