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Playin' on Purple: What are you going to be when you grow up?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The answers we give to that question have differed depending on how old or young we are. When we were little kids, we used to say “a fireman” or “I’m going to be famous.” When we got a little older, it started being about money: “I’m going to be a doctor” or “a lawyer.”

I always used to say, “I’m going to be a teacher” and “I am going to be a pro soccer player.”

When I was in high school, I entered a writing contest (which I won). My essay was about what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I wrote that essay, it said I wanted to be a sports journalist. I loved sports and I loved writing, and what better way than to combine the two and write about sports?

Now we are in college. We get asked the same questions, but it’s just worded differently. We’ve picked a major (or two or three), and we get asked, “What are you going into?” and, once we are seniors, we get asked, “What are you going to do after graduation?”

When I started college, I didn’t know what I was going to be. I originally wanted to be a history teacher. I switched my major to journalism and BOOM! Here we are. I am a sports journalist. I am getting real experience in the field, learning a lot and loving every minute of it.

This week when I found my essay about wanting to be a sports journalist, I thought, “What are the odds that I had just predicted my future?” Obviously there was always a part of me that wanted to be a journalist, and I never would have thought when I was 16 years old that I would end up being a journalist and writing about sports.

Now that I am graduating, I am getting asked the question “what are you doing after graduation?” The answer is I have no idea. My cluelessness is not because I don’t want to continue a career in journalism. It’s because I have options. I can work hard and enter into the journalistic field. I can go into a company and help with the communication efforts. I can be a librarian. I can be a professional slow-pitch softball player (yes, there is such a thing). I can be a garbage man. I can be a teacher. I can go back to school and get my master’s degree. The possibilities are endless. I am not ruling anything out.

I guess what I am getting at is that no matter how many times and in what form you are asked a question about your future, you are unsure. Go back to the past and think about the answers you gave back then. The future is uncertain. It can be whatever you make it out to be. If you don’t know or are uncertain, take a look back at something you wrote or what answers you gave back in the day. I know this isn’t really about sports, but it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. It doesn’t matter what the future holds; what matters is that it’s going to be what you really want it to be.

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