When I Grow Up.....

As a child, everyone has that one profession they want. Most popular ones being firefighter, doctor, lawyer and professional athlete. Why are these most popular? I don't know exactly but if I was to provide a brief possible answer, I would say...

Firefighter because they fight fires and save lives.
Doctors because they save lives.
Lawyer because they are seen to be rich.
Pro athlete because they are sport stars.

When I was growing up, even during my teenage years, I went through many phases of what I wanted to be when I grow up. At 22 years of age, I am still not "grown up" but looking back, I both laugh and feel heartbroken at some of the dreams I had.

My first career I wanted to pursue was being a vet. This was when I was about 6-7 years old, and I loved animals. I use to keep pet ants (well an ant-farm), drop-tail lizards and bugs. I loved dogs and cats, but also the non-domestic animals such as tigers and sharks. I watched TV and saw some animals suffering on a show, and I knew then I wanted to be a vet to help save these lives of the poor animals. However, this dream only last a month.

When I hit my teenage years, I started being "extreme" in the sports I participated in. This included skateboarding, bmxing and rollerblading. The first one I got into was skateboard, and I would spend hours outside riding around and falling over, but I enjoyed it and I still remember the moment I wanted to "be a skateboarder" I was watching tv and flicked over to ESPN where the X-Games were being played. The event was skateboard vert ramp best trick, and Tony Hawk was attempting the 900. If it wasn't for the commentators, I would have had no idea he was attempting to make skateboard history. After many, many attempts, he finally completed a 900, and the same time made history. I raced out to see my mum and I told her "I want to be a skateboarder, can you buy me a board please?" So the following week we went into the local town and she bought me a skateboard, it only had 1 kicktail on it, but I was pumped. Anyhoo, long story short, that dream failed when I realised I sucked at skateboarding.

BMX was next in line where I got my first, and only, bike for Christmas. I was slightly better at BMX than skateboard, but still no where near good enough to go professional at it. Then after watching Brink, a movie about rollerblading, this was the next Big Dream of mine. I bought a new pair of "blades" and hit the streets hard. I could do all sorts of tricks, like jump, grabs, 180s, 360s, jumps of stairs, I was a pro at this sport! Things were looking up for me, then, out of no where, I got bored of it.

The next dream almost became a reality, several times, and this dream had several variations. I was born with severe health problems (all this will be told later) and as a child, my mum was quite protective me. This limited my involvement in physical games and sports. Then when my mum passed away, I was 15, and wanted to improve my health and fitness, so I began working out. In a short month, this led to me wanting to be a Personal Trainer. Now, you think of the stereotypical trainer, and you would see tall and muscular, I was quite the opposite, well, still am, being short and skinny. However, I did not let this deter me, I spent hours reading magazines, articles online and the like. I applied for TAFE to study the Cert III & IV in Fitness, but did not follow through with it. I then found a online course in which I could become a qualified Strength & Conditioning Coach, which was I wanted. My dream, or goal, was to someday train the North Melbourne Football Club. I signed up for the course and they mailed me about booklets, a textbook and regular contact via email. This was motivating, however, being in a rural community, I was unable to complete it, so I put this on the backburner. Rewind to 2008, I decided I wanted to go to uni to study Exercise and Sport Science in Melbourne. However, I did not get a offer for the course, so after one more attempt to finish my S&C course but was lazy, I gave up on the dream. I also wanted to study and become a physiotherapist. It still sits in the back of my mind, and it is always possible to go back to it.

Even though I am not seen as a gifted athlete, I did have the dream of someday being a professional long jumper. I considered myself half decent at the sport during high school, and tried to coach myself at the event. However, I found out it is impossible to coach yourself at that sport, and then another dream was shattered. I re-visited this dream a couple years after high school but found I lost my mojo at the event.

After my hopes of being a strength and conditioning ended, I did not have a clue what I wanted to do when I grew up. Then I thought back to when I was doing some gardening/landscape work for a local person when I was younger. I found the job both rewarding and fun, and was great to see some hard work paid off. Then I googled some landscaping apprenticeships and I thought to myself, I needed to be realistic. My body could not handle the hardship of being a landscaper, so the next best thing was, if I can't build it, I'll design it. So landscape architecture was my thing, and after talking to a few professionals and a career advisor, I decided to switch over to buildings. The reason being, landscape architecture is a very competitive field as there is not many jobs out on the market.

So here I was, 21 years old, it was November last year, and I was on the VTAC website looking at my current preferences. My preferences being physiotherapist, sport science and health science. And within 3 minutes it all changed to building design and architecture.

Right now I am currently studying Building Design, and loving it. I have thoughts of moving to an architecture degree afterwards, but then again, who knows what can happen. I sometimes find it difficult to digest the thought of being in the one career for my entire life. I mean, with so much life to live, why spend it all on the one thing?


From The One They Call Anthony, This Is The Life And Times