I never knew what I wanted to be.

The closest I ever came to a concrete answer, though, was during grade school where I went through this phase of wanting to be a teacher, but I think every little girl wants that. The hotness, for me, was in writing on the board. This ability, to take chalk and write orders on a blackboard that effectively dictate the lives of little children everywhere, was very thrilling to me. It got so I couldn’t walk past a blackboard in a classroom that I wouldn’t write on. In the fifth grade, I gave up my lunch period to spend time as a “monitor” for my past fourth grade teacher and her current wards students. She let me write the homework on the board, and I was happy. I truly believed the mark of a good teacher was when they were able to write on the board in straight lines. My homework scribblings always began ambitiously, but soon tapered lamely down the board, like ice cream melting.

I spent 4 years working for a corporation that accepts money to teach students extra curricular lessons in the hopes of bringing them back to grade level, or else allowing them to excel beyond it. I worked with kids of all shapes, colors, and sizes. And pretty soon (4 years later? Soon?) I hated my job. It wasn’t the kids, for the most part they’d run in with hugs and smiles, it just wasn’t the job I wanted. I didn’t want to be a teacher after that.

Maybe I’ll just buy myself a blackboard. I’ll write poems on it.

I have worked at the Board of Education as an office assistant (and I am ever so glad I did, it was the first job I was ever offered, at 14, and it showed me what work can do for a person. I’ve been working ever since.) I have been a cashier at a grocery store (and I still think its kinda fun…) I have worked as a booker at a modeling agency, a labor union protester (a bad work experience), an intern at a huge investment bank, a service center assistant, an academic assistant to a Professor of Economics, and an editorial intern /contributing author for a magazine.

Some of these jobs I still hold. Others of them I wouldn’t want to return to. Others still, I think, are the coolest jobs in the world. But for me personally, for my future, to be able to concretely say what I want for my career; it’s hazy. The urge to work, to be doing something, for somebody, is what allows me to operate smoothly. (Accomplishing, striving, focusing, occasionally impressing!) At the same time, that is not the factor that people are concerned with when they ask you what you want to do with your life. That’s the toughest question in the world to answer.

I know what I’m good at. I know what I’m not so good at. When the proper time comes, I will apply for work (and cross my fingers) with the companies, the corporations and global industry leaders that I admire, respect, sometimes even idolize. I know I can work. (Harder, better, faster, stronger* than a lot of people.) It’s in my blood. And when I land one of these jobs, and when I’m doin it, makin’ my life, I will have accomplished something quite monumental (to me). And when that occurs, I might be able to answer the question better.

*Cenk ya, Daft Punk!