"When you grow up, you can be whatever you want."

Were the rest of you guys told this when you were at school? This was a particular favourite catchphrase of our social guidance teacher at school. Trouble was that it conflicted with the careers teacher’s slogan ‘be realistic’…

Even tho’ I was a pretty bright kid the extent of any input into this matter was the occasional vague question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ which was usually only ever brought up in polite company where the adult conversation topics had run out.

I wanted to be a scientist working in the field of genetics. I have no idea how I even thought I knew what a scientist was, or where this crazy idea entered my head, but I loved the idea of working with animals and doing experiments. I’d seen the Rowett Institute, all posh buildings and somehow knew about its world leading reputation for health and nutrition and thought that this was the place for me.

Reality intruded upon my perfect life vision of becoming the next marie curie when I had my first careers meeting with the school’s careers advisor. He asked me what I’d like to do after I left school and I stupidly took the question at face value, in that he genuinely wanted to know.

I remember hurriedly telling him my plans and how I’d already become the volunteer keeper of the school’s biology animals. How I’d been carrying out my own studies at home by breeding gerbils and had bred my first albino third generation from starting. And on and on I garbled, omitting that I sold the excess gerbils to both the school for vivisection and local pet shops for live snake bate in case he deemed me unsuitable to work with animals. Best part for me was for the first time ever, someone was listening to me and my plans.

Turned out that he had obviously just been on a ‘listening as a skill’ course and was waiting until I’d finished my vocalisation before discounting it in one swift but well aimed barb, “That’s a nice idea, but tell me – do you like shoes?”….

I felt something ping inside me as I realised I was supposed to be focussing on crappy jobs and that I ought to be just happy to have a job. And just like that, a grey haired, be speckled old man had stolen something from me and I never really got it back.