When I Grow Up: A Writer’s Other Dreams (Writers Reveal)

Hello, and welcome to another Writers Reveal (formerly Secret Subject Swap) post, brought to you by Emily Morgan of Emily Morgan Writes. This month’s topic was sent to me by Melissa, who suggested the prompt “When I grow up… Water”. Based on that idea, I decided to write about my thoughts as a child on what else besides a writer I wanted to be when I grew up. Thanks for the topic, Melissa!

The Dreams of Children

Elementary school is an important time in every person’s development. It’s that time when we learn the basic knowledge that will get us through the rest of our lives, when our minds are always buzzing with hundreds of questions about the world around us (or at least, mine was). It’s also a time when many of us start to think about what career paths we’d like to follow in the future.

When we were still children, grown-ups started asking us what we wanted to be when we were older, and those of us who took the question seriously began to ponder the possibilities. Some of us chose to become doctors. Some of us chose to become lawyers. Some of us chose to become scientists, or journalists, or politicians. Some of us chose to become athletes. And some of us chose to become artists.

But how many of us stuck to the first plan that came to mind? How many of us had only one plan to begin with?

I didn’t.

My Other Dream

Writing about what I wanted to be when I grew up is easy, but I still had to think about the last part of Melissa’s prompt: “water”. What could I say about “water”? I could write a fictional story about a young girl with a dream to study the ocean, but it would still be based heavily on real facts, because the truth is… that’s my story.

The first time I knew I wanted to be a writer was in the fourth grade. Creative writing was my greatest passion at the time, and I knew in my heart it was a decision that I was going to stick to for the rest of my life. But writing wasn’t the only career I wanted to pursue when I was a kid, because I had another passion: science.

Bottlenose Dolphin Riding WavesEver since I was about six years old, my favorite animal has been the bottlenose dolphin, mostly for its incredible intelligence and playful nature. Having spent a large part of my childhood living in southern Florida, my parents used to take us to Orlando all the time, where we’d visit all the big theme parks, including Sea World. It was there that I really developed a major interest in marine mammals, and I loved the attractions with dolphins so much that I eventually decided I wanted to be a dolphin trainer.

Over time, my passion for dolphins grew into a passion for ocean life in general, so that by the time I was in high school, my original plan had evolved from pursuing dolphin training to studying marine science. Years later, I graduated from university, and I now have a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.

From Dreams to Reality

So now what? Now I’m pursuing both my chosen career paths: creative writing and marine biology. I’m still doing research at my university while I prepare to start working toward a Master’s degree in Ecology, specializing in marine environments. In the meantime, I’m working on this blog to develop my skills and my identity as a writer, and I’m writing stories to release the creative energy inside me.

But these two paths are certainly not mutually exclusive. As a writer, I plan to draw from my experiences in science to write sci-fi stories with as much accurate detail as possible. As a biologist, I need to be skillful at writing to turn out high-quality papers for scientific journals, not to mention I need to be a creative thinker. In short, being able to follow both these paths is a wonderful experience, a real dream come true. I’m a scientist by day, an artist by night, and a dreamer by always.

What about you? What else did you want to do in life besides writing?

This has been a special topic post in Emily Morgan’s Writers Reveal. To learn more, just follow the button below to her site, and be sure to check out the other blogs participating in the event. Thanks for reading!

Other bloggers in the Writers Reveal
Melissa Khalinsky: Melissa Writes
Jodi Gibson: JFGibson
Becky Fyfe: Imagine! Create! Write!
Josefa: Always Josefa
Rhianna: A Parenting Life
Ashley Howland: Ghostnapped
Zanni: My Little Sunshine House

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