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What do you want to be when you grow up?

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Jemma Brown | 11:59 UK time, Tuesday, 22 July 2008

A question every child thinks about when they are about 4 most want to be fire-fighters, racing drivers policemen or woman, doctors, nurses or astronauts. What did I want to be? A motorbike driver AKA a courier!

I seem to remember once sitting in the car with my mum dad and my cousin when I was probably 3 or 4 having the what do you want to be when you are older conversation. I remember very vaguely even though I did not say anything at the time having a niggling doubt in my head whether I would be a motorbike driver.

Even then I knew I was different and there where things I could not do. I just hadn't fully worked out what all those things where yet and the impact they would have on my chosen career.

Looking back now it's quite funny to think of me, unbalanced, uncoordinated and partially sighted me wanting to be a motorbike driver.

I have been VI to varying degrees since birth from the very blind to almost getting enough vision (in perfect lighting conditions) to be able to drive, I think at one point I may have been one eye chart line away from that goal. However if someone where to open a curtain or turn the lights off I was completely scuppered!

So ever being a motorbike driver was completely out of the question, along with brain surgeon, microbiologist and tattooist. As I grew up I knew and accepted this.

Skip forward a few years and I was in my final years of secondary school, like everyone else in my year I was put on a computer programme to try and discover my future career path.

I was hopeful it would give me some ideas of possible careers and all the vital info needed. I was told that by going into a menu and ticking a box to say I was VI it would remove some of the blatantly impossible jobs.

So I filled out all 50 of the questions and waited eagerly for my top ten results and was shocked and disappointed to discover that top of the list was game keeper! Closely followed by paramedic, prison officer and various forms of nursing.

I can safely say that I would love to become a paramedic or a nurse, I spent years dreaming of being a P.E teacher but I also know that the risk assessments for those jobs would be horrific! Know one in there right mind would want me to suture up there lacerated head! I am however, because of my Guiding role and Duke of Edinburgh a fully qualified first aider, but that is most defiantly my limit.

Trying to decide on a career is hard enough for most normal's to cope with but when you have a disability just trying to get decent careers advice can be hard enough.

After the whole computer programme fiasco I refused to try it again and instead opted to have an interview with a careers adviser.

The consultation was disastrous, pretty much as soon as I walked in the door I was asked a question along the lines of 'what cant you do?' and the woman seemed to have the view that I should go down a traditional blindy career such as basket weaving or switch board operation, the whole experience was incredibly negative.

I've now settled on journalism having given up on the P.E teaching, physiotherapy, osteopathy and biology ideas for various reasons.

I can't wait to start my journalism degree course in September and I'm really excited that one day I will be a journalist!

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Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Well I didn't plan on being unemployed, that's for sure. Mind you, I'm 40 and have no intention of ever "growing up".

  • Comment number 2.

    When I was 11, in all seriousness I wanted to be a stripper. When I was 13 I wanted to be an F1 driver. And here I am with a terrible figure and an automatic-only driving licence :D

    But surely the right answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up" is "happy"?

  • Comment number 3.

    hey - I really wanted to join the army and be a cook but i cant as im disabled :(

    so i dont know wht i want to do later in my life

  • Comment number 4.

    Wednesday

    and on I sail not smoothly yet but gusting
    each gust full of your comfort and wisdom
    helping me to keep a balance

    I lurch as my breathing stops
    when a piece of paper drops from
    your address book
    I read the incomplete phrase
    in your scrawled handwriting
    'Wednesday Sarah Swanage D'

    Sarah was going to show you
    Swanage Day Centre.
    It would get you out she said. She would
    push you in the wheelchair. She knew
    you could barely walk nor
    sit in your own body without pain

    your spine was brittle and bent
    you weighed only five and a half stone and
    ''marked degeneration of the shoulder joints'
    the doctor had noted after the last consultation

    but despite this and your weak heart,
    you had scored one hundred per cent
    on the mental agility test
    at ninety-two! Do you remember that Mum,
    I was so proud
    and I told everyone in the hospital who would listen

    you had fallen on that Wednesday morning
    while trying to get ready,
    perhaps trying to brush your hair
    with arms that you could hardly raise.

    the courage you showed during
    your last years and these past
    weeks of fractures and hospital indignities
    has put a rod of iron in my back.

    I am my mother's daughter.


    Janet Peters

  • Comment number 5.

    i wanted to be a footballer, but then you get a bit older and realise your not that good. started selling things on a market and now sell online www.lakeland-furniture.co.uk - things can always go up, your just have to keep going

  • Comment number 6.

    hey nice entry! i always wanted to be a vet or a vetenary nurse! but well being completely blind i know that's not possible *smiles* the nearest i have gotten to this is doing canine companion behaviour courses and being a guide dog owner!

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