Every little kid has dreams about what they want to do when they grow up. For me, I wanted to be (brace yourself) a doctor-mom-ballerina. I would wear a leotard and ballet shoes with my doctors coat and have a baby carrier strapped to my back (and a stethoscope around my neck of course). On another note, I had nightmares about having to be an astronaut (THEY might make me go to mars!) but that's another story. With my "ample" free time this summer, I have found what it would be like to turn my life around from it's current direction back to those childhood dreams. Have you ever wondered why you didn't achieve your childhood goals? These might give you a hint. Here are seven steps I need to take to complete these:
1. Sign up for Biology and Chemistry in the Fall
If I want to be a doctor, I need to switch to a Pre-Med track immediately. I will probably still graduate a year late, but that's the price I will have to pay to follow my dreams.
2. Make use of my Summers
Forget summer jobs and summer classes, from now on, my summers must be spent dancing the time away. Learning to Adagio and Arabesque will be my new main goal. My first steps will be to learn the "lingo" and then the graceful art of ballet.
3. Get a Night Job
To try and put these dreams back into reality, I will need to actually make money to pay for not only my ballet lessons, but also my school (I'll be an extra year and Financial Aid can only cover so much).
4. Get into Medical School and start Professional Ballet Dancing
Once I've completed my ballet training, I can begin dancing in "The Nutcracker" and "Swan Lake" to pay for medical school.
5. Graduate and Pass all Exams
As of right now, I have no idea what graduation from medical school and everything after that entails, but I will figure it out, right?
6. Complete my Residency
Depending upon my specialty, it will take numerous years to complete my residency and be approved for my own practice.
7. Die from Exhaustion
From what I can tell, continuing on this path for the next 10+ years will be an exhausting way to live as well as nothing similar upon which is actually a way that I want to live. I believe I started too late.
Turns out, "Following you childhood dreams" isn't as easy as it might sound, and I don't want to be a doctor or ballerina anymore anyway. I'll just have to keep trucking along with my current path and believe that the best is yet to come either way. The lesson in this, I believe, is that sometimes, an idea sounds good, until you realize what your life would be like inside of a certain lifestyle. That might turn out to be incompatible with who you are. When that happens, it is time to rethink what you value in life, and find another path that will take you that way.
