What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Ernst Mayr said elsewhere, not written here
My father had a wonderful library, and we always bought books galore, and I devoured all the books of explorers that went to various places in the world. I admired what Humboldt had done and Bates and Darwin and the Swedish explorers, Sven Hedin and others. I was dreaming all the time about someday being an explorer, going to the tropics, going to the jungles, seeing new things, discovering strange animals and so forth, but of course it was a dream world.

Academy of Achievement interview, 5 April 2001 source ↗

Others on this question

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Dawn O'Porter British writer, director, and television presenter
A drunk woman who threw epic dinner parties.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 August 2026 source ↗

More from Ernst Mayr

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Question What does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? Daily life
No sir. I'm rather dismayed how many days I have to work on my willpower very strongly in order to get out of bed before 8 o'clock.…I write letters, I write manuscripts, in addition to the book that is in press I have two manuscripts that are going to be published some time this or next year, and I have a whole list of manuscripts that I would like to write.
Recorded Marcelo Leite, Scientific American interview, 6 July 2004 source ↗

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