Identity & self

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

195 answers answered between 1930 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 2 Arts and letters 164 Politics and public life 14 Business and finance 4 Technology 1 Sport 9
Read by age Any age Before thirty 3 In their thirties 33 In their forties 36 In their fifties 50 In their sixties 43 Seventy and beyond 25
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Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.
Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗
John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
When I was growing up I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to preach.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗
Malcolm Gladwell Staff writer at The New Yorker; author of The Tipping Point and Outliers
I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 April 2021 source ↗
Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
I know that for a very long time my consuming passion, which was confirmed when I contracted TB — I had TB when I was about 12 or so — was I wanted to be a physician and when I got TB I was even more determined. I want to be physician so that I can find a cure for the scourge. And, in fact, I was admitted to medical school. If we had had the funds maybe today I would have been a physician.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Edmund Hillary Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953
I really had no idea whatsoever. I feel that my life developed as I went along. I was never one of those people who, at an early age, had picked an objective and worked steadily towards it. All I knew was that I wanted to get involved in adventurous activity. I didn’t have any specific type of activity in mind, but I wanted to do things that were exciting and adventurous. I had a fairly diffused feeling as to what precisely it should be.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

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