February RHLC Challenge: What career did you want as a child, and what are you doing now?

[Deanna]

We will be hosting a monthly challenge where community members who engage and contribute have the chance to win unique badges in the Red Hat Learning Community!

February challenge: reply to this thread with what career you wanted as a child, and where you are now.

Good luck!

[AlejandroC]

I wanted to be a veterinarian, and here we are, deep down into IT!

[itnet7]

When I was a kid, My current employer used to hold Annual Christmas Parties, and invite the community kids that were less fortunate. One Year I was invited, and I said to myself someday I would like to work for them when I'm older. Now I do work for them supporting RHEL on our Engineering workstations and Servers. 

[EmanuelHaine]

I wanted to be a musician and now I'm falling in love for Linux.

[ricardodacosta]

I wanted to be a lawyer! That changed in high school when I fell in love with the Internet.

Today I work with Red Hat as a subject matter expert and on the weekends I dabble in growing my own organic produce :-)

[Tracy_Baker]

To be honest, I can't recall what I wanted to be as a child.

What I can say, however, is that when I was first introduced to computers in 1978 (when I was 15 or 16 - so still, perhaps, a "child"), I knew that's what I wanted to work with the rest of my life. I've been lucky as I've done exactly that.

At that time, I thought I'd end up a programmer. Things didn't work out that way; I've worn many hats in IT except programmer - as a vocation, that is.

Now? I'm a Red Hat Academy professor, teaching system administration (RHEL), automation (Ansible), and containers / orchestrations (Kubernetes / OpenShift). I also teach Cisco CCNA classes.

And I'm currently taking Python. The programming "bug" has never left.

[itnet7]

You just brought me back to my childhood for a second. My big brother said that he would send me to a summer camp if I wanted to go when I was around 7 or 8 years old. At the camp, they had a bunch of interesting topics (electives) you could choose from. I believe he said I could choose 2 out of the 3 but I had to go to one in pariclar called "Introduction to computers" (this camp was gearing kids for their futures, though I had no idea at the time I just thought my brother wanted me to go somewhere he thought was cool and have fun).

The intro computer class was awesome. It made me have a desire to learn more, but computers were so expensive back then. Fast forward to now, I do believe that class acted as a catalyst for my passion and love for computers today. Since then I have often thanked my older brother and let him know how much I've always appreciated his influences in my life.

[David]

This might sound made up, but I'm doing it!

When I was 4 years old, I was already computer literate, even though we wouldn't have that term until a long time later. By 6, I was programming in basic and logo. Around 1985, I began to think of this term 'user' and I decided that I needed to be the opposite of that. I thought I was fullfilling that dream when I became a sysop during my BBS phase in the mid to late 90s.

But things got real when I discovered unix. I wanted to be an admin. It felt right. Somewhere around 2002 when I took my first Red Hat certification class, I decided the best thing would be to be an instructor. If I could teach this subject to other people every week, I'd really get to know the material.

I've been teaching Red Hat classes for years now and I couldn't be able happier!

[jackieb]

I wanted to work in a racing stable helping work and look after the horses, somehow I ended up lecturing in IT for a vocational education organisation!

[DavidOBrien]

I wanted to be a farrier and stockman. As it turned out, my back couldn't stand up to the rigours of farrier/blacksmith work. I do have horses and ride, but I'm now a full-time technical editor for Red Hat.