Inspired by this thread. At what age did you decide what your future job was going to be, and what exactly made you decide that that was the right job for you?
Asking this because I'm 16 and I'm slightly worried for my future. Some would say that it's early to decide for something like this at my age, but I have a tendency to plan actions ahead of time. I'm not impulsive, and when the time comes for me to come face to face with reality and choose where I want to take my life, I'm afraid that I'll freak out and make terrible mistakes.
When I was 7 or 8 and I played around on the first computer I had touched back in the late 70s. Decided then and there that I wanted to be a programmer. Lots of years later here I am doing exactly that.
Decided that I was going to be a video game journalist like the guys at Giant Bomb last summer (or around that time). If I get lucky I'll pull a Greg Kasavin and end up working for a video game developer when I'm done with journalism
Really? You only chose your job because of the pay? I know that's not uncommon, but wouldn't it suck if you were miserable doing what you were doing? "
it would suck if i didnt like it. imnot gonna lie its not the career i want. but im earning money so one day i can go back to school and major in graphic design
Good question. Being an artistic person it wasn't a hard choice to make because I knew I would never be happy in a non creative career. From there it took me a long time to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and how to get it. A few years of community college, then I took some time off and traveled around Spain. I finally settled on attending a private art college and studied traditional illustration. Figuring out that illustration is akin to being a Latin major (print is dieing) , I pulled an audible in my last semester of college. I studied CGI on my own and pursued it aggressively in the months before and after graduation. Long story short, by the time I attended my college commencement ceremony I already had a job as a freelance CGI artist. Since then its spawned into a full career which has allowed me to work on countless commercials, major commercial marketing web campaigns, and about ten major motion pictures.
I didn't, it just happened. That's how most my life has worked out so far. I'm just doin' stuff on my own and people are like, "yo, let's do this thing." and I'm like, "aight."
" 22, got an email saying they needed a guy to record audio... ....go figure it was to record voice actors and actresses for video games. Best. Email. I. Almost. Deleted. Before. Looking. "
I was about 19 when I figured out I wanted to get into the IT field. I knew this was my bag, because that's the only thing I'm truly good at, besides video games.
If you don't know when you go to college, go to a school with a liberal arts program, take a variety of classes, and see what you like. I work in tech theatre, but I also double majored in philosophy because I enjoyed the classes.
" @Hamst3r: And you've never worried about what may happen to you? That lack of direction never scared you even a little bit? "
Not really. What I'm doing now is just one general path; that of music and games. I could do something else. There are a lot of possibilities out there, especially in the realm of creative works and they're the kind of skill sets that can be learned quickly. I can always figure something out. :)
20 and I still don't know what the fuck I wanna do with my life. Seriously, don't get incredibly worried about your post-school future just yet. Some people have known what they wanna do since they were a kid, and others don't decide until at least halfway through college.
I didn't really decide. It just ended up happening. I worked as a temporary contract game tester at Nintendo for a while, took similar contract testing jobs with some other game companies off an on for a couple of years, and ended up getting full-time work at a company testing commercial software.
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