Dolphin Trainers, Marine Biology and Other Pass Times

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm BAAAAAAAAAAACK!

<Insert Jack Nicholson here's Johnny jokes here>

I am happy to announce to everyone that I finished my 3rd Year of University and am ready to not do any serious thinking for the next few weeks. As fellow University students you all know EXACTLY how I feel right?

I have a few blog posts to catch up on, but as for right now I'll just do the most recent topic: What I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I was really little I had one passion: Sea life. The second best day of my childhood-life was when I went to Sea World (the first best day of my childhood-life was Disney World for one specific reason but that's a completely different story). At Sea World there were dolphin shows, whale shows, Shamu, Shark Tunnels to walk through, fake helicopters to ride and ALL THE FISH YOU COULD EVER DREAM OF. It was my own personal heaven. My Mother bought me a stuffed animal penguin and the Sea World Factbook (which I still have to this day) and I spent the rest of my Florida vacation curled up with my penguin looking at the pictures of the dolphins dreaming of the day when I could go swimming with them. In my little mind, the most perfect career that could ever exist was to be a dolphin trainer. I wanted to spend the rest of my life teaching dolphins tricks and swimming with them. It was like a fairy tale.

Now my parents weren't to keen to have their Eldest Child go into Show Business, so one day as I sat there staring dreamily at the photographs and talking endlessly about the tricks I would teach my pet dolphins my parents tried to sway me. As you can guess, this didn't go over that well. Until my Dad said in exasperation. "Why don't you just be a marine biologist?"

"What's a marine biologist?"

"You're a scientist who studies ocean life."

In other words my little mind imploded with possibilities.

Now these were the days before the internet was super big (kinda hard to remember that). So I had to go to the library. My career as a Marine Biologist was off to a strong start. I knew everything about everything. I begged my parents to take me to the Zoo to see the fish. My parents had to tape every single episode on the ocean that ever aired on the Discovery Channel. I was obsessed.

So what happened?

Well it was the Discovery Channel that did me in in the end. I learned the hard way (and a super graphic one at that) that there was a darker side to Marine Biology. I wasn't all driving in boats, swimming with the dolphins and writing a few notes down on a note pad. No, the Discovery Channel taught me.... I'd be cutting dolphins open. As a sensitive little girl, that was way too much for me to comprehend. The marine biology dreams died instantaneously.

I took to something a little bit safer... history. From grades 5-10 I was convinced I was going to be a Historian. That was until I made the mistake of taking a film course and picking up my first camera.

When I look back at all the jobs I wanted as a kid I was pretty all over the map. At one point I was convinced my calling was to be a Pretzel Salesgirl at Carnivals and Fairs, I also wanted to be a Power Ranger and Batman (who doesn't want to be Batman).

It's kind of funny looking back and seeing how much I've changed. But you know. There has been one thing that has stayed constant....

I still love fish.