I followed Lynn S back to her blog after she left a comment on a previous post, and found this from last week:
1. What did you want to be when you grew up? Without a doubt, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I spent my childhood in a suburb of Cincinnati, which has some of the most fossil-rich limestone deposits in the world. I spent many hours hunting for them, and reading books about dinosaurs.
2. Did you follow through? If not, what happened? No, and what happened is two-fold. First, when I was eleven years old, I moved to Florida and my fossil collection didn't make the trip. Where I lived there were no fossils to be had (though I did find some cool Calusa Indian artifacts!). Without the impetus of finding neat fossils, my practical interest waned. Second, I discovered I had an aptitude with computers, so I started down that road.
3. Is your life turning out the way you thought it would when you were a kid? If not, is it better or worse? Well, except for not spending my summers out in the field digging up dinosaur bones with beautiful grad students and my winters writing scientific papers that stun the academy, my life is much better than I figured it would be. For one thing, I have this pretty cool computer I can talk to the whole world with, which is something I certainly didn't anticipate. On the other hand, no flying cars and I'm surprised we don't have colonies on the moon....
4. Paradoxes aside, if you could time-travel back to when you were 10 years old, what would you tell your 10 year-old self? Spend more time with Dad. He won't always be around.
5. Do you think the child you were would like the adult you've become? Probably not. I was a snotty child, and as an adult I don't like snotty kids, so I suspect we wouldn't hit it off.