Age 18. What were your plans? What did you

[Tuesday Afternoon]

Want to do with your life? Did you succeed? Are you where you wanted to be when you were 18?
I wanted to dance for Balanchine. I got as far as The Ballet Company which was an unpaid level.
How about you?
Did all your dreams come true?

[ismnotwasm]

1. I was already a mother

And thought I was a badass-- lived in the projects.

Ultimately I became a nurse like my grandmother was so yes, dreams do come true, even if you take the hard road

[JustAnotherGen]

13. You still are bad assed

But in a very gooooood way!

[JustAnotherGen]

2. I wouldn't call them dreams per se

But my goals I've reached -

I wanted to travel extensively by myself - check
I didn't want to get married until I was at least 35 - check
I wanted to be featured on a national news program for doing something positive - check
I wanted to remain friends with an inner circle of friends (three since grade school - and 5 since high school) for the rest of my life - so far so good - check


I was a ballerina - too and did some modeling as a teenage. The best thing that ever happened to me was blowing out my left knee and learning of the permanent damage the day after I received the scholarship to NYU.

I got to dance with a ballet as a teenager - so I guess I got to do something that a lot of kids dreamed of but never even got the the chance to do. Better for 'five minutes' than never at all.

But it was a blessing - it taught me to keep myself open to change.

I guess - nothing in my life is random. All is by design. And I have no regrets about any of my choices that put me where I am today.

I have one goal left from my youth - and I think this year I will reach it. But I'm only 41. I've started forming new ones. And I actually have a 'dream' now - and it's to own a home in Costa Rica. However, I've already started to transform that into a goal with a plan and a way to get there a few months every year.


Pssst - my husband says I'm very 'literal'. He's the dreamer in our little family of two - I'm Action Adrienne!

[exboyfil]

3. Wanted to be an officer on a nuclear sub

with a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering.

Ended up working for a large mobile equipment manufacturer and getting a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering instead. Didn't see much of the world (just Iowa and Tennessee). Still I am happy with my choices.

[Gravitycollapse]

4. When I was 18 I didn't know what to do with my life besides go to college.

Now I am 24 and have a BS (no pun intended) in political science, work at a job making less than 10 dollars an hour, still have no idea what I want to do with my life and now have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

Voila! The American Dream.

[Ed Suspicious]

5. No plans. Bounced house to house and lived in my car, kept short term part time jobs,

did lots of drugs and drank too much, got into trouble with the law, went to jail, got out and latched on tight to girl who is now my wife who patiently waited and helped me become less of an irresponsible asshole. Jail was sort of my rock bottom and from then it's been a slow 20+ year climb out. Now I'm a late in life 18 year old in my junior year at college, contemplating law school after undergrad. At 18 I was a regular shithead. Thought I knew everything. Knew less than nothing. I'm a bit jealous of 18 year old kids who had a plan. I see them every day in school and they just seem so well sorted. That just wasn't my experience.

[MadrasT]

6. All I wanted when I was 18...

...was to get the fuck out of my parents' house and be on my own, be independent, and be able to support myself.

Seems like a pretty low bar as far as "dreams" go, and I managed to do that when I was 22.

I guess I try to keep my expectations in check. I've never had any real big dreams or aspirations. Safe, warm, not hungry, and my life not revolving around dealing with crazy people is good enough for me.

[applegrove]

7. I was on my way to university in Nova Scotia. There, I wanted to fall in love with

a lighthouse keeper who wore a cream cable knit sweater. Never found him.

[Downwinder]

8. My goal was to make $1,000 per month.

T figured with that I would be rich, little did I know.

I succeeded. I'm now making $1,000 per month. I don't feel very rich monetarily but I have had an interesting and rewarding 55 years since then.

You could say I met my goals.

[Awknid]

9. 18 was VERY long ago.

I was confident and positive, was going to college without a major. Thought about being a special Ed teacher, but not really. The next year was traumatic and it took me 15 years before I felt like myself again. But in the long run I prevailed, which I'm eternally proud of!

[OutNow]

10. My plan? Avoid dying in the Vietnam War

I was 18 in 1968. A good year for hippies, drugs, rock and roll. A bad year if you were a 18 year old male facing the draft and an almost certain job as ground pounder for the US Army in Vietnam.

I was one of many poor kids who didn't have college as a viable way out of the draft, so like many of my peers who joined the Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard as a solution to getting drafted into the US Army, I enlisted in the Air Force. The Coast Guard was not taking any recruits at the time.

That met my goal. I did have to cut my long hair and ditch the love beads and wear a uniform, but it was amazing how many of my enlisted peers were just hippies doing their best to avoid the infantry. Lots of Hendrix playing on the record player in the day room, lots of weed smoked out in the back of the barracks.

[Squinch]

11. I couldn't be farther away from what I thought my life would be at 18, and I couldn't be happier

about it.

I was the tail end of the last generation that was taught that women might work a little, but the ultimate goal was marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. It wasn't really anything you thought about, it just was, though I had little enthusiasm for the prospect.

Instead, when I came of age, there were suddenly opportunities for women to work at meaningful jobs outside the home, and it became permissible for us to conduct our relationships without marriage and with a lot of leverage, which was exactly how I wanted to do it.

I became an executive, did that for a while very happily, learned how to handle a certain amount of power while I was relatively young, and then switched to a health field to satisfy that "give some back" impulse.

I came of age exactly at the time that the exact right life for me became possible.

PS: GREAT QUESTION!!

[GeoWilliam750]

12. I had a long list tacked to my bedroom door in the Midwest when I was 18

I lost it, and have wished I could find it ever since, but I can remember a few of them

- Live in another country - done
- Travel to 25 countries - done
- Marry a wonderful woman - done
- Have children - Only one; we got it right the first time
- Make a million dollars (not in inflation adjusted terms anyway, but I keep working at it)
- Write a hit song - not done, but this was always going to be challenging for one as tone deaf as am I
- Do professional acting - done, if only at the lowest level. It was fun.
- Go for a ride in a balloon - not yet
- Become fluent in another language - done

There were more, but I no longer remember what they were. I can only hope that I did most of them, but I know that I did a lot of other things that were not on the list.

Much more importantly, from now my goals are:

- Travel more and more of the world with my wonderful wife
- Watch my delightful daughter take on the world
- Continue to train young people in my company to be the best in the world at what they do (some success so far)
- Continue to train young people in my company to be ethical, intellectually honest, and effective
- Continue to be curious and inquisitive and surprised and to have fun
- Continue to work until I no longer can (I like what I do)

I am a huge believer in the possible.

[laundry_queen]

14. The only thing I really wanted at that age

was to get married and have kids. I accomplished that and was very, deliriously happy for many years. Then my husband cheated and left. So...I had the dream and then it was gone.

I know it's not very 'feminist' to have the dream that I did...I didn't care back then. I was very anti-feminist because I really wanted to be a stay at home parent and my mom was the type of feminist who thought stay at home moms were dullards and stupid and had nothing 'interesting' in life (yes she worked f/t pretty much my entire childhood) and were losers for making their lives revolve around their children (lol, my parents certainly didn't). I didn't agree with her kind of feminism. I realize now why I felt the way I did - my parents treated us kids as accessories not as people. We were molded to fit into their lives, our needs were never considered. There was a lot of emotional manipulation (physical abuse too when I was younger). I felt like she wanted me to work f/t and ignore my kids...like not being a 'slave' to your kids was some kind of liberation. I never agreed with that. I found out later in therapy my parents were likely narcissists.

Obviously, I did not get along with my parents so I rebelled, found a guy and became a stay at home parent. Like I said, I was very happy until my now-ex cheated and left.

So now my new dream is to have a career in business after I graduate university. I did have the dream to become a designated accountant, but it'll take too long and the course work is a bit too intense (and there's a restructuring of the entire qualification system going on in my province currently that makes it even more complex) and my kids still need me (my youngest will be 7 this week). I still plan to take the business world by storm...where I live a degree is still worth quite a bit. I'm currently a f/t student, 4th year of a Bcom, major in accounting, and a single mom of 4. Being a single parent was soooo not my dream. I struggle daily with f/t school and the kids. My ex doesn't see them very often, which is fine by me, but the downside is I don't have much study time to myself. I'm hoping things improve once I'm working and not spending every evening holed up in my room doing homework. I'm hoping that I can also pay for my kids' education (since my parents didn't help me out when they could have and was a major reason I dropped out of university the first time around.) so that is also part of my new dream - making sure my girls have something to fall back on.

[Sheldon Cooper]

15. I wanted to be a ballroom dancer, but I wasn't very good.

[Texasgal]

16. When I was 18 I wanted to

travel and teach english in Korea. I applied but plans for college and my parents got in my way. It turned out okay. I got an education because I had parents that pushed me.

My dreams to travel and teach internationally never came through though!