What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Malcolm Gladwell said elsewhere, not written here
I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 April 2021 source ↗

Others on this question

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Edward Enninful Ghanaian-born English editor and stylist
In African families, you can be one of three things: a doctor, a lawyer or a failure. I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but things worked out in the end.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 December 2022 source ↗
Martin Kemp English musician and actor
I wanted to play for Arsenal. When I have a kick-around with my boy, I still feel as if someone’s going to spot me.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 July 2018 source ↗

More from Malcolm Gladwell

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Question What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months? Money & investment
Probably a piece of music. I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno called Another Green World, which is one of his early ‘70s, it’s ambient music, but not the kind of really weird ambient music. There’s an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18, I think it’s 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. ... Well, I discovered that when I was 18. And I sing the songs of that album in my head all of the time. And I worship Brian Eno.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 1 June 2018 source ↗

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