I wanted to be a cooker. Not a cook: I wanted to actually be the stove.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 March 2019 source ↗
The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?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.
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Paul Whitehouse
Welsh comedian
A professional footballer.
A teacher and a nightclub singer.
I remember really wanting to go into space. I liked the idea of flying.
John Malkovich
American actor
A baseball pitcher.
More from Adwoa Aboah
View profile →Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – everything she writes speaks to me. Her Ted talk, We Should All Be Feminists, inspired everything I do with Gurls Talk.
They are already things I work on: routine and less sugar.
On a walking safari in the middle of the Kenyan bush. I had no phone, no mirror, nothing, and I was really happy because I had no distractions.
Nothing. Everything’s got me to this point and I had to learn lots of things. Maybe I just wouldn’t have been so terrified all the time and I would have got up a bit earlier – I missed quite a few mornings.
For persevering, and being a good role model.
The whole of The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.
More on identity & self
- What do you fear most? 256 answers
- Which trait in yourself do you like least? 239 answers
- What most recently moved you to tears? 192 answers
- What does happiness look like for you when life is going well? 158 answers
- How would you sum yourself up in three words? 114 answers
- What fills you with the most pride? 103 answers
Also answered this
Robert Peston, John Malkovich, Salman Rushdie, Michael Stipe, Alice Munro, Sofia Coppola
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject