Career Goals

Most of my life, I have not had an acceptable answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  I started my early years by saying, “I want to be Princess Jasmine.” As I grew older and realized I could never grow up to become an animated Arabian princess, I changed my response to, “I want to be a stay-at-home mom. Like my mom!” Somewhere around the age of seven I decided that I would like to train tigers for the movies. When I was ten or eleven, I wanted to teach kindergarten, but decided it wasn’t for me after a series of negative babysitting experiences. In middle school I wanted to do interior design, and in high-school the only thing I could decide was that I wanted to be happy doing whatever I was doing.

And that has been the only consistency in my career aspirations since I was 15.

Finally, now that I have graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and been employed for over a year in a job that does not fit my only requirement, I am revisiting this question. It’s time to set some standards and meet them.

The things I have loved most throughout my experiences has been planning and organizing events. I especially love social events, although I have done a few that were more serious. I like to be in-the-know, to be the puppet master pulling all the strings. I like to be the faceless person who really runs the show, but stays out of the spotlight. I also love live music, although I can’t sing or play anything myself. Thinking about these skills and interests, my new answer to this question is that I would like to be an event planner, preferably in the music industry. I would like to plan and promote parties or possibly plan a tour. Maybe even book acts for venues. So, it’s not as cut and dry as my previous responses, but it’s a much more thoughtful.

The next step is formulating a plan on how to get to some variation of this career. What steps can I be taking now to help me with my long-run goals? I’ve been thinking a move to a major US city might be necessary, and I’ve narrowed it down to my top three choices: New York City, Los Angeles, and Nashville.