My future, according to a teen

Tip of the Day: hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

From the time I was five till seventeen, I only had one career aspiration. I never dreamed of being a princess, firefighter, doctor, or even a wife and mother. Aside from the short stint around age six of wanting to work in a grocery store, because using a cash register seemed like the most exciting thing in the world, I’d always wanted to be a lawyer.

Arguing was in my blood. If my parents stance was my bedtime should be 8 pm, mine would be it should be 9 pm, and I’d have a bulleted list of reasons to support it. Mainly because I loved a good debate, even from a young age.

Plus, lawyers wore suits everyday, got to use words such as “objection” and “your honor,” and always seemed put together on television or in books. And in my mind, they lived alone in the big city, which when growing up in a small town seemed more appetizing than anything in the world.

There was only one type of law I thought of practicing: criminal. To be honest, I’m not sure I realized there were other forms of law until high school and even then they didn’t seem appealing. I loved trying to understand the human psyche and getting to the bottom of a case, so to speak. I’d always loved mystery books, and watched Perry Mason and Murder, She Wrote before crime and law shows became the norm.

It wasn’t until I was looking for colleges my senior year that I really began to think about my future and what I wanted to study. I looked at several pre-law programs and ultimately decided I’d make a horrible criminal lawyer. There’s no way on earth I could defend someone I thought was guilty or prosecute someone that might be innocent.

Ultimately after several major changes, I landed on journalism, advertising, and public relations. And I couldn’t be happier.

Ironically, I turned back to my days of Murder, She Wrote and decided to try my hand at writing after graduation and found my niche in the mystery world. From behind the scenes in making up characters and having the ending turn out exactly how I’d like. And now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I never made it to the big city to live, but travel to them frequently instead. And ultimately I married way younger than I ever imagined. But it’s funny how things work out and you end up doing exactly what you’re meant to.


--Emily, Miss Querylicious