What I want to be when I grow up

I was recently going through some old school files trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of since my parents were moving. My mom loved to keep these old scrapbooks of projects and newspaper clippings from when I was a kid and it was safe to say she may have gotten a little carried away with her projects. None-the-less, an hour into my personal journey of rediscovery I came across several papers I wrote in elementary school about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Being as curious as I am sure the rest of you are, I decided to flip through these old pages and discover the wonderfully ambitious musings of youthful Calder. One thing was immediately apparent, I had a hard time making up my mind back then. My life goals and dreams seemed to change with every new year so that I went from desiring the honorable post of fireman one year to the equally daring field of painting the next. I could not help but laugh at myself and the absurdity of the papers yet what I found even more absurd was how could I possibly know what I wanted to do when I grew up or, indeed, how could I even know I did grow up?
Since the fifth grade I have had a passion for history; a passion I have since nursed with multiple books and movies until it became a dream. My dream was to go to college to study history and teach it in a way that would not cause my classmates around me to roll their eyes or doze off in the back corner. I knew I could do it too, I still know I can in fact. Yet as the years rolled on and I entered into my senior year of high school I looked back at where I was and decided it was not enough. I knew I could do more, I knew I wanted more. The pursuit of history was still my guide and my goal but I would not be content with placing myself in the box of teaching high school in a single town. I still knew teaching was a very prestigious occupation and that was where my heart wandered to but there had to be something else, something more.
I came to Montana State and immediately declared a history major, no teaching option just straight history. I decided I would do whatever it took to work my way to a doctorate and teach history on a college campus. Becoming a professor seemed like an option that could offer me everything I was looking for: prestigious academia, my own writing and research, travel and most importantly lecturing on a grander scale. Nearly four years later, I have kept that dream close to my heart and have worked every day for it. Why then, when I looked through those old elementary school papers, did that question cause me so much concern? What do I want to be when I am grown up? Am I grown up now? I do not think so but if not now, when? What happened to shift my foundations, my certainties?
Personally, I blame this class. It was not the lone culprit, it certainly had accomplices this year, but this Tracings certainly got the ball rolling. After all, given things as they are how should one live? I find this question far more appropriate then the generic what do you want to be when you grow up model. My life has become more complicated because I know look at it through lens tempered in this class. I do not feel this is a bad thing though. No matter how much anxiety the future gives me, it is still and always will be the future; my future. This class has shown me that to question everything is simply the best way to live and the only way to be free. I still have the dearest passion for history and perhaps that will take me to that final destination on a far flung campus one day but it will not be tomorrow nor in the next few years. Those years are for the journey.
The contradiction now stands that although I have so many questions about what I want to be or want to do with my life, my answer to the question what I am interested in has become far more simple: I am interested in living.