Youth Looking Forward

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm reading Wild Things with the BG's reading group at school. Turns out the author is from Carrboro, and one of the main characters--a doctor who abandons a promising career as a heart surgeon for sculpture--was inspired by her husband, whose artwork was well known to the kids.

Anyway, we were talking about passions and careers, and whether you can make a living doing what you love. I asked the group of eleven year-olds what they loved to do (their talent) and where they saw themselves in fifteen years. Here are the answers:

• Tinker with electronics/Getting my phd at MIT in either computer science or engineering.
• Glowing/Living at home, mooching off of my parents (this person may be headed for a career in standup comedy).
• Running/Working in an ice cream store, trying to take the next step professionally.
• Playing soccer/In Graduate school.

This led to a discussion of robots taking jobs and at what point a person with enough artificial body parts officially becomes a cyborg.

Not quite what the "suggested questions" at the end of the book had in mind, but interesting nevertheless.