When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was five, I do not remember wanting to be anything in particular. No fireman, no astronaut, no train driver. What I do remember is wanting to be out of school.
I can still remember walking to school with a friend and the two of us deciding that we would leave as soon as we possibly could. No Higher School Certificate. No university degree. We were getting out at the first opportunity. What we were going to do instead was unclear. We just knew that being grown up seemed to mean being free, and freedom meant no more school.
That turned out very differently from what I imagined.
I finished school. Then I went on to complete multiple degrees, including a doctorate. More than that, I have now spent nearly thirty years working in the university sector. The child who wanted to escape education somehow built a life in it.
Looking back, I do not think the deeper desire was really about avoiding school. I think it was about wanting to make my own way in the world. At five, you don’t have language for that. You just feel the pull of freedom. You assume it lies somewhere beyond the classroom, out in the wide world where nobody tells you what to do.
In one sense, that instinct was not wrong. We all want a life that is not simply confined by other people’s expectations. We want room to grow, to choose, to become ourselves. But I was mistaken about where that freedom would be found.
I thought freedom meant leaving learning behind. In fact, learning became one of the ways I found my place in the world. The thing I wanted to escape became one of the main settings in which my life took shape.
So when I think about what I wanted to be at five, the honest answer is not a profession. I wanted to be free. I just had no idea then what freedom would ask of me, or where it would lead. Thankfully, life turned out better than I expected.
The Afterword 
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