My Dream Career

Do you remember being asked “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Yeah, I still ask myself that all the time…but mostly I focus on the growing up part, because I’m not sure I’ll ever actually grow up. Throughout the years I’ve had no solid answer. I thought astronomy was cool, so I put that down for a while; same with engineering. When I would get fed up with people or felt goofy and didn’t want to give a serious answer, I usually responded with the sentence “I want to be YOUR boss”. That way I could tell them to quit asking kids these kinds of questions. I hardly ever mentioned my dream answer to anyone though.

It was about this time about 16 or 17 years ago when my family first went to Disneyland. I can’t remember if Chance was 5 months, or a year and 5 months, so that’s why I’m not sure exactly the year. But I remember he couldn’t come with us and Konner wasn’t born. My parents, my brother Logan and myself made the trip that UEA break (well I assume it was UEA, that’s when we normally have gone to Disneyland). We met up with my uncle Ron, his wife Suzy and their three kids, Breck, Courtney, and Colby. On the drive there, I remember getting a happy meal inside a pumpkin shaped plastic container…not really important, but you should know how well I remember the little things from this trip. Like the pizza we had at the hotel room, which I thought was great, or the fact that I said I wouldn’t ride the Indiana Jones ride again until I was 105 years old because it scared me so bad. Moving on.

We got there and I loved every minute of it. I remember the jungle cruise ride particularly well. It was on this ride I learned what I wanted to do with my life. Live at Disneyland – specifically in Jungle Cruise. I could bathe in the river, hop on a boat and go enjoy Disneyland the whole day. I’m not sure how long that lasted, but I knew I loved Disney.

Fast forward to about 10 or 11 years old. We were in primary. We were a sharing time activity about our goals vs. the commandments and how if we did what the Lord wanted first, then all would be fine, but if we put our stuff first it wouldn’t all fit. When asked what my goal was I said “to own Disneyland!” My mom, who was the primary pianist at the time, said how I liked to dream big. She looked a little embarrassed, but it was and is true. I’m a dreamer.

Well as my knowledge of how things worked increased, I learned that you can’t easily own a company like that. Disney has way too many shares of stock outstanding at way too high a price to effectively own the company (I guess you really need to only own 1 share over 50% to act like the owner), so my dream in high school evolved to be CEO or some other management position. I have learned that sharing said goal is generally laughed at. I can understand why, but still, don’t you have dreams that you want to accomplish? Why not try and get them?

Thanks to my M Com class, we’ve had to do mock interviews and resumes and all of that stuff related to getting jobs. I started looking at what Disney job I would apply for, and what I need to accomplish to get there. So far, I’m on track with my schooling, and I took my next big step by applying for an internship at the park. Jocelyn and I decided it would be a good idea since it would get me closer to my goal, it would look good on a resume, and it means Jocelyn doesn’t have to spend as much time in Provo. Wins all around right? So hopefully we both get accepted (Jocelyn applied too) and then I can try next year for an accounting internship, and then two years after that I can apply for the job I mock applied for in M Com. Only time will tell how this thing pans out, but I figure I’ll give it a shot. Even if I don’t get up to management one day, I will still hopefully have a career with a company that exists to entertain and make others happy.