I have harbored many not so secret desires to be many things. I’ve wanted to be an author, a creator of comic strips, a restaurant chain owner, a stand-up comic, a children’s television show producer, and currently, though medical school bound, a movie director. These impulses usually fade or lack the impetus to warrant full fledged following. Yet, for as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be either a paleontologist or an astronaut.

  Let it be known that I wouldn't be good at either of these professions; I tire easily from just digging in my mother’s garden and I am confused by even the simplest of calculations let alone astrophysics. Yet, time and time again, I find myself daydreaming about brushing dust off dinosaur fossils in the North American Badlands or orbiting our closest neighbor- Venus.

  Clearly, both of these careers are quite different from each other. One requires digging into the earth and one involves leaving it, yet, to me, both of them have the same appeal. Paleontology deals with the way life was, millions of years before anything even resembling humans existed. Astronomy deals with mankind's destiny though untouched by anyone.

  I, with my feet firmly planted in the present, would essentially be a tourist to the past or a visitor to the future. The draw of these careers is that they offer some sort of enlightenment; a glimpse of what life was like before petty emotion or what life will be like after rising above emotion. I would only be enlightened at work- once I came home, everything would be back to normal and I would just be another resident of the present. Therein lies the draw of these two jobs; I am too cowardly to either live simply or to soar to greatness that I have to achieve these things by burying myself or leaving the planet altogether. And I couldn't even do that.