Picture me. Now picture me doing a pirouette. Try not to let your head explode.

You know, when I was younger, I had certain aspirations. Until I was six I wanted to be a ballerina, which is laughable if you know me now, but then...yeah, it was still laughable. My grandmother likes to point out that she'd never seen one kid do more undignified things in her life. She's just mad because I spit up blueberry yogurt on her when I was a baby and projectile vomited a pot of tea onto the back of her head when I was 12. (I didn't do it deliberately, but some days I don't regret it.) I could have been a prima ballerina. But my mom refused to pay for ballet lessons, blast her.

My next career phase was much more realistic. When I was six, I met Miss Reed, the children's librarian. I wanted to be a librarian for four years after that, mostly because I couldn't think of any better way to get close to books, which I read voraciously (in my ultracool, I-wasn't-hit-with-locks-only-by-the-grace-of-God way). I had no inkling about the boring side of library life as I watched Miss Reed suggest one fabulous book after the other. I didn't see the reshelving and repair and annoying patrons; I thought Miss Reed just sat around reading all day, unless children came in to pick out a book. Then she chatted politely, suggested something perfect, and got back to her reading. What could possibly be better?

I don't know why I gave up the librarian gig; I was still entranced with libraries at age ten, although I'd outgrown Miss Reed. But somehow, I think through the auspices of a Weekly Reader article on King Tut, Egyptology caught my eye and held it for the next four years.This was sort of the next step of the dinosaur phase I went through at five, except instead of identifying stegasauri and tyrannosaurus rexes, I was rattling off names like Ashkenaeton and Nefertiti and trying on pith helmets at Nature Company. I realized when I was 14 that my interest in Egyptology was never going to come to fruition, but maintained a flirtation with it until college, when two particularly boring archaeology classes convinced me that tramping around the Valley of the Kings with a bone brush would have made me miserable inside fifteen minutes. I still read books about it, though, and I drooled over the mummies I saw last year at the Pergammon in Berlin.

Since 14, I've wanted to be a professor, first (and briefly) of history, and after that and up until now of English literature. So WHY can't I figure out what I want to do next year? I don't bloody well know.