This is not a knock against my current area of work. I love what I do, and I don’t intend to change. But I think most of us think about what we might do (or what we might have done) if web design wasn’t in the equation.
In this case, though, I’m taking it a little further. Instead of just saying “here’s what I’d do if I couldn’t do web design”, this is actually a list of legitimate jobs that I would rather have if I could jump into them immediately and not do anything related to the field of web design. These are not necessarily in preferred order.
1. Naturopathic/Homeopathic Doctor
I think mainstream medicine sometimes has good intentions but is not always doing what’s best for public health. This often happens because of business requirements and pressure from pharmaceutical companies. Health care should not be a business. I’m not completely against mainstream medicine, but generally speaking, health care in North America is in a sad state. I’d love to be able to help in this area by promoting natural methods to complement (not necessarily replace) what mainstream medicine does.
2. Journalist
Okay, I kind of already do this when I write for various sites in the web development niche, but I don’t really have any formal journalism training. It would have been nice to have been able to get an education and pursue a career in this specific area. Journalism lets you be creative and logical. I guess that’s why I like programming and markup.
3. Baseball Player
No, it’s not for the money (although Major League Baseball’s “minimum wage” for a couple of years could help me retire before 40). I just think baseball is the greatest sport ever invented, and is much more fun and strategic than most people outside the U.S. understand.
4. Baseball Writer
Due to the previous two, isn’t this one obvious?
5. Documentary Film Maker
There’s too much wrong with this world. It would be great to be able to investigate people, places, nature, and corporations, and analyze them in film in factual but creative ways.
What About You?
What are your thoughts on this? Remember, I don’t want to know what you would do if web design or web development wasn’t in the picture; I want to know what paying job you would rather have instead of web design.
Astronaut of course!
If I weren’t a web designer, I’d probably become a DJ. And who knows, maybe I will in time :)
luxury yacht delivery captain
Police officer. That was my other childhood dream.
Not sure about Baseball… but at least it’s not as boring as Amercian Football/NFL!
I’d be a waterslider tester!!!
Great post, my childhood dream was to become a professional football/soccer, but I didn’t. Designing was my second option, I think I did it :).
I wish that all people in the world to work in their preferred profession. It’s key of good and healthy life.
As a therapist and teacher I would say that any job where you help others to empower themselves has to be the best work possible.
I learned originally web design because there wasn’t anything good on the web in the UK that helped therapists promote themselves locally. Now I have a foot in both worlds and, for me, two separate careers that I love doing.
Definitely to be a Police Officer.
I’d like to study Midwifery.
I do get annoyed that while video post production uses similar techniques to design, the adobe creative suite, but just different programs and has similar types of clients, it’s something I’m unlikely to do and take to a professional level
Llama farmer. I’d also accept alpacas, but not yaks.
Restore and build motorcycles.
Many years now, i have a passion for photography. Who knows, maybe I will in time a part-time photographer :)
same here! ^_^
wanna be a pro photographer and an interior designer..
me too… I’d like to be an outdoor photographer :D
Make comics. I already do that in my spare time (at Beardfluff.com if anyone cares for wecomics :) but it would be cool if I could live off of it.
Most useless post EVER.
I agree! :)
It’s included in a new not-so-intense category, so it’s not so bad.
haha.. this is great relaxing post!
and I wanna be a rockstar! :D
“road-train” truck driver :)
You’re one of my favourite, and clearly well-informed and intelligent, programming bloggers. I have this image of you as some kind of benevolent oracle who has CSS selectors instead of red blood cells and a html5 validator embedded in your left eyeball. So, bearing that in mind, how about changing 1. to “Campaigner for less-rampant profiteering in North American healthcare” (not really a job, I know, but alternative medicine has some pretty dark sides too), otherwise I may have to just start accepting that you’re a flawed human being like all the rest of us.
Oh, and I’d be a mathematician I think. Or a bike mechanic.
You’re absolutely right, alternative medicine is not perfect. No medicine is.
And thanks for the compliment, but I do make tons of mistakes in my writings (I use the
<del>tag a lot on here), so I’m far from perfect.Circus artist))
1. Veterinarian
2. Chef
3. Social Worker
:)
Interesting choices, Louis.
I’d like to write TV scripts, I also like the idea of being a photography director, or designing TV sets. (Maybe I’m watching too many DVDs with the commentaries on.)
Sometimes consulting, on usability or marketing, appeals me.
My choice would be to be someone who works outdoors in the mountains. A mountain guide maybe?
But more seriously? Homeopathy. What a joke. You really think that water has a memory? Read and watch:
http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/06/homeopathy.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/17/canadian-tv-slams-homeopathy/
Naturopathy may have something going for it though…. There’s still lots of compounds that have not been investigated for their medicinal properties…
The mainstream will always bash what affects their bottom line. Nothing new there.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything in Homeopathy, nor do I claim to know a lot about it. Nonetheless, I have personally had fairly significant digestive issues cleared up by homeopathic remedies, and I’ve seen others improved by them too.
(Regarding the comment form: For some reason I don’t think this page posts a “comment under moderation” message when someone’s comment is flagged; I’ll have to look into that, if that is indeed the problem you mentioned in your 2nd comment).
You can believe in Homeopathy if you like. It’s no worse than a placebo (sugar pill). But don’t expect it to “cure” you of anything.
The problem I had with submitting the comment form was that it asked me to login to a protected area of the site. I’m on Google Chrome browser on Mac OS X.
I don’t need to “expect” it to cure me of anything; it already has. If you want more details, use the contact form and I’ll discuss it with you. Saying that it’s the same as a placebo is simply untrue.
While I don’t think that homeopathy is always effective, I believe it’s a valid option to try as long as someone is not undergoing extremely serious health problems that need more aggressive attention.
You’re also disregarding the fact that prevention is a big part of homeopathy; it’s not just about “curing” existing conditions.
Regarding your comment, that is bizarre. Your comment went through fine, but it was flagged to be moderated, which happens if you post more than one link. I’ll have to review that to see what exactly occurs when that happens. Thanks for the info.
You may have misunderstood parent’s point. Placebos work. Surprisingly well, in many cases. Just not as well as proper medications.
Properly designed and conducted double-blind testing of various homeopathic remedies shows that virtually none of them are more effective than placebo. Such is the metric for measuring efficacy in medicine. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t help, it just means you could be taking a sugar pill and the results would be similar. But there are always exceptions, of course. That said, the only harm in homeopathy is when people think they’re fixing themselves and forgo real medical treatment.
For my part, I’d swap out #1 for “weatherman”, where nobody requires (or even expects) you to be correct on a regular basis. It’d be great if my job had such low standards.
I kid, I kid.
Further on this. Here are some studies that have shown that homeopathic remedies have been successful:
A study on the effects of homeopathy on children’s ear infections:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11680801
The Lancet volume 350, 1997 did an extensive study of the effects of homeopathy:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2897%2902293-9/fulltext
Here’s a quote (you have to login to see the whole text):
A study showing the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in chidren (in comparison to placebo):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12634583
Another study from the Lancet showing that homeopathy is more effective than placebo:
http://goo.gl/x0EPl
And here’s another study from a 2005 issue of a journal called CHEST showing the benefits of a homeopathic remedy on patients with chronic bronchitis or emphysema:
http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/127/3/936.full
Further on this…
In 2000, the World Health Organization produced a ranking of countries and how they fare in the area of health care:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
France is #1. Why is this significant? Well, in addition to many other reasons, a high percentage of French use homeopathic remedies (up to 40%):
http://www.bmj.com/content/309/6947/107.full
See also:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/the-case-for-homeopathic_b_451187.html
I know this probably isn’t what you had in mind, but whenever I hear homeopathy I immediately think of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Dilutions
and dream of all the money people are making selling others water with fancy labels. I’m still not sure why I’m not taking advantage of that.
interesting you chose journalist…in my opinion, they are some of the smartest people around. but perhaps i’m biased – i received my degree in journalism and was a reporter for a couple years out of college. however, i realized my passion was in web development. the two fields are exceptionally different if you think of them in terms of reading/writing and math/science. in these days, though, with all of the trends in journalism, the fields are almost inseparable. what with newspapers and print losing ground and new technologies taking over our media consumption.
(you’d never guess i was a journalism major by all of the grammar errors in this post, but disregard those…)
A Paleontologist! I grew up hanging on Bob Baker’s every word and I grin every time I see him on TV.
Woops, Bob Bakker.
We have similar interests. I work as a current affairs journalist when not designing with aspirations of becoming a documentary film/audio maker. Good stuff!
If i wasnt a Web Designer id want to be a Ninja! If there was no Ninja Jobs going id have to be a Chimney Sweep!
I actually left Web Design to become a Visual Effects artist on movies… now I want to come back!!!
Police officer or politician. Maybe I will still become one of the two someday.
Pianist
Jet fighter pilot
Lawyer
Scientist
Philanthropist
I was a Journalism major in college (focused in broadcast journalism but passion was photojournalism and documentary!), but am making money with long-time web design hobby :D
My dream ended up in smoke whatsoever :(