I remember sitting in the career development office on many occasions my senior year, trying to decide just what to do with this coveted liberal arts degree from Centre College. According to the (many, many) career tests I took, I could be good at anything ranging from Methodist minister to aerobics instructor.

I never really made a definite career decision. It is only fitting that now, as careers editor at USATODAY.com, I work with all careers. I see a good deal of feedback from readers, most of whom are unhappy in their career choices. In their letters, I can hear so clearly the voices of teachers, writers, and nurses crying out beneath the skins of accountants, secretaries, and lawyers. It is sad to think of so many people taking wrong turns early in their career paths from which, years later, they cannot seem to emerge. And it is disconcerting for me personally, since I sometimes wonder if my own career choices have been the right or wrong ones.

I gave this a lot of thought recently when I happened upon some forgotten photo albums. I peeled through their sticky, yellow pages and found a photograph of myself, age two, plopped in the middle of a herd of the wiggling lab puppies that my family used to raise. So many heads and tails, I couldn't even make out how many there were, their plump, furry bodies forming a velvety brown blob out of which I emerged, a bigger, paler blob with a velvety brown bad haircut.

So this is where it started.

In elementary school, I loved science because it often meant studying animals. In the summer, family beach vacations were wonderful not because of the boardwalk or the seafood or the sun but for the hours and hours upon puckered-finger hours of snorkeling and digging for sand dollars, starfish, and any other creature slow enough for me to capture in a red plastic bucket on a salty afternoon.

I wanted to become a vet.

I wound up becoming a journalist.

Am I unhappy about it? No. I always loved writing, too. I remember Sunday afternoons, sitting on telephone books in my grandfather's study before his then impressive (now archaic) blue typewriter and excitedly tapping out the first sentences of such dramatic works as "Fly Away, Birds," and "Bambi II, The Sequel: Bambi's Mother Lives." (Even my writing back then somehow always involved animals.)

I haven't ruled out becoming a vet. Going back to school for a veterinary degree is one of the many options on my career to-do list. I have yet to follow up on them because - Oh no! It might actually turn into something!

Or worse yet, it wouldn't.

And then what? Would my life and love of all creatures great and small be false? Are we confined only to one destiny? Do we follow only the talents that most clearly present themselves? Did I miss my calling?

I doubt it. Rather, it's appreciating that I'm happy where I am. And being a vet (or a ballerina, or an astronaut, or a professional jockey - I'm 5-foot-9) is one of the childhood fantasies that may be best left behind as I understand that such a profession may not be all fun and fur after all. More often, it's handling sick, unhappy animals, who sometimes die, or worse, die at the hand of someone or something cruel and inexplicable.

It's also realizing that the same frail attention span that couldn't even carry me through a 50-minute CHEM 11 class in college still exists eight years later and is just as real - and should be just as much a factor in searching for my life's work - as my love for dogs. The latter is simply more pleasant, and easier, to emphasize.

And even dogs can get a little dull after the 947th time you've thrown them that ball.

I'll always think that perhaps I would have made a good vet. Who knows, someday I might even abandon all the common sense I have tried to dispense here and give it a go. For now, I will just buy a dog and write. About animals. Who are happy and furry and never meet with displeasure or pain.

And always live happily ever after.

An English and psychobiology major at Centre, as well as Kentucky's NCAA Woman of the Year, Laura Boswell '94 joined USA TODAY's on-line newspaper as a sports editor in 1995. To see what she does now, click on "careers" at www.usatoday.com.

Centrepiece
Centre College
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