Surprising Facts You Probably Never Knew About 10 Common Childhood Dream Jobs

Every kid wanted to be an astronaut when they were younger, but some parts of the job might not be as cool as you think. Like… going to the bathroom, for example. 

Let’s explore some surprising facts about the jobs you probably wanted as a kid, as adapted from the above episode of The List Show on YouTube.

Firefighters

Growing up to be a firefighter is a classic kid fantasy. Between getting to drive the big truck, spraying the giant hose, and saving people’s lives, it’s easy to see the appeal. But despite their title, firefighters don’t spend all day fighting actual fires. In fact, putting out blazes accounts for just a fraction of their regular duties. 

As a retired fire captain told Mental Floss in 2015, firefighters need to act as “plumbers, electricians, psychologists, and mechanics” depending on the scenario. For many situations—such as broken pipes and gas leaks—911 dispatchers default to sending the local fire department. Medical emergencies actually make up the majority of their calls, and today’s firefighters are expected to double as EMTs and sometimes paramedics. They also do rescue the occasional cat from a tree, though not as often as they do on television.

Astronauts

It’s not surprising that many kids dream of becoming astronauts when they get older. Astronauts are the explorers of the 21st century, and their work has been glamorized in countless movies and tv shows. But the job isn’t always so glamorous in real life. One aspect that’s not depicted in popular media is how difficult it is to use the bathroom in space. Toilets on Earth rely on gravity, and without that key element they become much more complicated to operate. 

To go No. 2 in orbit, astronauts have to create an airtight seal between their buttocks and the toilet, which uses a powerful vacuum hose to collect waste. The whole ordeal can stretch what would normally be a few-minute potty break to half an hour, and astronauts have to get used to the equipment as part of their training. 

And there’s more room for error than when we use toilets on Earth. Even with careful protocols in place, waste has been known to get loose on space missions. That was the case on the 1969 Apollo 10 mission, when an errant turd was spotted floating through the cabin. None of the crewmembers took responsibility for the incident, and its origins remain a mystery 50 years later. 

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Airline Pilots

If you were a kid who dreamed of flying high above the Earth but didn’t want to commit to space travel, you may have wanted to be an airline pilot. The job isn’t as well-compensated as you may assume—the lowest-paid 10 percent of commercial pilots earned less than $56,000 in 2023. But it does come with some perks. 

One is that they can fly just about anywhere in the world for free. That’s a sweet benefit for frequent travelers, but many pilots end up never taking advantage of it. Though they can go wherever they want, the when is not guaranteed. They still have to wait for a standby seat to open up on the flight they want, which makes planning trip itineraries in advance difficult. On top of that, most airline employees have access to the same perk—so if a baggage handler with more seniority is trying to get on the same flight, they get priority.

Veterinarians

Getting to hang out with pets all day and make them feel better sounds like the perfect job to a young animal lover. But there are many harsh truths about being a veterinarian that only become obvious as you get older. 

For example, euthanizing old and sick pets is a big part of their job, and many vets suffer from compassion fatigue. That’s part of the reason why around 30 percent of vets reported planning to leave their jobs in 2023, with half of that number saying they would give up clinical practice altogether.

And it isn’t just their mental health that’s at risk. They often come home with bites and scratches after handling scared cats and dogs, and when treating exotic animals like monkeys, infectious diseases are a major concern. So it’s not all pets and cuddles—though they do get plenty of those, as well.

Nurses

If you wanted to be a nurse at a young age, you may have realized it’s a tough job early on. According to professionals in the field, the work is harder on some days of the week than it is on others. Nurses generally dread coming in on Mondays because there tends to be an influx of sick patients who put off seeing a doctor all weekend and have already been symptomatic for days. And because many staff members don’t come in on weekends, there’s also more work waiting for the nurses who do get stuck with the Monday shift. Moral of the story: If you feel like you should see a doctor, don’t procrastinate the visit for the sake of your social life. Your friends and your healthcare providers will appreciate it.

Roller Coaster Designers

Many kids who grew up riding roller coasters dreamed of one day designing them. This was especially true for anyone who got a taste for engineering with the PC game RollerCoaster Tycoon. The video game isn’t exactly an accurate depiction of what it’s like to run a theme park—if a guest is misbehaving in real life, for example, picking them up and dropping them in a pond is frowned upon. 

But RollerCoaster did get many people interested in the field. Following its release in 1999, industry professionals noticed an influx of young people at trade shows who were inspired by the game. Fans who followed through on their passion quickly learned that designing a roller coaster for the real world came with a lot more limitations. When designing a steel coaster, each foot of track can cost tens of thousands of dollars—so practicality often wins out over ambition and creativity. 

Paleontologists

In a similar vein, many of today’s paleontologists were inspired by the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park. Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur thriller was a massive hit, and for countless kids it answered the question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Though many of them lost interest in dinosaurs as they got older, a large number chased their passion into adulthood. 

Paleontologists today attest that the “Jurassic Park generation” is indeed a real thing. In the 2010s, when people who watched the movie when they were 10 years old entered their thirties, jobs in the field became more competitive than ever. This led to a paleontology boom, with a new dinosaur species being discovered every 10 days on average in 2018. 

Teachers

Teaching is the profession we’re exposed to the most in childhood, so it’s only natural for so many kids to want to be teachers when they grow up. In addition to wanting to be like the adults they look up to, many students may like the idea of holding onto their summer vacation after they graduate. 

But unlike the kids they teach, most teachers don’t get the full summers off. Even if they’re not coming into the classroom everyday for summer school, they likely spend much of their so-called vacation attending professional development seminars and preparing for the upcoming school year. 

And because their salaries are barely enough to live on in many parts of the country, teachers often end up taking short-term gigs in the summer to make ends meet. According to a study published in 2019, 16 percent of public school teachers worked jobs unrelated to their school on their summer break, and an even higher percentage took a second job during the school year.

Ice Cream Truck Drivers

Owning your own ice cream truck is the ultimate marker of success in the eyes of a kid—or at least that’s true for kids who spent their summer days chasing the catchy jingle through their neighborhood, but this scenario is no longer as common as it once was. 

Nowadays, many ice cream truck drivers park in one spot and stay there. They may even build their schedules around weddings, school picnics, and other events where business is guaranteed. 

As inflation and high gas prices have eaten into profits, ice cream trucks in general are a rarer sight than they used to be. So if selling creamsicles to children was a childhood dream you’d still like to pursue, make sure your finances are in order before investing in a refrigerated truck.

Marine Biologists

It seemed like every classroom in the 1980s and '90s was filled with aspiring marine biologists. Kids may have been influenced by pop culture like Flipper, Free Willy, or those awesome Lisa Frank dolphin folders everyone had. 

Or maybe The Voyage of the Mimi is to blame: The educational series split episodes into a 15-minute narrative segment, where Captain Granville and a crew of scientists studied humpback whales on a sailboat named the Mimi, and a 15-minute “expedition” segment, where one of the show’s young actors would go to observe real scientists doing their jobs. The show aired on PBS and became part of many school curriculums.

Whatever inspired students to want to be marine biologists, many grew up to realize that studying ocean life isn’t as easy as befriending some aquatic creatures at the local marina. The career requires a serious science background in subjects like ecology, zoology, and biochemistry. A select number of colleges offer undergraduate degrees in marine biology specifically, including Northeastern University in Boston. One draw of the major is the Three Seas program, which sends students out into the field for a year to study three different habitats: tropical coral reefs, North Pacific kelp forests, and North Atlantic rocky shores.