Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Alternate Personalities via Google

I Googled my name today. Among the people sharing my name were a registered nurse, a college volleyball player, a professor, and a woman with my first name who married a man with my last name and had six bridesmaids.

Sometimes I think that google is not just a search engine, it's a portal into alternate universes. What if I had pursued volleyball after my tenure as middle school captain of the varsity volleyball team? I may just be playing college ball now, with a full scholarship and everything. What if I hadn't been disuaded from the sciences when my 9th grade biology teacher made us watch Finding Nemo four different times throughout the year? I may have become a nurse, or even a doctor...

As I sit here sorting through the law school acceptance letters that have arrived, and wait eagerly by my e-mail inbox to hear from the others, I often ponder if the carreer I chose in 10th grade is the correct one. My roomate said the average American changes carreers 7 times in their lifetimes. Great, but I would like my starting carreer to NOT put me hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt just in time for me to realize that what I ACTUALLY want to do is something I could have gone in to straight out of college.

This is where the Google portal stops being useful. When I click on the names, I read about someone who is not me. I'd like a button that I can click next to any one of these alternate selves that says, 'how to get here'. It would tell me, in great detail, what to do to become that person, starting from where I am right now.

So, any of you computer nerds-up to the challenge??