Recently I found this piece on BBC News, and think we could have a conversation. What did you want to do when you were eleven? (I wanted to be a professional athlete, but the sport changed from season to season. I didn’t get there, or even close!)

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up – and have you achieved it? A study run over the past 50 years has tested what helps childhood aspirations become reality.

In 1969 when they were 11 years old, 14,000 British children were asked to write 30-minute essays predicting what they might become in the future. ….

“There is definitely an observable link between what people are aspiring to do when they are 11 years old and what they end up doing when they are older.”

Of those with professional aspirations at age 11 – with dreams of being a vet, a lawyer, an architect – more than half did indeed end up entering professional occupations, even if their eventual career wasn’t quite the one they had had in mind.