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By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
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An old elementary school homework assignment had one Tennessee man pondering what his life might have ended up like.
Jake, who asked that he not be fully named, told Newsweek it was his wife who first stumbled upon the project, written back when he was in the second grade living in California.
"Growing up, my mother archived most of the homework assignments I brought home with me," he said. "I recently became a father and it was then that my mother decided to pass those memories down to me."
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The various school projects sat in a box in Jake's house until one day his wife decided to go through them. "From the next room, I heard her laughing at all the things my younger self decided to put on paper. She set this one aside and said I had to look at it," he said.
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That was when he came face to face with an assignment, written when he was 8 years old, detailing what he would be doing by the time he was 35. Everyone has dreams about what they will be doing as an adult, but few achieve it.
A 2019 survey of 1,567 people conducted by Perkbox Insights highlighted this with 96 percent of those polled admitting they are not in the job they dreamed of as a child, compared with 4 percent of those who made it a reality.
In truth, judging from this assignment, Jake always had an uphill battle if he was going to achieve his dreams.
"When I'm 35. I'll be married to Courtney and I'll be an actor or a singer or a brain surgeon," he writes. "I'll have 35 kids and each one will have a limo. I'll live in Beverly Hills and I'll drive a limo, Corvette Convertible, Lamborghini, Ferrari and a Porsche all mixed together."
The piece continues: "Courtney and I will buy Bermuda and the rainforest. Every summer I will go to one of those places."
Reading back what he had written, Jake couldn't help but crack up at his young vision of the future. "When I saw it, I was instantly taken back," he said. "We were doing handwriting classes and the assignment was to write about what I'll be like when I'm 35."
Alongside the written assignment, Jake put together a sketch of how he envisioned himself looking by the age of 35.
"I would have a tattoo on my arm of an anchor, like my favorite GI Joe, Shipwreck. I would have another tattoo of an 'N' so that people would know I liked Nintendo. I'd sport a sweet mustache and walk about shirtless with a hairy chest," he said. "I would have a 1000 yard stare and a scar on my face, a battle wound from being a badass mercenary."
Recalling his aspirations at the time, Jake said: "I definitely thought I would grow up to be some sort of mercenary. I also kinda knew how far-fetched it all was and knew that I had to have drive and long-term dedication to achieve that goal."
As for whether he achieved those dreams, the answer is definitely a no. "I did play in a band when I was younger, so technically I was a singer but today I work in IT and am not an actor nor a brain surgeon," he said.
"I have never driven an expensive car. Closest I've been is sitting in the passenger seat of a friend's Porsche. Even living in California for three years as a kid, we never made the trek to Beverly Hills. It was all fantasy in my head about where someone who was successful would live."
Regarding the references to "Courtney" Jake suspects it was the name of a girl in his class but can't say for sure. "At the very least, I knew that any girl named 'Courtney" had to be beautiful. So of course, my wife would have to be named Courtney," he said.
His choice of Bermuda as a place to own was down to his love of "UFOs" and all things unexplained with Jake of the opinion back then that he could" get to the bottom of what was going on there." The desire to own the rainforests was a benevolent one too: "I thought if I had the money, I could just stop people from destroying it."
Looking back, while Jake can laugh at the dreams he had then, if he were to offer his 8-year-old self one piece of advice it would be to "take chances."
"Don't be afraid to fail," he said. "Failing was always a fear of mine and held me back from doing a lot of things in my life, such as becoming a battle-hardened mercenary."
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