Career Choices: how museums sometimes make a difference

Last week we explored how museums can be fascinating places that spark in young children a desire to learn more.  This week we are going to take that even further, to a smaller group for whom museum visits truly transformed them, and their life paths. 

These memories, out of the thousands of memories we collected from adults in our recent research into early childhood memories of museum visits, are not numerous, but they do illustrate the tremendous capacity for museums to have a powerful effect on children.  They tell us how visiting museums truly changed the life course for children, giving them an interest that drove them into successful career choices as adults.  And, happily, these individuals specifically linked their career choice with childhood museum experiences.

 

• “The museum was the public museum in my city. I was fascinated by the fetuses at various ages and by the dioramas of native animals. I subsequently became an obstetrician with a love of nature.”
• “ . . . I was so awed that I have never forgotten it! The underground coal mine [at the Museum of Science and Industry] must have pushed me over the edge because I became a Geologist! :D”
• “5th birthday, NYC's Museum of Natural History.  Blew me away and I became an archaeologist.”
• “We visited a historic house.  I became an architect.”
• “Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa.  Participated in Saturday classes as a school child. Rode the streetcar (trolley) from a steel town to get there.  It stimulated my interest in science and nature and was a primary reason I went on to get a PhD in Engineering.”

Now it should be noted that the number of memories that made a specific link between childhood museum experiences and eventual career choices are not significant in number.  But they do illustrate how important museums can be to young children, transforming them in critical ways.  And that is something museums should be proud of and strive to have happen with youngsters today.

What do you think?  What do you remember from your childhood museum experiences?  To share, simply click on "comments" below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to http://reachadvisors.typepad.com to add a comment.)

Photo Courtesy:  Atlanta History Center's Swan House

Comments

[Erin Milbeck Wilcox]

Thanks so much for this series. It's great to have this data set instead of assuming a lot of information about childhood experiences.
It would also be fascinating to survey museum staff members to explore their early memories of museums as an influence on their future career.

[Emma P]

Working on UK museum project with young people - Stories of the World, part of Cultural Olympiad project for London 2012 - and getting evidence from them that working with museums is influencing their choice of academic study and job opportunities. Great to see this mirrored in US. One young person on Lancashire film project with museum has just got a job with a photographer because of this museum experience - museums can help get you work in the creative industries.

[Marianne Bez]

Do I remember my childhood museum expereinces? Absolutely -- and these expereinces definately shaped my love of history and desire to work in the history museum field. I grew up going to lots of different museums but I most dearly enjoyed historic sites and historic house museums. I can recall early visits to homes in the Hudson Valley. But my favorite vacation as a child was a two-week trip to the Boston area during which we saw all the Revolutionary sites in the city, Plimouth Plantation, the John Adams and John Quincy Adams homes. It was a vacation that made a very big impression in my view of the world.

[Katie]

When I was a young child, my parents were always members of the local history museum in my city. Some of my earliest memories of my childhood are of the trips that we used to take to the museum. During one visit, I can remember telling my mom that I wanted to work at the museum when I grew up and from that point on, I had an abiding fascination with museums. By the time I got to high school, I began volunteering at the museum and when it came time to go to college, I knew I wanted to major in history and that pursuing a career in museums was what I wanted to do. Now, I have been working in the Education department of my current institution for almost 5 years now and I'm currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Museum Studies. My trips to the museum as a child left an indelible mark on my imagination and were the reason I'm where I am today!

[Megan]

My grandparents took me to the Field Museum when I was a kid. The amazing Ancient Egypt exhibit hooked me on museums. Every summer I wanted to go back. I think that experience played a big part in my decision to do museum work.

[The Conservation Center]

This intern has always been a fan of museums, but it wasn't until I was 16 and abroad for the first time that I realized I'd figured out what I wanted to do with my life. It was in the Accademia in Florence, and I'll never forget how awed I was with the examples of conservation they had on display--I spent more time looking at them than at the David!

Now I've got my BA in art history and am working towards being accepted into a graduate program...as you can see by where I'm blogging from, I've already stuck my foot in the door. I owe a lot of the wonder and enjoyment in my life to museums, and nothing would please me more than to give some of it back for the next generation.

[Lauren S.]

Thanks for this trip down memory lane. Like many kids, I was influenced by the big dinosaur bones I saw at natural history museums and for several years was a die-hard paleontologist-in-training (since, I figured, they called artists "starving" for a reason). Another memorable experience was a week long daycamp at the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis, including a whole faux crime scene, where we got to lift real fingerprints and decide who was the villian. I ended up coming to D.C. for school because of the museums here - met my now husband while working at one on the weekends - and while interning, learned that I too could help children discover the joys of a museum. Now, I've worked in the field for a decade. Maybe some day I'll also become a dinosaur hunter or forensics scientist or one of the other possibilities that museums opened for me. Funnily enough, I also ended up studying painting...