courtbeanA Letter to My Legislators
Like most little girls, I wanted to be a marine biologist. As I started to learn about science, I changed my mind and said I’d be a detective. I read Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and decided I had to be a famous novelist. When I fell in love one day, I declared that I’d make a great poet. But then I got to University and thought I was smart enough to be a philosophy professor! After I graduated, someone told me I had to make money so I decided to become a lawyer. I learned how to look at a situation from all of its possible angles, and soon realized there weren’t many good reasons to be a lawyer.
I wanted to keep learning about the world so I became a journalist. I got a job writing about finance but it was depressing in 2008. I asked my editor what I should write about that would be more inspiring. He said, “Robots.”
I became a technology journalist. I left the magazine and started working online for a company halfway across the world. I can now work in any city on the planet as long as I’m connected to the Internet. I’m paid to write about people who are changing the world for the better and in doing so, I’ve helped make the world better too.
If you had asked me 10 years ago what I wanted be when I grew up, I couldn’t have told you that I wanted to be what I am today…because my job didn’t exist.
The Internet’s unpredictable nature and unfathomable potential is what keeps us hungry, foolish and imaginative. But its future lies in your hands. I implore you: don’t limit its potential. You’ll only be limiting the possibilities for all the little girls out there who aren’t certain of what they want to be when they grow up, except to help make this world a better place.
