> It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths

I believe the correct answer here is "not a lot," but not in the way that you probably think.

I couldn't be more different from my German-immigrant parents. Neither of them were college-educated, my father was the general manager of a moving company before he retired and my mom was a travel agent before she had me. They were both very generally hardworking and I (frankly) only work hard in very specific circumstances (ADHD brain). I excelled academically and was pretty immediately drawn to computers (I'm talking like 1982, with the Commodore PET; I was 10). Neither of my parents were technical, or even that literate, or even that successful (my dad, even as a mere "general manager of a small moving company", was nevertheless the most successful person in his family). Nevertheless they managed to put together enough money to send me off to Cornell, where I got a Psych degree with a "CS minor" (you don't declare minors at Cornell, but let's just say I hounded the CS department for courses I could take; I didn't like the inflexibility of being a CS major, though, and I had messed up a critical calculus course that was a requirement for many of them)

I also did a 4 year stint in the USAF (after a very poor first-year showing at Cornell where I bombed academically due to no study habits, having coasted through HS) wherein I was an aircraft mechanic and pushed computers away as far as I could (this was literally just 2-3 years before the Internet would explode in 1995, and sentiment about people who were really into computers was very much still "big nerd"; I was a late-bloomer ::cough:: virgin ::cough:: and felt the need to push anything "uncool" away from me as much as possible). Despite this overt conscious effort to avoid computers, one day the commander calls me into his office (my immediate reaction was "oh sh--, what did I do?") and proceeds with this spiel:

"Airman Marreck, word has gotten back to me about your giftedness with computers." (Wait, what? And then suddenly, with some horror and trepidation, I remembered flashes of memory: Walking past VT100 terminals that were inop to keyboard input until I couldn't help but set them right. Hearing about someone complaining about some Windows 3.1 issue and helping them. Fixing a formatting issue with printouts of flight records. Helping another person ranked above me with an Excel issue. Etc. Etc. Etc.)

He continued. "I am offering you the opportunity to cross-train into [whatever the USAF's version of software engineer was, I forget]"

My honest thought: This f---ing thing has boomerang'ed back to me despite every effort I've made to avoid it. (Clearly, I let SOME efforts slip through... And truth be told, I was ready to accept it, having felt I matured a bit. And gotten my V-Card stamped, of course.)

I asked "What's the catch?" He says "Extending your enlistment for 2 more years."

I thought "if I'm supposed to do this, then I'm going to do it in the civilian world, and benefit from civilian salaries."

I said "Thank you, but no thanks."

Anyway, the thing you love (and we could have a very deep discussion about where that comes from, because I certainly never consciously chose it) is the thing you will do. I feel I don't really have a choice, since you can't really choose what you love, you just either do or don't.

So... For some at least, there may not be much of a choice. But it may also have nothing to do with their parents.

The closest relative that might have had anything to do with me being into computers is my mother's father, who was an accountant, and could add up a column of numbers just by sliding his finger down them (and that quickly). That is literally the only "analytical" type of person in my entire extended family.