It's up to me, then, is it?

DISCLAIMER:

.
There is a chance that this post will have nothing whatsoever to do with the title I've plopped up there as a space-filler and vowed to myself not to change. It's also possible that this post may have some small thing to do with the title, but we won't really know until after it's all said and done, now will we? I may be able to tie together threads of conscious thought into an understandable outpouring of notion and fact, or I might not.
.
Let's just see how it goes, in this first ever stream-of-consciousness post on N.A.Y.
.

======================
.
When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a(n) 1) nurse, 2) teacher, 3) famous person known by only one name, 4) actress, 5) a speech therapist, 6) biologist, 7) famous person known by only one name.
.
I have made good on numbers 2 and 6. It is blindingly clear that I have much more to do in this life.
.
Numbers 2 and 6 happened because I realized, 3 years into college, that I couldn't be number 5. There are several good reasons for this, and some very bad reasons for this. See if you can pick out which is which!
.
1) I was much more interested in anatomy and physiology than anything else they taught me in the program
2) Most of the people in the program were girls
3) Most of them were the sorority-girl type

4) I had actively avoided pledging a sorority throughout my college career because all the girls who did wore Papagallo and madras and had bob haircuts, and that just wasn't my thing.
5) I have little patience with people who don't speak properly
6) The thought of spending my career hunched over trying to teach a little kid how to speak properly through the use of puppets, mirrors, wind chimes, and magic seemed a little short on the whole "life goals" chart.
7) Did I mention most of the people in the program were girls?
.
This is not to say that I don't value the work that speech therapists/pathologists do, b because I HAD speech therapy as a kid and it saved me from a lifetime of tongue thrusting (ooooh, how sexy!) and its after-effects. It just wasn't for me....

.

During my time in the program, I completely pissed off one instructor; sat in the back of the room between the only 2 guys also in the program, who, interestingly, both had stuttering issues; made jokes; ignored the instructors; mocked the Greek insignias sported by the preppy Richmond girls; and basically became the antithesis of what, to me, a typical speech therapist was supposed to be. As further oil on the fire of my decision to change majors, there was the time when an instructor, on St. Patrick's day, asked the class "what does 'Erin Go Bragh' mean?", and I was the only one who could answer. That was a clear indication that I needed to switch majors to something different. How could I spend my career with people who draw a blank at something like that?
.
But I wonder, could I have become a world-famous audiologist who was known only by one name if I had stayed? Because, while the speech therapy thing was a non-starter for me, there was always audiology, a field in which one gets to play with expensive equipment and tinker with computers and analyze things. This was marginally appealing, especially since the 2 guys in the program were going to be audiologists. Gotta go where the goods are, y'all!
.
Anyhow, that's my story about why I'm not a world-famous audiologist right now. Of course, I'm no longer a teacher or biologist either, but that's a story for a different day.
.
=======================
.
I'm fighting the urge to change the title.

.
=======================
.
Finally, without looking it up on Yahoo, who the flaming heck is THIS person????
.

I was stunned when I found out.

.

I thought it was K.D. Lang post-facelift (rhytidectomy for all y'all medical types)

.

It is not, in fact, KD Lang.