When I was growing up, I wanted to be something different each year. An astronaut. A veterinarian. A dancer. A doctor. An actress. A marine biologist. A civil engineer. The list was long and quite varied in scope. I thought that would change when I was in college, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to be. So I majored in what I liked doing: musical theatre. One of the reasons I wanted to be an actor was so that I didn’t have to choose just one thing to be. I might play a lawyer in one role, a mom in another, a cowgirl, a showgirl, a fairy. Once, I even played half of a cow — the back half! I was always learning new things and experiencing new perspectives.
After college, I was a dancer, then an actor, then a graphic artist, then a paralegal. 
Then I went to law school and became a lawyer. Finally, I had “one thing” I could be. And like acting, practicing law provides me with the opportunity to be different in each matter: to learn a client’s business, or learn about an entire industry, or practice in different venues. But even that was not sufficient diversity. While practicing law, I became a certified health coach, taught legal writing in law schools, began blogging about health and wellness, and started my freelance writing endeavor. Clearly, I STILL didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
And I’ve felt kinda bad about this. Shouldn’t I be able to focus on just my legal career? Luckily, I found this TED talk by Emilie Wapnick and I now know it’s not only ok, but good, that I am the way I am. She calls herself, and people like me, “multipotentialites.” She says a multipotentialite is someone “with many interests and creative pursuits.” She accurately describes our strengths: our ability to learn new things quickly, our ability to synthesize various sources and kinds of information into a cohesive and understandable new idea, and adaptability.
Now I can be happy that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up! Are you a multipotentialite too? Enjoy yourself!
Part exposé, part “how-to”, Amy chronicles the efforts of Susan and other leaders in the fledgling better school food movement as they take on the system nationwide. From Chefs Alice Waters and Ann Cooper reinventing school food in Berkley California to Chef Tony Geraci’s student designed meals in New Hampshire, Amy discovers programs that connect the cafeteria with the classroom and connect our kids with the earth. Over the course of a school year, we see Susan’s coalition drive dramatic changes in one Westchester, NY school district.
Jamie Jackson Spannhake 