I had none of any of them.
What I did have was a little brother with a small part to play in the newest newspaper.
I've bullied him all his life, so it was nothing new for me to torture him until he gave in and said he would ask if I could have a job.
I fancied being the literary and travel editor.
Oh, and print me a big stack of business cards giving me that title as well.
Getting the job was the easy bit.
Deciding what to write about was tricky enough, but finding a photo of my most unphotogenic self which wouldn't have readers slamming the paper shut in horror (can you slam a newspaper shut?) was awful.
I did ask why it had to be a photo of me and why I couldn't use one of my pretty friends' pictures, but they were adamant.
Probably one of those boring things about "truth in journalism" - they are always going on about.
So here I was - a real live journalist with a job and business cards - so glamorous.
They even gave me an editor.
Lovely Dave Cannan took me under his wing and edited me like crazy.
He did his best to keep my writing from getting me into trouble, but that has been a mammoth task and even this clever, capable man couldn't keep me out of those treacherous areas all the time.
Dave kept giving me opportunities to become a better journalist and I always let him down.
He sent me off to do my first interview at a literary conference - I had to buy a voice recorder specially for it.
I read everything I could about interviewing and everyone seemed to agree that having a list of questions written up was a very good idea.
Dave thinks the deep end is the best place to learn survival skills and had asked me to interview New Zealand' s No 1 interviewer, Kim Hill, at the conference.
She was very scary at first, so I didn't even remember to turn on my brand new recorder.
She took my list of questions and told me which ones were boring and suggested better ones.
It could have been a great story, but with no recording and no notes, it was the first of my many failures.
Dave finally escaped the onerous task of keeping me on track by getting a well-deserved promotion, dumping the unpalatable job of Miranda management on Neal Wallace, who is doing a sterling job.
I love being part of the Queenstown Times.
My greatest pleasure has been all the feedback from so many of you - there are a lot of very funny people floating around.
I love the books you suggest and especially love hearing you have loved a book I have recommended.
It makes me proud this community paper focuses on the great and good things happening in our region and on people seeking solutions to problems.
We are a magnificent tourist destination and those other papers with huge, horrid headlines make our lovely town sound like a hotbed of crime and sleaze.
Congratulations Queenstown Times on hitting the 500 and thank you for letting me be a part of a great team on a great local paper.
