I never really grew up watching cartoons as a kid. I was more of a Sports Centre and news type.

I remember constant quarrels with my brothers to get the channel changed on Saturday mornings from their cartoons to my highlights. But, seeing as I was constantly outnumbered, I got my fair share of Power Rangers, The Tick and Pinky and the Brain.

Another cartoon that found its way onto our television screen was The Jetsons. The Jetsons was a television show that first aired in 1962 on ABC, depicting a futuristic family going about their everyday lives. The show was set 100 years in the future.

It was The Jetsons that made me look forward to the future. I hoped that by the time I was a grown-up I would be able to fly to work, only have to work nine hours a week to be considered full-time and have the dishes done by my robot maid affectionately named “Rosie.”

So here I am, over a decade after dreaming about the future while watching cartoons and the world as I knew it does not seem to have changed much. Skinny jeans have come into style and it is all of a sudden cool to wear a dress made out of meat, but we still seem to do the dishes every night and our cars still run on gasoline.

Not to mention that, despite some very minor progress in the flying car department, the vast majority of cars still drive along the ground. Furthermore, we are still having problems with the electric car.

All of this makes me wonder: Where is my flying car and robot maid? Why have we not been able to accomplish what our dreams once were? For each and every individual to fly high into space, to be our own explorers, to touch the universe! Why have we been restricted to our jobs, school and our everyday mundane lives?

I reckon that it all comes down to perception. There is not a doubt that I see the world in a different way than I did when I was six.

I once dreamed of the future and innovative inventions because was all I knew. I had no idea about university and the work force, but rather I was in an environment that nurtured imagination and learning among students my age. My lunch hours were filled with imaginative games; we didn’t do homework but rather played with our imaginary light-sabers.

As my years progressed, I went from playing with my imaginary light-saber to focusing on school work. My views of life in general changed and then so did my priorities and dreams. I started to dream of going to university and eventually settling down with a family and a job where I could make some sort of difference in our world.

I’ll tell you this much, The Jetsons have let me down. My childhood dreams of flying into the vastness of space have been pushed to the side, and although I may have lost my childhood innocence, I have realized that all is not lost.

As my dreams to visit the moon on my lunch hours have dissipated, new dreams now have room to grow. Dreams that directly impact me: what I am going to do with my life, where I am going to go in life, the big questions that every university student faces, all of them about the future. But, if you do happen to get a flying car or robot maid, please let me know.