The funny thing - and this will surprise nobody who has read any of my longer posts at length - the ASSUMPTION in high school was that I was going to be some high-powered Vincent Bugliosi-style prosecutor. I changed probably more than anyone in my class during our first ten years out so I was the one that when I went back to the reunion, some people couldn't quite figure out who I was.
One guy finally looked close at me and figured it out and said, "So Bill, where are you practicing law these days?" And, of course, he brought up my penchant for arguing with instructors over points on exams (yes....I'll admit I was THAT guy) and how that was the assumption when folks would talk about who was going to do what.
I majored - of all things - in Music Education, and despite major cuts to the arts in schools particularly around the time I graduated (during the 1991 recession no less), I've never once regretted that decision for better or worse. As is often the case, home life made some contributions to my decisions - some very good and some very bad - but a psychiatrist would likely say that I'm the kind of personality that would "retreat to the comfort zone" or "known" and not be the kind of person (in most cases) that in life "throws the long bomb." My ex turned out to be the exact opposite, but there was never any rhyme or reason to it. She's the kind that you can see the defense knows you're throwing the bomb and you'll pick up 20 yards with a QB draw.......and will absolutely insist on calling the play regardless (if I may use football analogies here).
Med school was a different animal and probably the biggest problem was that I never really "wanted" to do it, I sorta got pushed into it as a way to improve my quality of life and serve my country (I did it through Univ of Nebraska in the USAF) and it seemed more important as my first day of school was only eight days prior to the 9/11 attacks. But I developed some (seriously) memory problems while in school that were later attributed to sleep apnea (that preceded any weight gain), and I failed some exams and then got caught up in some politics as well.
I just never really had the "desire" to do the medical thing; I still finished school with a 3.16, which is by far the lowest I ever attained in any of my schooling.
By contrast, seminary was something that at the start I DID want to do but as I got further into it began to notice that in seminary you don't "really" study the Bible.....you study what other people SAY about the Bible. And though my seminary was evangelical and conservative, it was by no means the stereotype of what you hear about in your local SBC church in rural Alabama. Probably the most positive outcome was that (in general) I learned more about "grace" and showing it to others, even though it often doesn't come across as such online. We were VERY well-read across the board - we read liberal scholarship, conservative, everything in between, and put together the whole paradigm for studies of "the historic Jesus," which always gets shown with the same "reverse fundamentalist" mindset you see on TV specials (seriously - it always amused me when you had some so-called reputable scholar dogmatically assert things he or she couldn't possibly dogmatic assert, and the only "asset" or "proof" of the position was that it was the opposite of the one the historic Christian church(es) held).
So more of my studies were devoted to things like the Graf-Welhausen hypothesis (truly ludicrous if you just pay a tiny bit of attention) or "which Synoptic gospel was written first and then used by the others" than whether there's "really" any significance in the words used by Jesus and Peter in the post-denial exchange (most likely not). Sadly, I'm to the point that I almost can't sit in church without cringing when some seminary grad preacher says something that is so OBVIOUSLY not what's being said - and it's not fair to the church or the preacher for my only contribution to be as a critic.
On the whole, though, there's really more good than bad.
I mean, I'm not some kid in a cage awaiting on the US government to do something (for example) or living in Castro's Cuba in the 50s.
So it's still not awful by any means.