Question: One Do Over In Life...

alabama mike1

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If you could go back and change only one thing with your adult life, what would it be?

If I could go back and change anything, it would be NOT moving away from Nashville, Tn. in August of 1984.
 

Go Bama

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I would do a lot of things differently.

I would have joined the navy after dental school. It would have paid for my schooling and allow me to save some money before going into private practice.

I would not have married my first wife. I wasn’t ready and neither was she.

Those are are the two big ones. If I only get one, it would be the bad first marriage.
 

selmaborntidefan

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How about the whole thing?

Look, I don't want to get into a bunch of psychoanalysis here but like a lot of people, I have things that caused certain things that were NOT my fault
and yet I'm ultimately the one responsible.

The difficult part is the not having control but thinking you do.


I wouldn't go to med school or seminary.
Wouldn't marry who I did.

In short, my life has been a pile of stupid, some of which was my fault and some that wasn't.
 

92tide

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if i had it to do over again, i would probably take a foreign language as i made it through all of my schooling without taking any language courses. but i wouldn't change anything major.
 

TIDE-HSV

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if i had it to do over again, i would probably take a foreign language as i made it through all of my schooling without taking any language courses. but i wouldn't change anything major.
Really, really learning a language is a lonely process and is best done out of the academic setting. The only formal courses I've had are HS Latin and German Lit courses. Why do you think it's too late? I'm working on several right now...
 

Jessica4Bama

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I had a scholarship to play softball at a local community college. I also just had got engaged and I wanted to apply to nursing school as soon as I could. For some reason that I can't remember I wouldn't have been able to get into nursing school until after I finished my 2 years of playing. I ended up quitting the team before I even started. Then my relationship ended a couple months after I quit and I failed my second semester of nursing school thus leading to a change of majors.

Even though I can't do anything about the regret of not playing softball, I finally was able to kick nursing school in the butt and become a nurse earlier this year.
 

FitToBeTide

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I had a scholarship to play softball at a local community college. I also just had got engaged and I wanted to apply to nursing school as soon as I could. For some reason that I can't remember I wouldn't have been able to get into nursing school until after I finished my 2 years of playing. I ended up quitting the team before I even started. Then my relationship ended a couple months after I quit and I failed my second semester of nursing school thus leading to a change of majors.

Even though I can't do anything about the regret of not playing softball, I finally was able to kick nursing school in the butt and become a nurse earlier this year.
Good for you, Jessica. I married an RN, who later became a nurse anesthetist. It's been a wonderful, blessed-of-God decision that I would never change. One or two other things, though, I would, most definitely.
 

TIDE-HSV

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How about the whole thing?

Look, I don't want to get into a bunch of psychoanalysis here but like a lot of people, I have things that caused certain things that were NOT my fault
and yet I'm ultimately the one responsible.

The difficult part is the not having control but thinking you do.


I wouldn't go to med school or seminary.
Wouldn't marry who I did.

In short, my life has been a pile of stupid, some of which was my fault and some that wasn't.
You realize that means you wouldn't have the kid(s) you do?
 

92tide

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Really, really learning a language is a lonely process and is best done out of the academic setting. The only formal courses I've had are HS Latin and German Lit courses. Why do you think it's too late? I'm working on several right now...
i started messing with arabic a little bit several years ago but never stuck with it.
 

Bamabuzzard

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I wouldn't change anything in the "major" life categories. I married who I wanted to marry (18+ years), had as many kids as I wanted to have (5), working in the field I wanted to work in (Accounting) and haven't made any life altering bad decisions. But as far as the "little stuff" that if I had a chance to go back and "do over". I would have used my time in high school to hangout with my guy friends more and enjoy being in that stage of life rather than being consumed with being in an exclusive "serious" dating relationship.
 

selmaborntidefan

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You realize that means you wouldn't have the kid(s) you do?
Yes, I do realize that genetic technicality.

I guess I'm more just angry about the premarital phoniness.

You know, I didn't necessarily have a "lot" of second dates because for better or worse, I was who I am. The appeal of my ex was her SEEMING authenticity at the time (which always includes a level of vulnerability since we all have insecurities and dealing with them is part of being coherent) and acceptance.

Somewhere SOMETHING happened, and she has gone full (our current leader) in the most bizarre ways, that kind of person who no matter what the evidence shows will absolutely REFUSE to admit it.

She is the kind of person who could get committing a crime on videotape and would insist the video was created to frame her.

(I can't buy even at 20 years old that I was THAT stupid).

But yeah, you're correct on that little complication.
 

selmaborntidefan

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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.
 

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