Thursday, August 5, 2010

If I Could Do it Over...

I love Mama's Kat's Writer's Workshops.  They really get me thinking about events in my life, things I'd like to do, etc.  This one was odd though because I was having a hard time picking a topic.  This subject won out when I pulled a number out of a coffee mug.

1.) If you could do it over again…

The problem with this is, I would not want to do many things over because I believe that the teeniest, tiniest change can alter an entire life.  That scares me a little.  If I had changed my path by one footprint, one small decision to skip rather than run or walk things could be very different, better, worse, etc.  Then I thought about what I would WANT to be different and went backwards from there.

I came up with one thing:

I wish I had switched majors in college. 

I kick myself every day for this.  I got to a point in school where Marine Biology was not doing it for me anymore.  I didn't like the professors (they were oh so high and mighty with that #3 school in the country for Marin Bio label), I didn't like the fact that there were almost no jobs with only an undergrad degree (more school!  WHAT!?) and I hated the fact that for each science course I had to take a lab with an other 3 plus hours a week for only 1 credit.  I was also taking geology courses but I think I liked the subject more than the thought of actually getting a degree in it.  All I wanted to do was get out of school.  I am not sure if it was just because I was in major I didn't love anymore or if it was because at the age of 19 or 20 I wasn't ready to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life.  I truly think it's the last thing.  I mean lets face it, it took me until I was 35 to figure out how to deal with my hair.  How was I supposed to figure out my entire life at 19?

Hind-sight being 20/20 I would have done exactly what another friend had done, drop the science and major in something in the English department.  Even then I loved to write and I loved me some literature.  I didn't have her guts though (love ya L!).  I still don't.  I was afraid to make a change like that for fear of facing the same ire from my parents when I suggested to them that I take a semester off.  It is so funny (not ha ha funny by any stretch) to look back on it now because I could have told them and worked it out.  I have only myself to blame...

and to fix.

Maybe it's time I started looking at what I can do about what I WANT to do...what I could do if I HAVE (not had) the chance to do it over again.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

I suppose there are tons of things I would do differently if I could go back....
Or maybe not.

I guess it would all depend on whether I could retain the knowledge I gained from my initial mistakes.

Oh, and I majored in English. You're right -- it's such a non-specific thing that one could probably apply it just about anywhere.

Los said...

I was an engineering major freshman year in college ... I realized then that I hated physics and calculus.