Looking back on your life, what would you have done differently?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Fascinating question. Becoming a moderator was a terrible mistake.

No, seriously now…

I find, looking back over 39 years, that I regret things I didn’t do, not things I did. Times that I was proactive or took chances, I am glad I did, even if the result wasn’t entirely successful. Times I was timid, I regret.

So the main thing I’d change is that I would have left my home town to go to school. I grew up in Kingston, Ontario, and went to the home town university, Queen’s. Queen’s is a wonderful school, one of the very best in Canada. It was an awful mistake. It was too easy, too simple, and didn’t challenge me enough. It didn’t broaden my horizons enough, didn’t show me enough new things.

If I could go back and change one thing, I would have never applied there; I would have bitten and clawed my way into Columbia. (My grades were plenty good enough) and gone to school in New York City. If not Columbia, NYU or some other big city school far away. I would have ended up with more debt but vastly improved myself as a person, learned more, grown more, and enjoyed school more.

62

Practiced baseball (i.e., took it more seriously) more than I did.

Gone to school for Computer Science. I showed an aptitude for it in HS some 26-27 years ago, but the plan for me was always to become a doctor. That did not work out well. Ended up with a degree in Chemistry, a field in which I never worked.

Gone to the local college out of high school where I had a full boat, rather than go away to school for a year and fail miserably.

As someone else said, manage my weight better.

Those are a few of the things.