# Worst decision you ever made in school
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [January 9, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370 "2015-01-09T03:01:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2015, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370/41 "2015-01-12T22:03:13Z")
Listening to the school counselors who claimed that I was incapable of learning a foreign language. Three districts later, the counselors started urging me to take a foreign language. Signed up for Spanish I in my junior year of high school and Spanish II as a senior; learned enough to get by in conversation with native speakers.
Forgot most of it over the past 25 years due to being out of practice.
---
### Author:  [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2015, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370/42 "2015-01-12T23:43:07Z")
My biggest mistake was trying to take Calculus as a Freshman and Physical Chemistry as a senior. PhysChem seemed like nothing but Calculus that I hadn’t even thought about for three years.
This was right at the end of my aspirations as a biochemist anyway, but for a few weeks, I struggle to re-learn calculus while trying to keep up with the main class. With two lab sections (literally 30 hrs/week in classrooms) and a part-time job, it was just plain impossible to do it all and I dropped out of the course about halfway through.
Of course, one could say that pursuing chemistry itself was the biggest mistake. Once I realized what the accounting profession was like (a long story there), it was so obvious that it was the perfect fit for me. The problem is that the high-school me was given a skewed view of some career alternatives by well-meaning teachers who nevertheless seemed to want to vicariously fulfill their own personal ambitions rather than take into account what I should really be doing to fulfill my own goals.
---
### Author:  [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2015, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370/43 "2015-01-13T19:43:41Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#):
>
> She refused to believe me when I told her that I seriously feared for me life in high school; that I got the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis; and that the principal had absolutely no interest in my complaints because, as a Bright Kid™ who wasn’t living up to his potential by getting good grades and making my high school look good, he didn’t give a damn.
>
> At the time, I didn’t know that there was such a thing as the GED. Mammahomie sure as hell wasn’t going to tell me about it, and this was before the internet so it’s not like I could have found out about it on my own.
>
> Looking back, the best thing I could have done was dropped out, gotten my GED (I could have aced it without even taking a prep course), and gone to tech school. Instead, I suffered through it (I still carry a chip on my shoulder from the experience to this day), went to college (because that’s what Bright Kids™ do), and made a series of bad decisions that I’m still living with to this day.
I’ll definitely echo this. I feel I finally ended up ok now, but I guess I probably got set behind in life/career at least 5 years, maybe even 10 years.
Within this, during my spell in college I wish that I had done internships, apprenticeships, etc. Guidance advisors at my university were beyond clueless about the realities of post-graduation job searching and hiring.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-decision-you-ever-made-in-school/709370.md?page=2)