Any of my regrets are social, not academic. I was a focused young person and did well in high school and worked hard in university.
However, I remember lots of interactions and behaviours that are mostly embarrassing and make me feel great sympathy for my younger self.
It’s not a point-in-time thing, but it took me until my last year or so of college to actually learn to do the math about the best way to spend my studying and assignment time.
I remember when it actually hit me; I was spending a LOT of time working on this one Networks and Distributed computing class project that was worth 5% of my grade, when I figured out that based on my previous coursework and exam scores, there was no way I could make an A in the course (he didn’t curve), and unless I utterly failed my final with like a 10% grade, there was little chance I’d make a C in the course.
I promptly turned in what I’d done to that point on the 5% project, went and drank beer with friends, got a B on the final and a B in the class.
Prior to that point, I hadn’t done a good job of concentrating my effort on the classes that I could actually change my grades in, or in the courses where I could keep an A. I spent way too much time trying like Don Quixote to make that one-in-a-million A in a really tough class, while blowing easy As in easier classes, coming out worse overall as a result.
Had I had a more pragmatic and relentless triage system like that from the very beginning, I’d have done better overall AND had more time to socialize, etc… If nothing else, I’d have quit trying to pull out last-second Hail Marys via the final or final project, and just go have fun instead.
It’s what I did in graduate school, and I did extremely well GPA-wise as a result.
In college-not going to see Moe Howard when he came to speak. I was feeling haughty and decided the Three Stooges were for elementary school children. Those who sent it was good, although you had to write down questions for Moe. One student brought a pie and got Moe to shove it in his face.
Oh, a wise guy, eh?
Looking back, I made a few 
Overall though, I am happy with where I ended up
As an incoming college freshman, I was signed up for a double major, engineering and arts. During the first week of school, I was called into the engineering dean’s office and informed that the engineering school didn’t allow that particular double major because it would interfere with engineering studies. So I dropped the arts and majored in engineering partly because my dad always urged me to pursue a professional degree for the money, but it turned out that I was better suited for the arts degree as my main interest in high school was in the arts rather than sciences.
Here’s the irony though. My dean was also my childhood next-door neighbor, and he himself minored in arts while pursuing an engineering degree, as did my dad who also minored in arts while pursuing an advanced degree, and they were good friends who sometimes mutually pursued the arts as a hobby. After I graduated from college, my dad spoke with pride about being the only non-arts major in his school with a minor in arts. My dad didn’t really like his job, and maybe had regrets about not pursuing the arts as a career.
I think if the dean had allowed me to go with the double major for a couple semesters, I would have eventually pursued an arts degree and would at least be teaching somewhere, but instead I had an undecided major and drifted into a degree that didn’t suit me, and haven’t had much of a career. I had another opportunity to switch to an arts major during my junior year, being encouraged by an arts professor to do so, but didn’t make the switch.
I’d have to say it was not keeping up with my French. I’d had five years of it in school, and got a high enough score on my SAT to be exempt from the language requirement but man, I’d like to be fluent.
At my uni, only language majors could do junior year abroad. A friend actually transferred to another school for a semester to do her year. All my other friends from high school went abroad for the junior years at their colleges and they spent half the time meeting up with each other. And sending me postcards to rub it in.
I got there eventually though and turns out, the French don’t mind if you speak it badly.
Drink. I’ ve got 2 degrees and because of my sprees it took more than 20 years to earn what I could have gotten in 6.
Worst decision was dropping out of college halfway through my sophomore year because I didn’t think I needed a college degree to be successful. Best decision was going back to college 7 years later, getting the degree and becoming successful.
Probably not doing a better job in picking a major but then again, I had no idea at age 18 what I wanted to go into.
In high school probably not handling bullies better.
A summer photography course where the prof was boffing one of the students.
As for EVERYONE! But no idea how to use a camera or darkroom.
Taking a couple of random courses in my senior year, then realizing that had I taken two particular math courses, I could have graduated with a second bachelors’ degree.
Not taking a year off between high school and college was a mistake for me. I partied way to hard in my freshman year. If you added the GPA from my first 2 semesters together, it was about 1.5.
Dropping out when I had 5 credits left to get an associates degree.
Taking the first couple years of French twice, and still not being able to speak french. Should have taken wood shop, or Spanish.
Going on to major in music, which has amounted to nothing in my life, rather than stage production. I was on the stage crew and loved it; I had no idea that I could study it in college and get work as a set, lighting or audio technician in a theater, which I would have loved.
Chose the wrong graduate school. Mind you: with the information I had, there weren’t that many other viable options, but damnit, Boston U, it would have been nice of you to send me the information I asked for (what did I need to get into their PhD program in Chemistry) and not what you though I’d like! (double Masters in Business Management from Boston and Chem Eng from MIT… which I would have loved but had no way to pay for, and they sent it without any information on what to do to get in anyway).
Going, period.
I begged my mother to send me to private school - I even offered to pay for it myself. She wouldn’t hear of it. In her mind, sending your child to a government high school was the absolute BEST thing a parent could do for a smart kid. The socialization! The diversity! The teachers who want to Make A Difference.
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 know 3 different people that dropped out of high school, during their 12th grade year.
My worst decision was probably not getting more involved in extracurriculars, at 3:18 I wanted to be anywhere but school.
I graduated from high school two weeks after my 16th birthday, so when I headed off to college I was, shall we say, still a bit malleable.
I went to the college my mother wanted me to attend - private, small, all-girl school. Essentially more of a finishing school than a college, if you scratched the surface a bit, although the programs they offered had a fair degree of academic rigor.
Being that I was a tomboy, an athlete, underaged and a bit of a geek, I was the target of every mean girl in the place. I lasted one long miserable year. When I came home that summer, I flatly refused to return to school at all unless I could transfer. She relented and I transferred to a large public university where the remaining three years of my education were indeed the happiest years of my life (as the adage goes).
That one awful year left its indelible impression on me. I’ve never since felt comfortable with groups of women.
First two years of college, I had no idea what I wanted to study, and I was only very loosely aware that eventually I’d want to get a job, or into grad school, or anything else. I didn’t fail out or anything, but let’s just say that the habits that got me straight As in high school didn’t get me that much at a highly competitive university. I did right the ship and I’ve turned out fine, but given my particular majors and career path, I probably could have taken a three year “shortcut” if I had cared about my grades the first two years. Maybe next life!