2013 Meme: Topic # 15 -- one big mistake
Day 15: If you could go back and correct one big mistake, would you, or are you content with where it's led you? Are the good times generally worth the bad?
Hm. Big mistakes.
1) Turning in my grad school application late, and subsequently being told by the Chair of the History Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia that if I'd had it in on time, *I* would have been the recipient of that year's Huggins Fellowship, with an enormous yearly stipend attached, instead of the actual recipient. Psych!
2) Not pushing to finish my dissertation, even if I would 95% likely still have become a teacher in public schools and not an academic. I would still have liked to complete the project. And no, before you ask me, I couldn't complete it now, during the summer(s). It would require at least a year on sabbatical with no need to earn money. So I can do it when I retire.
3) Going out with the asshole I was going out with when I started the LJ, now almost ten years ago. That mistake I wish I could go back and correct. I have not continued to associate with many toxic people in my life, but man, that was one. A YEAR wasted on that. The few funny anecdotes I got from it, I could do without easily. And there's nothing else in my life that would have been negatively affected by not making that mistake. I would still be doing what I am doing now, though possibly in better mental and emotional shape.
That's about it. I feel like that's not a huge number of serious mistakes -- am I forgetting or sublimating some?
Hm. Big mistakes.
1) Turning in my grad school application late, and subsequently being told by the Chair of the History Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia that if I'd had it in on time, *I* would have been the recipient of that year's Huggins Fellowship, with an enormous yearly stipend attached, instead of the actual recipient. Psych!
2) Not pushing to finish my dissertation, even if I would 95% likely still have become a teacher in public schools and not an academic. I would still have liked to complete the project. And no, before you ask me, I couldn't complete it now, during the summer(s). It would require at least a year on sabbatical with no need to earn money. So I can do it when I retire.
3) Going out with the asshole I was going out with when I started the LJ, now almost ten years ago. That mistake I wish I could go back and correct. I have not continued to associate with many toxic people in my life, but man, that was one. A YEAR wasted on that. The few funny anecdotes I got from it, I could do without easily. And there's nothing else in my life that would have been negatively affected by not making that mistake. I would still be doing what I am doing now, though possibly in better mental and emotional shape.
That's about it. I feel like that's not a huge number of serious mistakes -- am I forgetting or sublimating some?