Was talking about home economics as a school subject in another thread and i realised that for me personally, taking “Food Tech” (cookery gcse) would have impacted me pretty negatively, even though generally speaking GCSEs don’t have much of an effect on the rest of your life or education.
So i wonder if anyone else has similar revelations? My post title is also phrased more openly than that, so it doesn’t have to be school specific, but i am mainly interested in things from the teenage time period.
Another choice i made in HS, for instance: i remember being really glad to have a medium-size group of friends in high school, but in retrospect they were terrible people and i realise that there would have been huge benefits to spending more time alone and in the library - yes, i genuinely look back and wish i studied more, lol. Something which I'm always told never happens.
This one “affects me as an adult” because i ended up entering adulthood with several friends determined to force their personality to be cool, relying on manosphere influencers to determine how they should behave; a lot of these people i didn’t want to know in the first place.
decided to start smoking weed in high school
now as an adult i vape it every day
it helps me out with so much. zero regrets
Probably most of them, at least in small “butterfly effect” ways. But mostly, I paid attention in class and remember how to think without having to have answers spoon fed to me. So many people I work with, of a variety of age groups, just seem to lack that skill.
You mentioned home economics, and I only had to take one semester as a required elective (yes, you read that right) and just kind of coasted through it. While I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I appreciate knowing how to use a sewing kit to make small repairs. I’ve patched several holes in my favorite “lounging around the house” robe and extended its life probably 3 times.
I didn’t start getting stoned out of my mind until my late 30s so I guess my brain developed normally.
Go me.
I didn’t start until I was almost 40! But I think I’ve more than caught up for lost time.
I smoked weed in high school, a fair bit lol, I was definitely considered one of the “stoner kids” of the school.
In my 20’s I stopped for the most part (only a joint here or there, maybe 2 or 3 times max per year), many of the kids I went to school with that were all anti drugs and anti drinking as kids became hard drug addicts in their 20’s.
Now in my 30’s I smoke again, much easier now that I can comfortably afford this habit
Huge win!!!
The things you THOUGHT were the most important, never matter at all, but everything that you considered background noise (school, family, jobs, morals and values) that shit will determine EVERYTHING that happens after high school.
The elective classes I chose played a huge part in who I became. More so than friendships or cringey moments or anything that happened in the mandatory classes.
I took home ec and made crappy fried rice and sewed an apron with the pattern upside down. I thought it was lame at the time. Today I cook every day and I can sew well enough to fix things. They are ridiculously valuable skills.
I took electronics and made a dumb little siren that pitched up and down when you held down a button. Once every couple of years, I need some simple bit of electronics and I design a circuit board, etch it onto copper, and solder on some components. If I hadn’t chosen that elective classes, I’d think that sort of thing was super advanced.
The hilariously basic “IT” class (I made a PowerPoint slideshow with animation and fart sound effects) is probably responsible for me having a career in software development.
Give me back my fucking taco!
All of them and none of them
The wise Jesuaurus has spoken.
I feel like so many of my days don’t actually contribute to the grander life narrative, myself - it’s a bit frustrating.
I know the solution though
Go on…
Less time playing video games, more time shaking up the routine. New tasks you don’t do regularly make the day feel longer.
Good stuff! For me, that’s figuring out how to automate as much as I can of my everyday tasks, both at work and home, with my poor coding skills, haha.
I wish I’d stuck with the vocational classes and ignored the utter morons I was surrounded by.
I could have made a killing and been retired by now, but I thought I was too smart and went to college, got in a bunch of debt, and crushed my soul in advertising and web dev for my best years.
did those classes had post-hs training? the pseudo-vocaitonal class i was i was woodwork, teaches you how to properly measure, cut wood etc. the teacher did try hard to keep the course from being cancelled for future semesters, but people wasnt interested for the most part in doing the class only the bare minimum.
I was getting apprentice credit I could have used to shorten an apprenticeship after graduation, but I dropped the box classes senior year and went to college for design instead.
I eventually ended up using a tiny bit of the knowledge for interactive museum and store front installations, but I’d have made a killing in commercial electrician work in the mean time.
Same. Last year of sixth form, when we’re applying for unis i was given really bad guidance for where to apply. I saw an apprenticeship for my degree and thought “if i can get paid for it, why not get paid for it??” But didn’t look into it any further because i was lazy. Wish i was grtting paid for my suffering right now.
Having an abortion. It was probably the one good decision I made for several years, and the only one not informed by chaos and despair. I mourned on the day for years, but have had zero regrets.
Declining an ADHD-evaluation. I didn’t think having another diagnosis would help, nor understand the symptoms enough to think I had it, and thought it would only work against me because of the stigma (certain jobs, licenses etc). This is probably the one I regret the most. It could have changed so many of the other choices.
Those are probably the ones that single handedly would have impacted my life the most if made different.
certain jobs, licenses
Wait, how? I thought you’re legally allowed to hold the diagnosis from them, or am I misunderstanding?
It probably depends on where you’re from, but you for example couldn’t do military training or become a pilot with a diagnosis, and you needed a doctors note that you were reliably medicated for a long time to be allowed a driving learners permit. Some things have changed since then though, since this was decades ago.
Pretty crazy that they used to encourage people to stay undiagnosed and unmedicated to go into dangerous careers, rather than the other way around.
Oh, right, okay, you meant mission-critical stuff. I was thinking of the ADA Act and the “No response” option when job applications ask if you have a disability.
I had to choose an elective in 9th grade. Nothing looked interesting except for drafting, but I sucked at drawing. I took the drafting class.
Now it’s ~25 years later and I can go around town and point out the buildings I had a hand in designing.
I spent the entirety of my high school years dating one girl, at the time I was in the thick of things and didn’t realize it, but it wasn’t until we broke up that I realized how disfunctional we/she were and made me realize that my life with her was the exact opposite of everything I wanted out of life.
I spent five years with her and was on a fast track to a very different life, and I hopped off that train at the very last moment.
I refuse to argue with my wife, I try to be compassionate to those around me, strive for financial stability, and take care of my body and mind. All things I didn’t have with my first real girlfriend from high school.
Furthermore her constant pregnancy scares (yes I wore protection, every time.) taught me that I have zero urge to be a parent. Every time she told me she might be expecting, but subsequently refused to take a pregnancy test, my entire existence was filled with dread. I couldn’t contemplate a single possibility where having a child resulted in anything good.
That might be my biggest visible ‘scar’ from those days the circumstances of my life and finances are drastically different, but that revelation remains consistent.
So your lady is also child-free? That’s awesome and rare.
I refuse to argue with my wife.
I’m curious to get more details about this.
My brother dated a gal that did that pregnancy scare crap. He was with her for three years. Even if you wanted a kid one day, at that time even, nobody wants a kid or pregnancy like that. Glad you got out of that situation. I only have experience with the person that did it to my brother but she was very controlling, abusive, and unhinged if she happened to not be the center of attention in whatever room she happened to grace with her presence.
I chose languages instead of the science side because I was told to do so because I was a girl. So now I’m an unemployed translator instead of a doctor.
you can be by going into stem too, alot of paths in stem are very unclear and fuzzy, and most of them significant experience to even get into. currently the most “useful” stem is basically programming, nursing, and some other health jobs. every other stems requires alot of research and lab experience.
I regret spending so much time playing sports. I didn’t have enough time to figure out what I like and what I’m good at and where those things intersect so now I’m just kinda adrift as an adult. My parents forced me to play though because they were shitheads that thought my not terribly athletic self would get a full ride college scholarship through hard work so I had zero financial support for college as well, I was just glad to escape their manipulative bullshit. The lesson I should have learned was that natural talent beats hard work every time, it sucks.
most people arnt informed alot of scholarship, grants go unawareded and dont need significant gpa achievements to get. its probably the fault of High school not preparing people properly on financial aid.
Only one: dropping out. Best choice I ever made.
Interesting!
How so?
It put me on a path where I did what I liked doing, instead of what I was supposed to do. Today I get paid handsomely for a set of niche skills in IT that are hard to find. If I’d gone the normal route I would probably instead have been confined to being some sort of corporate sysadmin that spends most of the day fixing people’s email.
None. Every year at school was so boring I forgot what happened, but I don’t care since I had to learn everything on my own way after it happened.
same, they shunted all the poor performers into “Baby sitting class” so the school doesnt get bad marks and lose funding. its a game to them, plus all the participation grades, albiet less severe than it was today. we were at the beggining of the stages of that happening.(still had ton of summer school to graduate people. these days likely they are passing people who are failing regardless.
:(
Don’t be sad, I forgave everyone and I now have almost the life I wanted :)
I had a friend who discouraged me from going into software development after highschool. I was always into computers, but math isn’t really my thing - I would definitely have crashed and burned fast if I tried to study computer science at university. Years later I ended up doing a trade school ‘degree’ (German Ausbildung) in software dev, though, and that worked really well for me.
My professional life isn’t going well due to medical reasons, though. There’s a possibility that I could have avoided the worst of that if I never went to university and just went to trade school right away, my university years kinda fucked me up.
Good on your friend! I was in the same boat, but was encouraged to go to uni and very much regret it at this point.
That’s too bad. I hope you can recover.
