Like many first generation college kids I did not have the parental guidance when it came to applying for College and the High School College councilors were useless. I look back and wonder if I had better preparation I would have achieved more during my working years and would be passing Grey Poupon instead of clipping coupons.
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No-Pain Résumé
I celebrated yesterday
By getting totally smashed.
My online Ph.D. came through
--But today the diploma crashed!
So how'll I sweeten my résumé,
Which needs a solid degree?
I know--I'll do a Google search
And buy a GED.
I celebrated yesterday
By getting totally smashed.
My online Ph.D. came through
--But today the diploma crashed!
So how'll I sweeten my résumé,
Which needs a solid degree?
I know--I'll do a Google search
And buy a GED.
4
No regrets about High School -- but having to take the Geometry Regents twice still haunts me till this day....
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I do not have any "regrets" about high school. I had an opportunity to go to an excellent private Catholic high school and my mom let me chose to go to the local public high school because there were boys there. I think regrets are a waste of time. I prefer to search and open my heart for insights into the past so that my present may be full of more intelligence, awareness, and courage to life my life with full compassion, kindness, and grace. I am about to be 65 years old.
6
I have regrets, but they are about things over which I had no control. I wish I hadn't been poor. I wish I hadn't had an extraordinarily difficult home life. I wish I hadn't been a female and a minority in an incredibly sexist and racist society, although I thought then that it was on the verge of changing.
Thinking about the past isn't illuminating. That's why I try not to do regret.
Thinking about the past isn't illuminating. That's why I try not to do regret.
3
To me, regret is appropriate only when at the time you had sufficient information and resources to have made a manifestly better decision. Most people, when making important decisions, examine their options and then take a leap. By a certain age, many of us have a list of things we wish hadn't happened. Regret is different.
2
Good point, Lifelong Reader. According to your thoughtful definition, I regret probably three things I've done in my life. That seems like a lot.
1
Free breakfast. . .free lunch. . .is the City running a school system or a cruise line?
1
You've never had public school meals, have you? It's a far cry from cruise buffets.
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Jerry--
You have that right. I can still remember the congealed tapioca. You could stick the plastic spoon into it and pull the entire content out of the cup without it ever separating. The cinnamon powder never came off of the top either. I do not recall anyone ever eating one.
You have that right. I can still remember the congealed tapioca. You could stick the plastic spoon into it and pull the entire content out of the cup without it ever separating. The cinnamon powder never came off of the top either. I do not recall anyone ever eating one.
1
You're in NYC, are you really unaware how these rising rents may be effecting some of our fellow residents???
3
Annette Herwander - you are so right ! - i keep telling my son who is starting high school - that this time in life is the best, but also the toughest. You must have the courage to do what you truly love, and not do what everyone else is doing !
1
I wish I had not lived in the closet until I was 40. then again, it was the 80s and my reticence may have saved my life.
7
RIP Stephen Fybish; if you can do one thing really well in life, you are a success.
9
From the In The News section: “Lunch at public schools in the city will be available free of charge to all 1.1 million students... ”
Though I know the program's needed - Where was this free lunch program when I was in school? Bad timing, I guess. :)
“What I Did for,Lunch” - tune of “What I Did for Love” (the ultimate "don’t regret" song, at least that I can think of)
Kiss that dough goodbye, each meal cost me a dollar
I burned my allowance through
So I won’t forget –
What I paid for lunch, what I paid for lunch
Look, we can’t deny / the fuel to be a scholar
It’s just what we have to do
But I’m still upset –
That I paid for lunch, that I paid for lunch
Gone, all that money’s gone
I thought I'd moved on
Right now, I remember
Kiss that cash goodbye, the voices seem to holler
And now my taxes pay for you -
I’m upset, can’t forget
What I did for lunch, what I did for lunch
Though I know the program's needed - Where was this free lunch program when I was in school? Bad timing, I guess. :)
“What I Did for,Lunch” - tune of “What I Did for Love” (the ultimate "don’t regret" song, at least that I can think of)
Kiss that dough goodbye, each meal cost me a dollar
I burned my allowance through
So I won’t forget –
What I paid for lunch, what I paid for lunch
Look, we can’t deny / the fuel to be a scholar
It’s just what we have to do
But I’m still upset –
That I paid for lunch, that I paid for lunch
Gone, all that money’s gone
I thought I'd moved on
Right now, I remember
Kiss that cash goodbye, the voices seem to holler
And now my taxes pay for you -
I’m upset, can’t forget
What I did for lunch, what I did for lunch
6
1) Graduate early and start College/University sooner. 2) Insist on better Academic Advising.
1
@Kim Susan Foster...hard to tell from how you wrote your comment, so do you regret that you did not graduate early and start college sooner? Because I did graduate early and I regret doing that and not starting college at the same time as my classmates. Besides being younger than all my college mates, I ended up losing touch with my high school mates, too. It was lonely.
3
Shawn's Mom - I did something similar. Combined senior year high school with most of first year college. I had my Masters a month after I was 20, then started law school at 20. Looking back, I wonder why I was in such a hurry!!! I would tell high school students not to be in such a rush, I think.
4
I regret being raped by high school jocks. Remembering freezes me to the extent I find it impossible to move a muscle. I desperately need quiet. But my work with adolescent boys (always more suspicious than drug dealing) is rarely quiet. They have been raped, too. Our biggest struggle is to survive. We all carry some kind of feeling that it was our fault. Personally, I shot myself with a gun, blowing my guts out, but lived. If you can call it that. It messed me up in school, it messed me up in relationships, and it forced me to look squarely at the fact that the number of boys being raped has increased, and is gaining on the numbers of victimized females; it's clear that the numbers will be equal. In high school, no one would discuss being raped, and they deeply resented my existence. I INSISTED I be released from being forced to be anywhere near those boys. I was accommodated, but that accommodation was never considered related to crimes. Administration was steadfastly not liable. Several years later sexual crimes were committed in those very stair wells -- rape is a legacy -- and this time people went to jail. My "friends" thought rape was funny, it wasn't funny, and it was NOT my fault. Rape is not sex in high school or anywhere else. I regret high school, all of it, I regret living in that community, I regret my family, learning was hard, I regret teachers who looked the other way, I regret death threats I get for bringing the subject of boy rape into a public context.
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