For those of you 21 years-of-age or older, what is the single biggest mistake you've made in your life?

Sending my kids to public school

Not starting to save sooner I'd have been out if the rat race by now had I started investing 10 years sooner.

3-16 wrote:

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Not doing as well in medical school secondary to depression and other issues and not being able to practice my desired specialty.

Investing (and ultimately losing) substantial personal wealth in the stock market

the five minutes of my life that I spent reading this thread.

Spending time on LetsRun asking questions that mean nothing

had an affair

Cheated on my wife. Broke up my marriage, hurt my kids, and sucked me dry, emotionally and financially. That was 4 years ago and I'm finally picking up the pieces.

Is "over 21" really the time to start thinking about your mistakes? You've barely scratched the surface of your potential mistake making.

I'm 37. Joined the army when I was 32...probably should gone the officer route, but was going to go enlisted then officer in a couple years...then the age limit changed

Made some professional mistakes/debacles over the years.

Was initially a fine arts major, then exercise science. My standard of living is much higher now than most anything I could have done with either of those degrees.

Should have gone and ran for Indiana State instead of Eastern Kentucky.

Really though I have no regrets. Life's choices are opportunities. I have a beautiful wife and daughter because of the choices I've made. I have a career I am very good at. Theres a lot of bs and a lot of dumb stuff I shake my head at but my work has been rewarded as well as being rewarding.

Alan

I made many mistakes but things are pretty good right now. Maybe some of those mistakes helped me to become the person I am now and helped me to be in the place I am now.

So I don't know if I would risk not doing those mistakes if I had the chance for a redo. So were my mistakes, in the grand picture of my life, really mistakes?

I'm going through that exact thing right now. The amount of material they pile on you is insane. I knew med school would make demands of my time, but it has taken over my life. My depression was triggered really bad by a girl yesterday now Im just too tired to study. We have a break coming up and I will have to study all thoughout that to catch up. But at least you are still a doctor right? What specialty are you practicing?

notsatisfieddude wrote:

3-16 wrote:

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Not doing as well in medical school secondary to depression and other issues and not being able to practice my desired specialty.

I'm 56 and I've learned to accept my "mistakes" not as mistakes but as part of life.

The truth is, every decision I've ever made led me to where I am now.

I'm happy- I have a wife of 30 years who I love and wouldn't want to live without and two grown children who are happy adults.

I did some stupid things, made mistakes but I am here now.

I guess the only thing I would change are the mistakes (minor) I made as a father- maybe I got mad when I shouldn't have, the normal things. But my kids respect and love me as adults so I guess I wasn't all bad.

a combo of not taking running seriously earlier to get into a bigger better school/not taking academics seriously(still had a 3.7gpa, 1200SAT) to get into a bigger better school.

Not applying myself to academics the first two years of college. I almost flunked out. I made the Dean's list my last 2 years of school (after I learned that I actually had to study), but I couldn't catch up my overall GPA. It's like 2.95 or something like that. Embarrassing, really. I wish I would have hit the books at 18 & 19.

Not marrying my wife earlier. We should have gotten married a year and a half earlier, but we bought into the social crap of "you should be engaged for xx amount of time". Life would have been soooo much less stressful if we had just gotten married.

Not taking enough pictures of life events through college. Of course, digital photography didn't exist, buts still, I wish I had taken more pictures. I don't have enough of my wife from back then. Sigh...

Not traveling more before I had kids. I am just now to the point where I can travel with my kids (and keep my sanity) now that they are tweeners. I wish I were seeing some of these places a second time rather than the first.

I am 48. I wasted a lot of time in my 20s partying without a real direction. I should have gone in the USMC like my father did. I think it would have made me a more disciplined person at that age. 4 years there would have been better for me than the time I wasted after college. That is the only one I can think of.

Maybe being socially manipulative and a huge ass to my college girlfriend to the point she broke up with me. Thats more of a series of mistakes though.

Or it could have been making a left turn through incoming traffic when I thought I had just enough room and ending up wrecking my car. $7500 down the drain because I just couldn't wait 3-5 mins.

Or it could have been transferring out of one of the top public universities in the country so I could run for a rinky dink D3 school.

Hindsight's 20/20 unless you're James Kirk slingshotting around the gravity well of a neutron star-black hole binary.

for me studying was a waist of time

today at work a guy got me to stand on a pallet so he could pick it up with a forklift

only time i ever used my arts degree

Lost wrote:

I am very thankful for the relationships, travel, experiences, and success that I did achieve, but there is also a part that asks, "What about the bar scene, hanging out, and girls."

The more I think about it...I sure we all have our "What ifs..."

If that's your biggest regret, you didn't miss much. Drinking and hanging out isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I'm 47.

I wasn't a good HS student. I just did enough to get by. I probably graduated with a 2.? GPA and I know I was as smart as any of the the top 5 in my class.

I was just very lazy and unmotivated in that area. I was able to go to college, but I spent 2 yrs catching up because of my lazy HS ways. I went to college woefully unprepared. Because of this I was very limited in what school I could attend and what major I could chose.

All in all it limited my trajectory in life. Luckily things have worked out very well for me, but I could have done even more.