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Damn, you're me except I did finish high school. In hindsight I very much wish I'd gotten my GED at 15 or 16 and snagged an associate's degree by age 18. Turns

Damn, you're me except I did finish high school. In hindsight I very much wish I'd gotten my GED at 15 or 16 and snagged an associate's degree by age 18. Turns out non-elite college gen-ed classes are easier and have way lower time requirements than the high school I went to (which was just, like, a totally normal high school, nothing special), so it'd have been a breeze. I had no clue about that, and just (reasonably, I think?) assumed it was even harder than what I was already doing. Could have put more time in at my tech job, which was hugely valuable to my future, too.

tailspin2019 5y ago
Although I say I wouldn’t have changed anything, I think it’s really tough to go back and reevaluate choices like this - you can never really know what alternative paths lay ahead, better or worse. I think we tell ourselves stories about how we got from A to B (like mine above) but in reality it’s never quite as simple. It’s always easier to rationalise and construct what feels like a meaningful narrative in retrospect. For all you know, the choices you made, even if they now feel slightly uniformed in retrospect may still have been 100% right for you! I suppose reflecting on my previous comment, the flip side of the situation is that I was incredibly lucky to go to a pretty good school (even though I didn’t always like it much) and the single biggest benefit I got was the utterly amazing life-long friends I made there, who are still great friends today. Those friends have had 1000% more positive impact on me than my schooling did, but I wouldn’t have met them without school.