Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Best: college and grad school choice, who I married. Worst: decisions about when/how to become a parent

Mile-high club?

lol, fertility treatment, foster care/adoption, timing, etc. Wound up without kids and mostly content with that but sometimes sad.

Best: joining the debate team. I didn't realize I was intelligent and capable until I joined, and then I started caring about school more, which led to college and grad school. I am the first person in my family even to start college, and I graduated undergrad and grad school summa cum laude after getting poor grades in middle school and only slightly above average grades in high school.

Anonymous wrote:Worst: quitting a job before I had another one lined up. I quit because in order to stay I'd have to commute about an hour each way and didn't want to. I thought it'd be so easy to find another job but it wasn't. I was out of work for two years and burned through all my savings.

Best: learning to be direct (while not being mean) and setting boundaries. Learning to call my mother only at the very end of my lunch hour - otherwise she'd keep me on the phone for ages. But if I said "Ok my lunch hour is over - I have to go back to work now" she somehow understood that and would say goodbye. (She's dead now, so it's a non-issue but this gave me a ton of stress while she was alive.)

+1 Applies to almost anyone you might call.

Marrying dh was best. Not staying at my boarding school job with free room and board and private school for my dcs was the worst. I should have sucked up my unhappiness for the advantages it would have offered.

Best: staying at home w my kids
Worst: staying at home w my kids

I loved that time with them and it made our family run very smoothly, but now I’m divorcing and have no career.

Worst: waiting years (until my late 30s) before trying for kids. I ended up having to undergo extensive fertility treatment and ultimately got pregnant via ivf. We have the family that we want now, but it was a hard and costly journey to get here.

Best: Taking my time after college to figure out my next step instead of jumping straight into grad school like many of my friends did. I ended up quitting a comfortable job in my late 20s to go to grad school in a different city and completely changing my career.

Anonymous wrote:Worst: quitting a job before I had another one lined up. I quit because in order to stay I'd have to commute about an hour each way and didn't want to. I thought it'd be so easy to find another job but it wasn't. I was out of work for two years and burned through all my savings.

Best: learning to be direct (while not being mean) and setting boundaries. Learning to call my mother only at the very end of my lunch hour - otherwise she'd keep me on the phone for ages. But if I said "Ok my lunch hour is over - I have to go back to work now" she somehow understood that and would say goodbye. (She's dead now, so it's a non-issue but this gave me a ton of stress while she was alive.)

Oh, I forgot two more bests!
1. Learning to make small talk. I practiced on hair dressers, because ... captive audience. I still brought a book, because hairdryers are loud, but learned to chat about casual things that aren't personal and ask questions. I did not have this skill until my 30's.
2. Learning to ignore my parents and go with my instincts. My parents had this "worry about yourself - don't worry about other people" attitude. I got yelled at if I asked if we should tell someone their headlights were on, for example, because my bedroom wasn't clean. Now as an adult, if it's a hot day and a kid is waiting on the stairs locked out, outside my apartment I feel free to give them a bottle of cold water. Even if my laundry isn't folded. I gave a work-friend an encouraging card last week because she's been struggling, even though my kitchen was a wreck. One has nothing to do with the other.

Worst: quitting a job before I had another one lined up. I quit because in order to stay I'd have to commute about an hour each way and didn't want to. I thought it'd be so easy to find another job but it wasn't. I was out of work for two years and burned through all my savings.

Best: learning to be direct (while not being mean) and setting boundaries. Learning to call my mother only at the very end of my lunch hour - otherwise she'd keep me on the phone for ages. But if I said "Ok my lunch hour is over - I have to go back to work now" she somehow understood that and would say goodbye. (She's dead now, so it's a non-issue but this gave me a ton of stress while she was alive.)

Best: buying real estate - fixer uppers in up and coming neighborhoods. Then, when the the neighborhood gets “discovered”, I sell and repeat somewhere else. Did this three times. Also best - choosing my occupation and investing max in my 401K since I was 22.

Worst - marrying my first husband. I love my kids that resulted, but I lost some of the best years of my life to that marriage.

Echoing college/grad school choice, and marrying DH. Adding career/field choice (this was a risky one), a major cross-country move that fast-tracked my career, and choosing not to have children.

Anonymous wrote:Best: college and grad school choice, who I married. Worst: decisions about when/how to become a parent

Mile-high club?

Marrying DH Felt like I didn't really have a choice in the matter at all at a very young age. I knew something was very off and a miss but nothing I could do about it now its decades later and it's been a horrible disaster in many ways yet he's a really good friend of mine so my feelings are very confused. I love him as a human being but don't know that I'm in love with him.

Best: college and grad school choice, who I married. Worst: decisions about when/how to become a parent

Marrying DH. I knew at the time I shouldn't, but I thought I would fall in love with him over time - like an arranged marriage (it wasn't.) Now it has been 25y. I love him, but I have never been in love with him. We have a nice life and are great co-parents, but I wonder what a different life would have been like.

I am curious about other people's good and bad decisions in life.