I was able to get one guest poster for this week. Michelle blogs at Gotcha Baby (her personal blog) and she also contributes to Grown in My Heart, which is an adoption network.
I asked her the same question I asked my guest posters from earlier this month:
Since hindsight is 20/20, what is the best “mistake” you’ve ever made?
Thanks for participating, Michelle!!
In thinking about this prompt, I started tracing back my adult life, trying to figure why certain things happened when. Events kept going back to my college days, the friends I made, the city where I went to school (my home now), the subjects I studied, the connections I made. Clearly choosing the college I did wasn’t a mistake, but how I chose it could be considered one.
In 1990, I started looking in earnest at colleges throughout the Midwest. And by looking, I mean my parents drove me, (and often my two brothers) to small liberal arts colleges in Wisconsin, Michigan and all over Indiana. I liked a lot of them, and had my applications all ready to begin as my senior year of highs school was starting.
I remember ordering them from “easiest” (no essay) to “more detailed” (essay, references, whatever). I filled out the first one—the short form, no essay one from a little school in Indianapolis, sent it off and thought I’d start on an essay for the others once I school got started. So senior year started—I was editor of the yearbook (I spent two class periods a day in the yearbook office), stage manager for the fall musical, and ironically enough, involved in Homecoming that fall. The essay and other applications fell by the way side as I a got busy with my very involved life as a senior in high school.
I was accepted and offered a good financial aid package from Marian College all before Halloween. I spent a weekend there, with students in December. It seemed like a good place, a nice, non-scary liberal arts college that my parents liked.
And honestly, I was too busy (as only seventeen yr olds can be) to finish filling out the other applications or even starting the essays they all required. So I accepted Marian’s offer, without even applying to any other school. Which was a mistake, I think, since you are supposed to have a few schools picked out. Since you are supposed to compare costs and quality of instruction, quality of campus life and job placement rates.
As it turned out, I had a great college experience. I made life long friends and got a good education at a reasonable price. Oddly enough, I wrote for the paper in college, write newsletters for my classroom and blog for fun now. Essay, after essay, after essay…….
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That’s really funny! I went to UVa because I thought we’d get in-state tuition, but my parents had kept their residence Alabama because my grandparents paid for their car registration? Something weird I can’t remember. So anyway, despite having lived in Virginia for years, off and on, between being shipped other places for the Air Force, my poor parents paid out-of-state tuition for me for four years. I applied to and was accepted to Carleton College, in Minnesota, and I sometimes wonder if I’d been better acclimated to cold weather if I’d gone there or if I’d been just as whiny about the cold… Anyway, it’s good you’re not as busy now as you were when you were 17! ; )
I’m impressed you are admitting something so close to my heart! See? Laziness (or busy-ness, in your case) isn’t always a bad thing!
I was in a similar situation – looked at all the nearby colleges I’d been accepted to and what scholarships they offered. I thought my chosen would be less work (because it was smaller?? I dont’ know where I came up with that logic). Had I not chosen it, I would never had met my husband!