I just watched, “The Holdovers,” starring Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa. It’s set in a fictional boarding school, Barton Academy, located in New England. It’s a great film. Bittersweet and funny and thoughtful. It gloriously manifests the look and feel of New England in the early 1970s, and American Cinema in the early 1970s. Just superb.
The film’s themes and cinematography got me reflecting on my college years.
I went to the wrong undergraduate college for the wrong reasons, valued the wrong things, made bad decisions, and metaphorically steered my life into a ditch.
While in my senior year of high school I was determined to get into the “best” college possible. That meant the one with the highest academic standards as measured by conventional college ratings. I don’t remember its name, but a book back then was “the” book for mainstream college rankings. It was very thick and I think it had a red and white cover. My guidance counselor’s office had copies and I bought one to paw through at home. Totally mainstream and conventional rankings, and I bought into them without a critical appraisal. I never even considered using another source.
I didn’t visit any colleges before applying nor deciding which admission to accept. I didn’t contemplate what I wanted to get out of college. I didn’t consider small vs. large, rural vs. urban, broad vs. narrow, types of study, campus life, etc. None of that. All that mattered was which one was the “best.” Why my parents went along with this might be a story for another time.
And so I applied, was accepted, and went to a very good Massachusetts polytechnic university that was precisely the wrong one for me. I wasn’t happy there and I was clueless as to why. I made some good decisions, often by accident. But I made far more mistakes than good decisions. I lived to regret them, and I needed years to unwind them. Not months. Years. So many forks in the road where I took the wrong fork. Relationships trashed, missed opportunities, inaccurate understandings of how the world worked, inaccurate notions of my chosen career. For many years my life was a lot harder than it could or should have been. And I can never get absolution for some of the mistakes.
I also didn’t consider taking one or two gap years between high school and college. I should have, because in no shape manner or form was I emotionally ready for college. It’s fair to say I was one or two years less mature than my contemporaries. It was just how my brain was wired. So giving my mind a little more development before plunging into college (any college) would have been a much better deal. I wish I had travelled the US or abroad for a time, and then lived on my own and worked for a time. But my parents would never have gone for that, and to be fair I never ever considered it myself. So that’s all on me, too.
Both ends of the regret spectrum are unhealthy. Having zero regrets about anything you do is wrong, and so is basking in regret about past mistakes. But some regret enables us to learn. Some regret adds depth to character and gravity to our sense of ourselves. I wish I hadn’t done some of the things I did, but I’m glad I regret them because that means I realize my errors and the regret eventually makes me better. “That thing I did was stupid. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could go back in time and not do it. But it’s done. But I can do better.”
I’m in a good place, but not without a lot of broken eggs along the way. I’d do so many things differently if I could go back in time. But then maybe I’d make different mistakes. And regret those, I guess. That’s life. We make mistakes, then hopefully realize their cost, and then reflect and grow.
Seek Nuance 