I feel like I would make use of it more if I could do it again. Maybe that’s weird, I don’t know.
Edit; To ask more of a question. What would you do differently?
Frankly, the further one grows past the school age, the more (I’ve found) one finds that all that was only practice for the actual schooling. Keep getting smarter, and never stop learning! 🤘🏼
I’ve sometimes thought along the lines of OP, and for me it was thinking about opportunities that were available back then. One could get a better head start in life by doing better in school or applying for the right program, or even just switching to the right career path sooner.
What’s nice though is that we might someday want to jump back to where we are right now, and we can take advantage of our current opportunities too :)
To quote a recent bit of dark AF insight: “Kids these days say ‘when I grow up, I wanna—’ Nah. It’s 70F in Dec. You ain’t growing up, son.”
On the other hand, nostalgia is a golden-haloed liar. The only “good times” are right fucking now. Live your life in the present, not the cherry-picked & misremembered past.
It’d be nice to do the whole childhood over again but with parents who loved me.
This is the only thing that would make me say no. I could relive the shitty school years, I could not relive the shitty home years.
I laughed, then cried
Honestly, no.
I learned a lot in school and I retained a hell of a lot of it, but from middle school onward I wasn’t a good student because I had absolutely no interest in doing homework, reports, reading the books I was assigned, projects, etc. so I scraped by skipping as much of that as I could.
I ended up in a profession where I don’t need a degree, and I’m not rolling in it, but the job security and benefits are amazing (county government job,) I’m making an OK living, I enjoy the work I do as much as I’m capable of enjoying any job, and I’m happy to stick this out until I can retire.
The things I wish I learned better in school are things like trig, which would be nice because I’ve developed a little interest in things like machining, but would only ever want to pursue that as a hobby, not professionally, so no great loss there. Frankly though, my school’s math program sucked and I’ve probably taught myself more math from casually watching a couple YouTube videos than I would have learned in a decade of high school math classes there.
The things people love to complain about not learning in school- finance, politics, etc. I think I have a pretty solid handle on. Maybe I’m better wired to put those pieces together than they are, maybe my parents did a good job of teaching me that themselves, maybe those people are idiots, maybe some combination of all of those things or none at all.
A lot of my best friends today and even my wife I can trace directly back to sitting next to and goofing off with one guy in a history class at community college before I dropped out. If I’d been a better student I may have gone to a 4-year college, or maybe would have taken different classes, or just fucked around less and never hit it off with him, and my life would be drastically different. It’s probably even likely I wouldn’t have found the current job that I really like, I stumbled onto it by chance while I was living in an apartment with my wife (then girlfriend) and a roommate.
And without a lot of those life experiences I had in the decade or so after school, I don’t know that I’d be able to do the job I do now, I don’t think I would have been able to cut it fresh out of high school, I definitely needed those shitty jobs, misadventures, etc. to mold me into the person I am, and I’m overall pretty happy with that person.
Not that there aren’t things I’d do differently given the chance, but not enough that I’d want a total do-over. Just give me a chance to go back and slap younger me upside the head once in a while to get him to exercise more or brush our teeth a little more diligently and I’ll take it, but there’s a lot of mistakes I had to make along the way, and I don’t want to interfere with any of those cannon events.
The things I wish I learned better in school are things like trig, which would be nice because I’ve developed a little interest in things like machining
I see that you’ve watched some videos, and you should definitely continue that. I teach HS physics, but I never took an actual trig class because of an administrative quirk. I thought I had this huge gap in trig but eventually I realized that there’s just not that much. You can definitely teach yourself trig!
Khan Academy is great, but the secret sauce is in really trying to understand WHY you get some of these problems wrong. If you really spend some time trying to find each mistake, and thinking about what exactly makes it a mistake, you’ll be all set.
Hell no
Fuck no that sounds awful
Youth is wasted on the young, and wisdom is wasted on the old.
What I always think about whenever this sort of question comes up is how it would be super awkward having an adult brain but having to interact with children as peers
That’s how I remember highschool being. I wouldn’t want to repeat it.
Elementary school was even worse, as I had almost zero agency. At least I was able to help my kids through that humiliating process where they often knew more than the teacher about a subject but still had to follow the learning process du jour.
I’ve always thought that school was more about learning how to interact with difficult people than about enriching personal knowledge. That bit happens at home if it happens at all.
Fuuck no! While there sure are thing I miss about my childhood and teenage years school isn’t one of those. School fucking sucked.
On one hand I wish I’d handled a lot of it differently and studied more. On the other hand I’m not sure how much I’d realistically have been able to change considering what I needed was medication and accommodations that just weren’t going to happen, so instead I’d just be putting myself into when my trauma happened and being more vulnerable, which doesn’t sound like a great idea.
I studied well, got a really good tertiary ranking (95th percentile) and chose a degree program that seemed good. I hated that course. Didn’t finish it. If I hadn’t had that experience I would probably make the same mistake again.
Hell yes. Go back with all my masterful adult experience and knowledge, so I could own that place. It would be glorious.
Or I’d still get bullied into non existence. Kids are still way meaner than me, even as a grizzled grown up….
School? No. University: Maybe.
It’s never too late to learn things. Read some books, visit a library and get the standard literature. It’s not as easy as if you were learning as a kid, because adults have other things to do and it’s difficult to muster up the time… But I still like to broaden my perspective and learn new things. And I admire people who are like 65 and choose to attend some university course or learn a new music instrument.
Turning back time isn’t an option. So think about what you actually want and go for it. There probably is a way if you really want to…
when i was about 10 or so we moved to a new neighborhood. obviously that meant exploring the new area, and making new friends. the first people i met in that area lived down the road from me. two of my new friends were brothers, one a bit older than the other, both several years older than me. they had a neighbor, who was my age, and we attended 3rd grade together.
the older brother was a bit wiser and kinder, the younger brother could be a bit bullheaded at times. when i was about 15, i left to live with my dad. those 5 or so years seemed so incredibly formative on my upbringing, for good or bad. around that time the younger brother died in a car wreck, and i really hadn’t spent much time with them since i moved away.
to this day, i remember something the older brother taught me, which was to try to learn something new everyday. you won’t always succeed, but it’s still important to try.
i’m 40. the amount of time i lived there was really only about 1/8th of my life. but i still try to learn something new everyday.
I can relate to that. It’s fascinating that even limited time with some people provides us with something lasting for life.
I think there is really quite some truth to it. We adults oftentimes are captured within our daily grind. And you have to pay attention.
With all my knowledge intact? Hell yes! I’d keep all that bitcoin instead of spending tens of thousands of it (about £100) on Silk Road in uni.
4 Bitcoins for an 8th? Bargain!
Did you have no knowledge of tact back then? 🧌
Aha good spot
I don’t think it would change much, I have a problem focusing and studying, and 20 years ago ADHD was still a “hit him/yell at him until he studies”.
No, I imagine I’d be twice as bored the second time around.
Not school generally, but definitely university. Turns out giving an 18 year old total agency with very little accountability doesn’t really set you up for success. I got through (mostly because a close friend kicked my ass), but was a terrible student and am still filling in gaps in my skills a decade later
I’m an August baby so was the youngest of my cohort going into uni and while I’ve done ok I do wonder if I’d have done a bit better academically if I hadn’t been so distracted by all the other things on offer to a independent 18 year old.
