If you could re-do your studenthood experience, would you?

I’ve gotten into wonderful show called Being Erica.  It is about a young woman – Erica – who has her life falling all over the place and gets an unexpected, bizarre but wonderful opportunity to fix up her life in exchange for attending therapy. In the therapy, she writes up a “list of regrets” – a list of decisions, choices or actions she’s undertaken in the past which she feels have been poor decisions. Some of the regrets are small mistakes, others are big, wrong decisions which, if she had taken another avenue, could have changed her life completely. What is very special about this therapy is that, in every session, Erica’s therapist, Dr. Tom, sends her back to the past, to re-live and re-experience that regret.

In rare instances, Erica is able to change the past – but most of the time, the re-living of her regret is meant to be a learning experience. She has an opportunity to try taking a different avenue, even temporarily, and it helps her to come to terms with her own decision and regret.

As students, there are many instances where we make a decision and later come to regret them – wish that we could go back and see what the other opportunity could have  been like. Continue reading →