If you could be 16 again...

[MountPheasant]

...but with your current brain and life experience, what would you do differently?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and for very superficial reasons 😅. Late Feb, I was in a bar and I ran into a guy I fancied at school. He was very drunk and basically told me he had fancied me too, the whole time- as had a friend of his, who I ALSO fancied.

I was about a stone overweight the whole time I was at school, very self conscious about it, and also had a terrible father, so was shy with men. As a result I spent a lot of time reading by myself and hiding from my peers. I was convinced no guy would ever fancy me and would have run scared if they had shown interest anyway! I gained a lot of confidence at Uni and am now happily married, but this interaction keeps making me think- if only I had the confidence I have now, I would have had the nerve to approach one of those guys, and my school memories would have been a lot more interesting than reading in the bathroom!

Aside from being more confident with guys, I also wish I had taken up some form of boxing or martial arts (again, being overweight stopped me), didn’t quit my piano lessons, and had carried on French to A level instead of dropping it at GCSE.

I am trying to rectify the ‘lost time’ currently and am curious what other people would do if they could go back and give themselves some wisdom!

I would have had a completely different attitude my education. I didn't think I was very clever at all . I came from a very poor working class family and lived on a council estate and even though I passed my eleven plus and went to top grammar school ( chosen by my father ) I just felt second class and dim.
Most of my classmates came from well off middle class families and I felt totally inferior the whole time that I was there. I didn't work at school cos I thought that it was pointless and I wouldn't be able to achieve attending university as no one in our whole extended family had achieved this.
This was all in the 1960s . In the 70s I married and had 3 children in very quick succession. At 32 I got a job as a hospital cleaner , later became a care assistant in the same hospital but was encouraged by my workmates to apply to train as a nurse . I did the entrance test and was told that my results were high enough for me to become a member of MENSA !
So obviously I'm not as dim as I thought and I'm sorry that I didn't go to university.
Saying that I had a career as a nurse and had a good life. I'm 67 now , my husband died 13 years ago but I have 3 lovely children who are now mid forties with their own families. I can't complain

Absolutely nothing, it’s been a bumpy road, but very happy about where I ended up (24 years later).

But god no, I would not want to be 16 again. I remember being miserable and hating life at 16 and one day having a conversation with myself where I said, “look, this is all shit, but one day you will have such a happier life and you’ll look back and all this will seem like not a big deal, even though right now it’s pretty shit.”

I was right. It did get better. And nothing back then was as important as it seemed at the time.