Looking back on my teenage years, I can now realize how silly I was in my choice of high school electives. Teenage Me was never that big on long-term planning. Frankly, Adult Me isn't that into it, either. However, I'm feeling let down by my lack of foresight as a 16-18 year old.
Let me begin by saying that I don't remember too much of my high school years. Frankly, I was more interested in one particular fella through all of sophomore year and kind of lost track of anything else going on in the place. By junior and senior year I was tired of being in high school and just wanted to get out. Also, I was working and wasn't paying much attention to class choices. I took whatever I felt like taking. My high school was not a super academically-challenging place to begin with and I chose easier classes than I could have. I don't regret any class on my high school transcript more than a shorthand notetaking class. I needed an elective and there one was. At the time, I told myself that it would be a great way to learn to take notes for later courses and in college. This was not true. Learning a shorthand language is no real help in any course that I found myself in. It wasn't necessary. I would have been just as fine in college without my knowledge that a 't' in shorthand is just an 'i' without the dot on the top.
If Teenage Me had been more of a long-term planner, and a practical one at that, she would have looked more at the shop classes or a car mechanics class. One thing my high school had going for it was that there was a career center attached to it. I completely ignored this aspect of my school, and that was dumb. Adult Me, who owns a house that needs handy-work on it sometimes and who also relies on an older model car to get her all over kingdom come nearly every day, could have really benefited from the skills Teenage Me would have learned in said classes at the career center. I don't know if the career center still offers those types of classes any longer and if they're available for adults like me who made goofy-ass choices in their high school days and now can't figure out why a car is stalling out on the entrance ramp to a highway on her way to work.
I would just feel better knowing more about the mechanics of the vehicle I rely upon every day. And I'd also just like to have a better understanding of the workings of my home. I don't need to become a plumber or electrician or carpenter or car mechanic. I just want to be able to speak with those people in a knowledgeable way. I loathe going to a car mechanic alone because they always tell me stuff that I have no idea what they're talking about and then I can't remember the exact words when I get someplace to look it all up. I don't know whether I'm being taken advantage of or not. Same thing goes with handy-work on the house. I can get a quote from several different handy-folks, but in the end, I still don't know what they're talking about.
Teenage Me never really imagined that I would become Adult Me, and therein lies the problem.
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