Regrets

Note: I am not an ingrate. I just feel like writing about some of my regrets right now. I have no idea why this happened a day or two away from Christmas. No, I'm not emo either.


As much as I try to have little to no regrets in life, there are some undeniable regrets I do have. Most of the ones I will mention here are related more to my education, and the decisions I had regarding my education. Come to think about it, my biggest regrets in life revolve around education.


I should have taken my studies a lot more serious than I did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid. In fact, I think I'm very smart. I can learn things fast and there are times I think outside the box. Unfortunately I also have a very short attention span. I get bored at school listening to the teacher, specially if the teacher is, for lack of a better term, "boring" in my eyes.


I also regret not having a direction when I was graduating from high school. Do you want to know what courses I picked when I applied for UP (University of the Philippines)? I chose, and I'm not sure if this is the correct order, Journalism, Anthropology, Biology (a quota course), and Pharmacy.  Of course, I passed and was accepted into the Pharmacy course. Something I could have used as a pre-med course had I chosen to be a doctor.


Now, Bio and Pharma are two related courses. But why Journalism and Anthropology? Well, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I graduated college. All I know was I wanted to be rich.


Which was why I chose the following courses when I applied in Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU). I can't remember them all but I believe it was Management Information Systems (MIS), Management, and some other business related courses. Of course, I passed and was top 15% of the entrance examinees. So I got MIS. But then the College sent me a letter saying since I was top 15% they felt I could handle Computer Science (CS). So I shifted to CS, thinking I could handle it.


Wrong. My attitude was not meant to survive ADMU. I got kicked out after my sophomore year because of really low grades. I didn't fail any subject (except a math subject that I passed the second time around) but my "GPA" or whatever was well below the minimum passing.


And that's one of my major regrets. Instead of challenging myself to become a doctor, I decided to go into computers. Instead of taking a relatively simple course that could open so many opportunities after graduating (like management courses) I decided to take a very specific course that could only give me one narrow career path. I believe my reasoning at the time was that since I'd be theoretically graduating by 2002, a lot of programmers would be needed to create new software after the millennium bug hit.


Wait, what?

Yup. I was stupid enough to believe that crap. And because of that I am now a 3D Artist. Because I transferred to Ateneo de Naga University (AdeNU) and it was there where I decided to take up a new course called Digital Illustration and Animation (DIA).


That's not really bad, if you were working somewhere else aside from the Philippines. My salary here is decent, I can't really complain since I am getting paid. But it wasn't what I was expecting.


You see, I never really had any plans to go abroad after graduation. I wanted to grow rich, and grow old here in the Philippines. But with the current career path I am in, that's almost an impossibility.


Do you know that some of my high school classmates are successful corporate people. They own their own houses, or nice condo units. They have their own cars. They can afford to fund any extracurricular activities they have.


And me?

I still live with my parents, even if I have a wife and a kid. I still use my mother's car. I cannot afford to buy the things I want without compromising my monthly budget, and I don't even contribute that much to the household funds.


I should have just taken a course that could have opened me to the corporate world.


This was not how I envisioned myself when I was younger. I always thought I'd have my own house by now. And my own car. And enough money to actually afford me a few luxuries.

But that's not the way it is, not yet. There is still a chance to improve my income and my way of life. There is always a chance. I just have to grab it, so that I won't end up regretting how my life ended up.


Out.