As the graduating seniors know, college goes by fast. One minute, the Yellowjackets are serenading you while yellow jackets swarm your ankles as you’re moving into your dorm, and the next, you’re being transported from winery to winery, enjoying your hard-earned senior week.
Since they’ll be leaving soon, I felt that it was important to hear about the experiences of the seniors, and to see what wisdom younger students can glean from their mistakes. After asking seniors what they regret about their college experiences, the initial response was shock. Either they didn’t expect such a serious question, or they needed more time to process words through their drunken stupor. Either way, once they thought about it, they had poignant responses.
Some seniors regret their academic choices. Dan Rubery regrets that he did too much math.
Meanwhile, Antonio Cardenas had other thoughts about math.
“I regret not taking enough math classes,” he said. “Abstract math is so interesting.”
Whether underclassmen should be taking more math is inconclusive.
Others regret how they balanced their academic priorities with other priorities. Jenna Becerra regrets concentrating too much on her work, because she didn’t explore other opportunities that interested her.
“I have a research grant I never used that I got when I was accepted,” Becerra shared. “I have no idea what I would have researched, but I never even thought of it. Maybe I would have tried building a robot.”
Hannah Greenwald, on the other hand, wishes she had focused less on her other interests. Greenwald said, “I regret not being able to balance my academics and my extracurriculars equally. I put more emphasis on my extracurriculars. I wish I’d had the time to apply for a Take Five, because there were so many more classes I wanted to take.”
Perhaps students should consider whether they’d like to do a Take Five in robotics.
Other seniors’ regrets have to do more with who they spent their time with.
Megan Whalen regrets studying too much, because she would have paid more attention to her relationships, while Samantha Lienert had a different approach.
“I have no regrets,” Lienert said. “Everything I did led me to where I am, including cutting people off who I didn’t like. So I guess my regret is not cutting people off who I didn’t like sooner.”
The takeaway here is to pay more attention to your relationships, so that you can figure out who you should be cutting off.
The only instance that seniors didn’t contradict each other on? Drinking.
Marissa Martin regrets that she never went to Mex, a popular bar among UR students that closed last year. Anna Alden had a regret along the same vein. She regrets not knowing how to get “sufficiently drunk” her freshman year, because she “missed out on a whole year.”
Though their advice is sometimes contradictory, there’s one area that the Classes of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 can be certain they won’t regret come their senior year—getting wasted.
Here’s to the graduates—take this knowledge with you so you don’t make the same mistakes in the future. Cheers!
