Excellent points, aussieexchange. I have often thought that foresight would come in quite handy, and have also wished for a convenient lightning bolt to write a note in my dinner salad to help me make difficult decisions. However, I must admit that I am of the camp that I have learned just as much from the decisions I regret (never say “bad”) as the decisions that I made that turned out well. One of the most powerful things that I learned in college came from a psych professor that looked exactly like the mice in her experiments, and regarded a theory whose name I have long forgotten. However, the essence of the lesson was powerful.
If you want to continue to grow, learn, and progress in life, you must consider the borders of your knowledge, and their permeability, carefully. Picture yourself and what you know about a specific boss, for example. If you think of what you know about “Roger” when you first started working with him, you would have believed anything. Your borders of knowledge were completely permeable. If someone told you he was about to win a Nobel, or about to be arrested for embezzlement, you would consider it equally likely to be true. As you get to know Roger, your borders of knowledge SHOULD become less permeable. Now when someone tells you a new piece of information, you can judge it more carefully. If it is out of character, and turns out true, your borders will change again to include it. However, if it seems out of character, you may do some research before assuming that it is true and believing it.
You didn’t make a mistake picking UCR. You had a plan based on what you thought you wanted. As you learned, your borders were permeable enough to realize that medicine was not for you. That is a STRENGTH not a weakness. The people who get in trouble are those whose borders are rigid (e.g. I don’t care if I hate science I still want to be a doctor) or excessively permeable (e.g. my new girlfriend doesn’t like doctors and the program is time consuming). These are the people that miss new lessons, become rigid and stuck in another time period in their opinions, and are unhappy.
Think permeability, look back on your good choices as well as your bad, and you will be fine!
That’s enough philosophy for a morning…