Regrets...we all have a few!

When we look back in life, we always have some things we wished we had done differently. It could be something small that we think could’ve made a big difference down the road or maybe something we totally misjudged. For me, my biggest regret was not trying harder in school. I was never the best student in middle or high school. In fact, I just did just enough to scrape by most of the time. I always thought that the lesson or assignment “wasn’t important” or “didn’t matter” and, often, I kept putting off the schoolwork.

Nearly every day in high school instead of paying attention in class, I would be looking at ESPN, or Facebook, or doing a random sport quiz. I’ve always been the “sports guy” in my town. Whenever someone needed a sports question to be answered, I was the guy they would ask. But that was also a problem. I was so focused on sports, I wasn’t doing any schoolwork, or paying attention in class.

While I recognized that I have some academic prowess, like the ability to multiply double digit numbers in my head without a calculator, I always chose to focus on sports and not academics. One day, this really smart kid, who was on honor roll, asked me a question about football. I answered him, he said thank you, and then added “if you were to put as much effort into school as you did into sports you would be going to Harvard on scholarship”. I took that as a backhanded compliment at the time, but in retrospect, it should have been a wake-up call.

After high school, I ended up going to Hofstra to pursue a career path in radio. Hofstra is a pretty good school with a strong radio program, but even back then I felt I could have done better. While there, I started to see the error of my ways. I thought I could get by doing the same things I had done in high school. But I couldn’t. In fact, it led me into a deep spiral of many problems. I was put on academic probation and I was doing terrible in all my classes. I started to get depressed and overwhelmed. There were some days I wouldn’t even go to class. It also hampered my social life because I was so far behind, I couldn’t hang out with friends.

At the end of my first year, I dropped out of Hofstra and went to Bergen Community College instead. That was when I started to take my academics seriously. I ended my two years at BCC with Honors, and then I was able to choose from a variety of excellent colleges.

I chose Rutgers because of strong academic reputation, live radio program and proximity to home. My dad went to Rutgers Law School and we always went to the games and tailgates so I felt comfortable here too. I have absolutely no regrets!

I also took the lessons I learned at Hofstra and used them to help me make choices about my social life and academics here at Rutgers. Sometimes your biggest regrets could end as a blessing in disguise. Or proof that we all have a unique path to go down. Either way I’m happy with how it worked out for me in the end.