When I Was Young and Foolish (a.k.a. The meanest thing I ever said.)

 “When I was young and foolish…” was the phrase that started off my favorite history lectures during my freshman year of college. It indicated that, instead of some dry slice of U. S. History that you could read about in a hundred different books, for the next hour we were having “Story Time with Dr. June,” and hearing first-hand about the life and times of our professor, June Rayfield Welch.

I still remember the stories about how – because of his first name - he was assigned to a women’s dorm when he arrived at TCU on a football scholarship, or the time when he and his friends almost successfully moved a piano up a flight of stairs, or the hot summer day (before air conditioning) he and his co-workers turned their one office fan into a “pigeon whip” in an effort to get retribution on the bird who mistook their boss for a toilet.

I tell you all this because I too was once young and foolish. And once when I was young and foolish, I made a cruel joke that I believe was the meanest thing I ever said.

I tell this story for a few reasons:

1)      In these days of social media, we often just get the highlights of people’s lives, and can forget that everyone does regrettable things. Having regrets means that we have changed (and hopefully grown.)

2)      It holds a life lesson that I believe people need to hear.

3)      It was funny. I was funny. But um, yeah, mainly the life lesson thing.

It was my last semester of undergrad and we were at a party. Now, I know what you’re probably imagining, a college party scenario, a kegger, or something. But while there may or may not have been alcohol there, my friend group never drank much. We were more likely to play Trivial Pursuit than quarters. So instead, imagine a brightly lit suburban living room and about a dozen college kids in various conversations.

I find myself talking to two people. Greg is a friend from high school, he is a freshman with a 4.0 grade point average, studying to be a physical therapist at a school across state. It was spring, so he may have been home for spring break. After all, who needs Daytona Beach when you have southeastern Wisconsin? The other person is Patty. She is a much newer friend. I met her at my college because we were both seniors who hoped to be clinical psychologists, and thus we’re active in the honor society for psychology students.

While all three of us were getting the grades necessary to achieve our dreams, clinical psychology Ph.D. programs are extremely hard to get into, and it’s not all about grades. Being active in the honor society lets programs know that we are serious about are studies, but test scores are the most important thing. And Patty and I are currently waiting for responses to our applications for the upcoming fall.

We each applied to a bunch of programs, but our approach to grad school applications were different in two key ways. The first was that she applied to a higher tier of schools than I did. She applied to schools like UCLA and Arizona State, whereas I applied to schools like the University of South Dakota and Kent State. The second important thing to note is that I took my GRE exams before I applied and that I did pretty well, while Patty took her GREs in January, after the application deadlines. She had recently received her test scores and learned that she had not done well. She knew that she would be getting rejection letters from every school to which she had applied. I, on the other hand, was on a couple of waiting lists and had an in-person interview at the University of Houston coming up.

So, like I said, Greg, Patty and I are talking at this party, and Patty learns that Greg wants to be a physical therapist. She quipped, “maybe the three of us can open an office together – a sort of mind and body shop.” Trying to be funny, I replied, “Yea, Greg and I are going to need a secretary.”

Boom. There it is. The meanest thing I ever said to anyone. During a time when my friend’s dream was crashing around her, I made a joke that implied she was not worthy of her dream. But also note, that at this time when she was getting a river of negative feedback, she was still assuming that this was only a temporary set-back. And she was right.

Patty re-took the GREs the next year and applied to less competitive master’s programs. After earning her M.A. she applied to Ph.D. programs and got in to a program at a big state university. She knew what she wanted and she found a way to get there.

Greg later encountered an obstacle on his career path. He was denied admission to the physical therapy program, even though he had maintained a perfect GPA through his first two years of college. At first, he thought that he’d show them and become a medical doctor. But then he realized that he didn’t really want to be an M.D., and instead he earned a Ph.D. in English, became an English professor, and is currently a college dean.

And while I got in to the program at Kent State, I learned that I wasn’t passionate about clinical psychology, and I left after my second year. I entered another Ph.D. program – but this one in Sociology – but only got my M.A. and have spent the last 25 years working in IT.

So, some people pursuing a dream get in through the front door and turn around and walk out. Others find that the door is locked and try a door on another street. And yet others who are met with a locked door go around to check the back door and then the windows to find any other way in. In the end, we all ended up doing alright, but at the time I only knew about front doors. What can I say, I was young and foolish.

-Jim Zaffiro