There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.

What's a mistake you made that changed you, or your life, for the better? How so?

There was another child in my elementary school bullying and giving me a very hard time every day, this went on for about a month and it was making me not want to attend school. It wasn't braveness on my part but out of pure fear, I proceeded to knee him in the crotch as hard as possible.

His response wasn't what I expected. He didn't rebound towards me and beat me up. He ran straight to the teacher and I spent an hour in a detention room getting yelled at for violence.

It definitely taught me bullies are just cowards, and I was never afraid to stand up for myself again when I felt it was necessary. He also left me alone and never bothered me again.

I was required to take a science class at university, and chose intro to plant biology. I initially wished I had taken the astronomy class instead, because the biology one was grueling, though it was supposed to be an entry level class. The professor just drilled us constantly with very hard tests, and pop quizzes, so much reading, huge books to finish in short intervals of time that I could not keep up with--this wasn't my field of study, so many lab reports to write, and she graded mercilessly, a lot of the students barely passed by the skins of our teeth. I was going to extra credit lectures and turning in additional papers, staying up hours late into the night doing homework and still got a C as the final grade. I also had some drama where my partner for one of the projects dropped out of class, and I had to do the entire assignment alone. It was a living nightmare, I was so glad for this semester to be over. The science books were all expensive. I spent 800 dollars I couldn't afford to get all my supplies, not to mention it just wasn't interesting to me overall, I thought those three hours hearing her talk at the white board every week were so boring and passing by in tortuous slow motion. I just didn't see a lot of opportunities to make learning exciting and fresh with this class.

While part of me regrets taking this class, there was something I guess I got out of it that would have a lasting impact on me. The course was about the relationship between plants and people, and one of the dozen or so books on the syllabus was,The Omnivore's Dillemma, which made me more aware of the corruption within the food industry, particularly factory farms. Now I didn't even agree with the hypothesis of the books author, Michael Pollan. I think we need to do more than just eat locally-sourced food to do what is best for the environment, but he got me at least thinking more about what I ate, and the book was a catalyst for me to do research of my own outside of class, and as a result I would convert to vegetarianism, which evolved last year into veganism, and I think had I not taken that class I may never have begun this journey, or maybe I would have eventually, but making dietary changes when I did was definitely beneficial to my physical health, and may have added many years onto my life.

The the bio class was more trouble than I expected it to be, in a round about way it was a stepping stone to something that was very positive for me.

ZeoStar said:

There was another child in my elementary school bullying and giving me a very hard time every day, this went on for about a month and it was making me not want to attend school. It wasn't braveness on my part but out of pure fear, I proceeded to knee him in the crotch as hard as possible.

His response wasn't what I expected. He didn't rebound towards me and beat me up. He ran straight to the teacher and I spent an hour in a detention room getting yelled at for violence.

It definitely taught me bullies are just cowards, and I was never afraid to stand up for myself again when I felt it was necessary. He also left me alone and never bothered me again.

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Love how the victims get punished. I was always punished when I tried retaliating against my many bullies. Eventually I just lost my will.