When you look back over your life choices and the roads you traveled, what would you tell your "younger" self?

Interesting question. In high school I wanted to take auto shop, a vocational track. My dad wouldn’t allow it, he wanted me to go to college. Intentionally, I didn’t work very hard on school work until my junior and senior years. I realized my dad wouldn’t give in.
I really didn’t know what I wanted to study. I chose Phys Ed. Actually, I majored in beer drinking and women with a minor in class cutting. I couldn’t find a position in the area of the country I wanted to live, so I hung sheetrock. Then I went to truck driving school and was hauling hogs, cattle, and horses.
While I was doing that I met my wife, we married and she found a job in Franklin, VA.
I couldn’t find a job so I went and applied at the hospital to be an orderly.
They also had an LPN program, so to get hired as an orderly I also enrolled in the LPN program.
I worked in a couple different hospitals and eventually was able to get into a BS Nursing program.
After graduated, I was given a direct commission in the USAF. After 2 1/2 years I was selected for the Nurse Anesthesia program. I finally found where I belonged. I had a very successful AF and civilian anesthesia professional.

The only thing I could tell them would be to weather the storms coming. I certainly wouldn't tell them to change things because if I did that, then what I have now and what I am now would not come to pass. Those storms shaped me to what I am today; a better husband, a better father, a better Soldier and a better Leader.

I think I am going to jump in and answer my own question. Back in 1978 I was a "follower". The majority of friends I had were party kids. In college, they all spent their time in the student lounge playing pool. I did not want to be known as "book worm" so I trotted along with the hangout crowd, to have friends.

My grades started slipping to "Ds". The "friends" said, "don't worry about grades, we are going to get passing grades if we never go to class". Some professors did just that, issued passing grades to serial class skippers. That semester I had one of those professors. But, the next semester I had a real no nonsense professor. She gave out passing grades to certain failures but others, she made them learn the material (statistics). I had skipped so much class, all I could do was stare at the book. She came over to me and said, "don't worry you will pass because I have been told to pass you with a B". She told me I did not have to come back to class.

I went away feeling deserted because she did not care to grill me like she did the other students. I sit and thought to myself, " she is hard on the white students and is making them learn but she is giving me a gradeI have not earned, WHY? Then I paid attention to the environment. Black students were getting As and Bs not going to class and white students were in study groups, had tutors, getting Fs until they could do the work.

Long story short, I dropped out of community college. Someone told me the Army took dumb people. I wanted to go to the Marine Corps. So I thought I was dumb. I took the ASVAB and get this, I scored high enough to go Air Force, Navy, Army, Coast Guard and I missed the Corps by 1 point.

I realized society expected nothing from me and there were never free lunches. I chose the Navy. I crawled my way to being the best of the best. I was accepted into the Enlisted Commissioning Program, I got accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill, I earned a letter of Commendation and many other awards, I earned an AS degree onboard the USS Puget Sound AD-38, now decommissioned. I passed on the ECP and discharged from the Navy. I went back to that Community College and earned an AA Liberal Arts College Transfer. I attended North Carolina Central University and graduated with BS Business Administration and Management with a Concentration in Computer Information Systems. Then as a disabled veteran, I went back to that Community College and earned a 2 year ASE diploma in Auto Mechanics, for a leisure activity.

There are no free lunches. Outside of hardwork and effort there is no real accomplishment.