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Bryce Roberts wrote a great post yesterday describing a bookmark he was given as a gift once. It was homemade and said “I Wish I Had. I’m Glad I Did.”. He said that it was given to him to always remind him to “strive to look back and find [himself] saying ‘I’m Glad I Did’ far more frequently than ‘I Wish I Had’”.

This reminded me immediately of seven years ago, when I was deciding where to go to college. I applied to quite a few schools, but it came down to two choices. The University of Florida, where I would essentially start as a sophomore, make money every semester from scholarships, and be with most of my high school friends; or the University of Notre Dame, where I wouldn’t know anybody and definitely would not have a free ride. I spent weeks trying to decide. One of my best friends (who was going to UF) told me something I still haven’t forgotten: “Go where you can never regret not having gone” (or something like that). That one sentence essentially decided it for me. I chose Notre Dame so that I could never say “I wish I had”.

And that decision was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. If I didn’t go to Notre Dame, I never would have learned what “engineering” was. And if I never learned what engineering was, I never would have learned about computer science. And if I never learned about computer science, my life and career would be in a completely different place right now.

I think that Bryce’s quote, and my friend’s advice, suggest a great way to live your life. This is especially true when thinking about your career and relationships. I took my friend’s advice when I was picking my college, but I don’t think I am taking that advice in my career so far. Hopefully that will change soon. I don’t want to look back on my career five or ten years from now and think to myself, “I wish I had…”. I hope to live with no regrets. To take chances. When deciding between something crazy and something comfortable, to go crazy! You only live your life here on Earth for a limited time, so make the most of it.

For those who don’t know, I just recently returned from a three-week trip to Europe (explaining my lack of blogging). I had a blast with my fiance, traveling through Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain. I’m not even going to attempt to sum up my trip here (check out my Everlater blog to see everything we did), but want to share a few observations and thoughts after three weeks outside the U.S.

• Ireland is beautiful and the people are very nice. Ireland was, by far, our favorite country that we visited. It didn’t rain at all while we were there, which was very nice. We saw the “big city” of Dublin and the more rural west coast - both were great. Guinness truly does taste different (and better!) there and the pubs were so much fun to go to.
• The French are not nearly as snooty as I expected. Jenny knows a little French, so we (well she) started every conversation attempting to speak French and nobody was ever rude to us.
• Gelato is AMAZING. We had gelato at least twice a day during our entire week in Italy and I loved every single serving I got. My favorite was kiwi gelato from a place called Carabe in Florence.
• It is pretty incredible how it is just as expensive to purchase wine or beer when you go out as it is to get water. Sodas are even more expensive. We had lunch at a bar in Madrid where beer, wine, soda, and water each cost €1.50. That is definitely not the case here in the U.S.!
• Root beer (my favorite soda) is definitely an American thing. There were a couple things that I was craving by the time we got back home and one was a good can of root beer. (If you are wondering, the other was a Steak n Shake meal from Steak n Shake … cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla malt!)
• Speaking of American, I learned in Paris that we are the only people who consider our continent as North and South America - the rest of the world apparently calls our entire continent “America.”
• Bathrooms in Europe are tiny! We stayed mostly in hostels, but only two of the five hotels we stayed at had full-size bathrooms. The rest were basically the size of a broom closet - enough room to stand in the middle with the toilet, sink, and shower surrounding you.

That’s all I’ve got for now. It was truly an amazing trip. I absolutely loved getting to know each and every new city we stayed in and especially liked the places where we had to try to use our non-English skills to communicate. I can’t wait to go on another trip like that again.