My decision to quit my job at GE while I was a grad student. I had a part-time job at GE Research & Development in 2001, my first year of grad school. While there, I applied for the grad student program, whereby you work there about half-time, and you do your Master's Thesis on whatever you're working on. In exchange, the company pays for grad school.

Well I wasn't accepted to the program. I decided to quit the part-time job, because I now needed a new research project on which to do my Master's Thesis. And I figured I wouldn't have time to take classes, work part-time, to research, and serve as a teaching assistant to pay for grad school. Therefore, the part-time job had to go.

Flash forward two years. I never got any research project off the ground, and more or less was kicked out of grad school. I suffered through about 2 years of a very low-paying job in my field, racking up debt on about 10 different credit cards.

I'm doing fine now - I got a job at another multi-national corporation, am well paid, my debt is gone, etc. But if I had been making money for those gradschool years and the two years after, making and saving, I would be much better off now. I'd have a house at the very least, rather than continuing to rent an apartment because I can't afford a down payment.

So that's what I'd undo. I wouldn't quit the part time job at GE. I would instead apply for a full-time position, even if I couldn't get into the Master's-paying program. And if I couldn't handle school & work at the same time, I'd stop pursuing the Masters at that point, rather than when I got kicked out two years later.

I would have found a way to pursue a higher education after I graduated high school instead of marrying my first husband.