Death, Feuds, and Naked Career Ambitions

Regret Now Vol V

It’s been about a month since we last spilled the tea, and I feel like I’ve lived a whole life in the intervening weeks. I went on an extended family trip to Japan, started a feud with yet another academic (why am I like this?), and was set straight by a good friend and mentor. Oh yeah, I also had an email exchange about dying with Zeke Emanuel of Brothers Emanuel fame.

I’ll gossip with you about all of this, but as usual for this regular feature, my darkest thoughts will be behind the paywall where I am truly free to be me. I know this feature is supposed to be about regrets, so when did it turn into a bitchfest? My wife is right: I’m a yenta at heart.

As usual, we’ll start by sharing some of your anonymous confessions. If you’re new, the Regret Project is where I asked you to share things you regretted, moments where you wish you could do over. It's like therapy, but cheaper and with no actual therapeutic value. You can still contribute to the Regret Project if you like, and I’ll publish a few of your submissions once per month. You submit these through an anonymous form, and I promise I have no idea who you are.

The Regret Project

Now, let's dive into this month's regrets. Our first regret comes from Cordial Castoff, who really got into it and wrote a short dissertation of 1,600 words. This is longer than some of my posts, so I asked ChatGPT to edit this down to a more manageable size.

One summer in college, I landed my first real academic job: a research assistant in a big psych lab running a massive study on aging. I worked hard, kept my head down, and took it seriously—too seriously, maybe. I didn’t bond with my peers much, and by mid-summer, I was eating lunch alone in my car. At the end of the summer, the coordinators gave out jokey superlatives. I waited eagerly. After months of professionalism and diligence, I was dubbed… “most cordial.” It was crushing. To them, I was just the quiet, polite one. I hadn’t made a single real connection.

Determined to shake that image, I joined the group for a night of drinking before our final day. We were underage, but I knew the bouncer at the bar and got in. I drank. A lot. We danced. Drank more. Then, in a burst of chaos and bad judgment, many of us—colleagues, coworkers—went streaking, running naked through the night. I blacked out on my walk home and woke up face-down in the street, covered in dirt and vomit, being loaded into an ambulance by my freshman-year RA, now an EMT. Hours later, I was released from the hospital and barely made it to our final meeting. I threw up in the bathroom, missed the group photo, and realized that everyone there had seen me naked.

I regret taking the job too seriously. I regret trying to prove myself through excess. And I regret missing that photo. But mostly, I regret caring so much about what a bunch of undergrads thought of me that I ended up proving them wrong in all the worst ways.

Sorry to everyone who had to see me naked. No one deserves that.

Am I mean for thinking this is a hilarious story? As someone who laughs easily at himself—I was recently voted "most likely to be made fun of" by my family—I hope you can laugh at yourself after all this time (or maybe this just happened?). You've given us the perfect academic origin story: from "most cordial" to "most nude." There's something beautifully symmetrical about your journey from eating lunch alone in your car to lying face-down in the street with your freshman RA witnessing your dignity's final departure. But seriously, I hope you're not judging yourself too harshly. Isn't this what college is also supposed to be about? Not that I'd wish this specific misadventure on young people, but taking risks and emerging mostly unscathed is practically a curriculum requirement. When I think back to my university days at McGill, it's hijinks like these that stand out in my memory. Thanks for sharing your story, Cordial Castoff, and for the morning laugh.

Given the length, I’ll share only one regret this month. But please submit more if you want me to continue with this feature. Submit regrets here.