Go back in time...

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I'd like to know who would like to go back in time to their high school, or even earlier, years. I know that I've changed so much and learned so much since then, that I'd have a completely different life if given the chance, and I'm fairly certain it would be for the better. Not that my life is so horrible, now. I'm not actually doing too badly. Anyway... Would you take the chance?

You can choose to go back to any time you really want, but the catch is that it has to be at least 10 years back. Keep in mind that you'd have to live that 10 years (or more) all over again, and you couldn't do shifty things like catch the nasdaq bubble or bet on the super bowl.

Kindergarten, rebuild my social life from scratch. Not that I have one now, but that's beside the point.

Plus, it would be kind of nice to know Calculus as a seven year old.

A trivial yes. Getting ten extra years of life, being much younger but with all one's present knowledge, and having an opportunity to substantially build on that knowledge by the time you get back to where you were - what's not to like?

i dont think i would wnat to go back in time, i feel whats done is done, i regret some stuff but that stuff made me apart of who i am, i wish i could prevent some stuff happening to me, but im afraid if i go back in time and change something itll mess up the present time even worse for me.

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Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated

I voted no as well.

I agree with Blindspot.

I would, and have always thought this way.

-If I did want to meet the people I knew the first time around, I know where they live.
-The opportunities I let pass would be available again for my interests and career.
-I would have knowledge of how to deal with stress and overload in better ways, and my body was stronger then, so I'd generally be happier.
-I'd get to take Saturday art classes at school again and this time would not allow the school to lose all my work.
-I would get to talk to my chemistry teacher again.
-I also preferred the music and TV. However, the internet would not be available to me until after I'd left school.
-I would know that all the hypochondria turned out to be nothing in the end.
-Bad relationships could be avoided and the time put to more productive use.
-I'd take on some extracurricular activities and not drop the ones I did before my exams.

Going back in time to earlier adulthood could be fun and helpful (now I already know by heart the things I was just learning in college, so that would be easier). Going back to childhood would be awful. Why? Because I'd be a child and would be expected to interact with other children as peers and not to interact with adults as peers. After several decades of being peers with adults, not children, the shift would be horribly difficult to make. Then there is the problem of parents. Although you are never really peers with your parents, the relationship between a 40 year old and parents is far different from the relationship between a 10 year old and parents. If I went back to any time prior to highschool graduation, they would be trying very hard to raise me in their interactions while in my mind that sort of "we are raising you" relationship ended decades ago and has changed to an adult relationship and is slowly heading towards a caretaker relationship as my middle age is matched by their elderliness. That shift cvould unhinge me, even more than having to talk to unrelated adults as though I honestly didn't understand what sex and death were all about, as well as money, jobs, divorce and all the other things adults feel uncomfortable talking to kids about.

^ This is a fantasy, though, so we don't have to take paradoxes etc. into account.

Thinking of a friend's view on childhood (she had a terrible one), "the one better thing about being a child was that you believed people when they said it would get better".

I could start doing things my parents knew I'd like but didn't 'cause I was busy (watching TV).

Now I'd like to go to dance classes, or drama classes, but have no time and have to pay for them myself.

Going to dance classes or swimming lessons as a young kid would work pretty well, too. It's not so cool once you're old.

Having already learned what I did on college, I could focus on something else (perhaps I'd still get the degree on software engineering, though, because I like my job, and without the degree it's not so easy to get a good job).

I don't think I'd attempt to change anything - as has been pointed out, any alteration in the past would disrupt everything that followed and change the future as well, not necessarily for the better. I know we're just talking fantasy, but even in fantasy, some rules must apply.

Truth be told, there are some moments I'd like to relive, knowing what I know now, in the sense that rather than trying to alter them, I'd like the opportunity to relish them, as they were so fleeting in the moment and I didn't know how important they were going to be to me until much later.

Many of them are now so bittersweet, I know they would break my heart all over again, this time for myriad and quite different reasons. Still, how wonderful it would be to stand in those moments one more time - the touches, the sounds, the smells, the people. To embrace them, knowing how special they are - not just at that instant, but forever.

Even the emotional wounds and all the accompanying suffering would all be worth it, perhaps because knowing what I know now, I understand WHY those moments HAD to be the way they were.