One of my grandfathers was a writer for the San Francisco Chroicle during the early days of aviation. It was his passion. For many years he lived a great life and knew all the aviators, including Ameia and Lindburg. One day colleges started turning out young men with degrees in journalism by the droves and seeds of doubt about his natural writing ability entered the picture. He decided, in his mid 40's that he was being replaced by the younger generation. However, he never stopped writing wherever he went. In Canada he wrote for the newspapers and he wrote short stories. Returning to the states he just kept on writing until the day he died. I guess one can never really give up his compass.

Amen to that! I have stated on more than one occasion that it is my wife's influence to pursue excellence, either by pursuing my engineering degree years ago or now, by going after my dream--a published author. She will tell me, however, when it becomes less of a pursuit and more of an obsession. If I'm a successful author but a failure as a husband and father, I'm still a failure.

There's probably not a day goes by I don't regret going to law school but it seemed to be the only open door at the time.

Yeah, that compass woould be nice, but when I'm orienteering I find I can never stay on a bearing for more than about 50 meters1

Eric,
I got a call last night from Michian State University, my alma mater, and of course they had some undergrad wanting to correct info in their books (also they never seem to get it completely right no matter how many times I correct it) and, of course, they want me to donate money. This young lady was pretty chatty (or I was) and she asked if I was still in microbiology and I told her no, and she asked what I was doing and I told her, and she asked me why I had majored in microbiology. I said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't, but I thought it was at the time."

I think it's unfortunate we have to make decisions like that when we're 18. Some people know exactly what they want to do early on and there's not much doubt, but I think the majority don't find out until much later. (And I'm pretty sure that a majority never find out, suggesting that they really don't want to do anything, but that's just a sad observation on human beings, I think).