This is gonna sound fucked up bc it absolutely was but I only learned that women are people when I was like 15 maybe 16. By that I mean complex and interesting in a way deserving of respect and patience. I was a shitty kid who grew up around a lot of misogyny. Learning this earlier would have saved women in my life a lot of trouble and grief they didn't deserve. There are a lot of people I'll never be able to make it up to and I think about them a lot tbh. I wish I could find 2 of them to atleast say sorry.

On a less consequential note though, I wish I had learned how interesting history can be far earlier. I spend the majority of my undergrad on physics which I liked to think about but didn't actually enjoy doing very often. I struggled heavily compared to my peers especially as I came to realize most of the uses for my degree would betray the morals I was developing at the time. My interest in the subject remained but my motivation to be good at it plummeted. I took an art history course as an elective in my 3rd year and fell in love. Not only was it beautiful and interesting in the mechanical sense but the evolution and variety of human expression was endlessly fascinating. I am a history major now and while some of the romance has faded at the hands of 200 pages of grain and transport statistics I am much happier. It's a wonder I did not realize this sooner to be entirely honest. I am autistic and have always loved obsessing over fictional worlds, knowing everything about them until I ran out of things to know, digesting and regurgitating their lore to anyone who will listen. How I did not see the greatest story right in front of me I will never know. It also ended up being far more alligned with my morals which is a plus.