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JACK, 27, A&RWhat would I be doing now if everything had gone the way it was supposed to? Well, personally, I do not see the fact that I spend my days trying to track down the publishing info for a saxophone sample from 1974 or agonising over 0.5 seconds of crackle on a test pressing as widely symptomatic of some sort of degenerative idleness or spiritual torpor, but admittedly I am not a doctor or lawyer. I'm not even a tinker, tailor or candlestick maker. I am, however, a relatively poor man, so let's roll with this for the sake of argument.A better question would possibly be to ask, "What does my mother wish I was doing?" She actually touched upon this in an email recently where she berated me for yet another in a series of minor life disasters. After one or two paragraphs of seething invective I think she probably realised that she could potentially be authoring a text that would end up in the tragedy porn pages of the Evening Standard (although I'm not liked by everyone who knows me and certainly not a talented footballer, so it may not have made it regardless) and so reined it in a bit in concluding: "I love you so much, but I do wish you'd made better choices with that great brain of yours."Well, if only I'd not heard the clarion call of indie calling in 2007 and continued my stellar start to academic life (catapulted from a special measures school that was run by a psychopathic pseud who was eventually caught siphoning off the PE budget to fund his expensive plonk collection into the dizzy flashbulbs of the local paper as star pupil) into university, then I think by now I could probably be just about finishing a law degree, possibly with some sort of placement in a practice on the Strand.READ: 'British Values' Is a New Way of Dealing with British Racism
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RFN TAYLOR, 24, PLATOON MACHINE GUNNERI never started to think of things as a sad "if only" scenario. Being a soldier in my Regiment means every day you have to better yourself if you don't you fall by the wayside. Serving in the British Army has been something I've wanted to do since I was young. It has given me a remarkable sense of accomplishment and the ability to reach my goals, despite how many times you fail. Failure is inevitable – it's how you re-organise yourself mentally and physically, and it's how you overcome it that defines you. The army is like any employer, full of good bosses and bad bosses, good people and bad people, and you don't get to pick who you are thrown to hell and back with. Learning how to carry on and overcome is a gift. It has been a wild, amazing ride.LISA, 24, FLORISTI'm not quite sure how to answer this question, to be honest, as I'm not sure what you mean by "potential". Thinking about where / when I could have worked harder would probably have been most effective when I was in school, doing A-levels or various exams. I remember teachers telling me I hadn't reached my "full potential and needed to pull your socks up", but I never really knew how much further I needed to push myself. What are you pushing yourself for? Do we value ourselves only by our economic output?
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