Many of us think of General Education as something to bare with a grin until we get to our major-focused classes. Consequently, we go the painless route of choosing the electives that are easiest or most schedule-friendly. But now in my final year of college, I can’t help but feel sad over a couple of missed opportunities at registration time.

I wish I had opted for more American Sign Language (ASL) classes. I, like many of us, took advantage of that delightful California State University rule that allows us to satisfy our foreign language requirement with two semesters of a different language than we studied in high school. At the end of that second semester I was finally getting a knack for ASL. I could have advanced further in it and picked up a rare capability. Now, I’ve already forgotten much of it. I’ll never have a private, interpreter-free conversation with a deaf person because I was too lazy to finish learning how.

I should have taken a course in religious studies. Theistic beliefs permeate our societal attitudes like nothing else on earth. Religious Tolerance.org reports that 96 percent of Americans believe in God or some kind of universal spirit. How many religions am I genuinely familiar with outside of Christianity? Uh…that would be zero.

Is it true that Mormons think they’ll be gods and goddesses of their own planets in the afterlife? What does the Koran really teach about violence toward those who won’t convert? Why can’t Jews mix milk with meat in their diets? I’m sure I’ll get around to googling these at some point; but that’s not the same as studying them in textbooks and mulling over them with professors. College is one of the few periods of our lives when we have the time to do that. For most of us, it’s just four short years and then it’s gone. We put on the funny hats and robes and then head off to our future’s daily grind.

Bernita Howton, English professor for Sacramento State told me that she looks forward to retiring in a few years because she’ll finally have room in her schedule for classes she never got to take in college.

“Students need to take advantage of those classes now,” Howton said. “They might be collecting social security before they get another chance.”