The One Regret I Didn’t Know I Had

A simple assignment at a Catholic university turned into something more—a glimpse of formation, truth, and a regret I didn’t know I had.

So a cardinal and a nun walk onto a college campus… No, really.

Experience teaches you a lot over time.

What works. What doesn’t. What matters, and what doesn’t matter nearly as much as you once thought it did.

It also reshapes memory. The sharp edges of regret begin to soften. What once felt like mistakes slowly reveal themselves as part of a larger path. Not always a painless one…but a meaningful one.

And so, as the years have gone on, my list of regrets has grown smaller.

Not because I got everything right…

But because, more and more, I’ve come to see that even the wrong turns had a way of leading somewhere they needed to lead.

Grace has a way of doing that.

Still… if I’m being honest… there are a few things I might do differently.

Nothing too dramatic…

Like, I wouldn’t have sold that old Jeep CJ-7.

And there are two books that are absolutely worth their weight in gold that I carelessly misplaced— Small Boat Engine Repair and The Art of Bricklaying — both written in the early ‘40s…I can’t even find them online.

And then there are a handful of decisions that, well, I probably would reconsider.

But near the top of that short list—higher than I expected it to be—is something I hadn’t really thought about in years.

College.

I didn’t spend much time on campus when I was that age. Not in any meaningful sense. A semester or two, here and there.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love to learn. I did. Even as a teenager, I was drawn to ideas, to questions, to the deeper currents beneath things. But I didn’t yet have the discipline… or the humility… or the maturity to recognize the value of the moment I was in.

And so, like a lot of young people, I moved past it quickly.

Too quickly.

That realization surfaced unexpectedly during a recent visit to the campus of The Catholic University of America.

I had gone there to photograph student life.

Simple enough.

But it didn’t stay simple.

The first thing I noticed was how young everyone seemed.

Or maybe, more accurately… how not-young I am anymore.

That tends to happen when you have grandkids.

But once that thought passed, something else began to take shape.

Not just information… but formation.

I found myself sitting quietly in classrooms, listening as professors spoke about St. Thomas Aquinas… about philosophy and metaphysics… about architecture… even quantum physics. Not as abstract ideas floating in isolation, but as part of a larger pursuit, something ordered, something coherent.

I watched students gathered in groups, working through problems together, pushing back on one another, refining ideas, sharpening thought. There was energy there, but not chaos. Engagement, but not confusion.

And then… I walked into a chapel.

And found them in Adoration.

That was the moment.

Not dramatic. Not loud.

Just clear.

Because in that instant, the distinction became undeniable.

There is a difference between a university…

and a Catholic university.

And The Catholic University of America in particular.

We’ve all seen what higher education has become in many places. Institutions once devoted to the pursuit of truth have, in too many cases, lost confidence in the very idea that truth exists. Knowledge, untethered from anything solid, begins to drift. And when it drifts long enough, it fractures.

But here…

something holds.

As I stood in the Communion line at an evening Mass on a Tuesday, no less, in a chapel filled to capacity, I began to understand what that “something” was.

Or rather… Who.

Because whatever you do in life, whatever path you take, however ambitious or ordinary it may seem, if Christ is at the center of it, then everything else finds its place.

Without Him, even excellence is hollow.

With Him, even the ordinary becomes luminous.

Education, at its core, is the pursuit of truth.

Not just useful knowledge. Not just information. But truth, wherever it leads.

And all truth—whether discovered in philosophy, in science, in art, or in the quiet of prayer—finds its origin in the One who is Truth.

That’s what I saw on that campus.

Not perfection.

But alignment.

An environment where thought expands, where ideas are tested and refined, where innovation is encouraged—but where all of it is grounded in something deeper than intellect alone.

A place that doesn’t just form minds…

but forms hearts.

And standing there, watching, listening, absorbing it all, the thought came, unexpectedly, and with a touch of irony…and yes, the sting of regret.

I missed this.

Not just college.

This.

And yet, even that realization didn’t feel heavy.

Because if experience has taught me anything, it’s that even the regrets we discover late have a purpose.

They clarify.

They guide.

They point us forward.

So no…

I wouldn’t rewrite the whole story.

I’m grateful for the road that brought me here.

But I will say this:

If I had the chance to do it again…

I know exactly where I’d go.

And maybe, just maybe…

My grandkids will get that chance instead.

And at the very least, they’ll have one less regret than I do.

Learn more about Catholic University of America HERE,

And see the Cardinal Newman Society list of America’s top Catholic Colleges HERE.

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It allows me to continue telling these stories.

Thank you for being here. Please keep me in your prayers, as I keep you in mine.

God bless,
Jeff