Originally I wanted this discussion to be part of my Second Chances giveaway. However that one had way too much rules as it is, so an extra discussion will just clutter it even more. As such, this discussion is completely independent of the giveaway.

So, post your stories about any Second Chances that you were given, or preferably that you grabbed, or even better any Second Chances that you yourself created for yourself. And I'm not talking about the time you burned your last bagel, only to find you still had one more left. I'm talking about big Second Chances with a capital S. What happened? Did you use them well, or did you manage to screw up again? How did it end?

To get the ball rolling I'll begin:

I have no stories to share in this discussion.

Neither I have any stories to share.

There was this exam coming up later in the week. Nobody was prepared. Everyone was going to do horribly. I was prepared for this.
2 days before the exam we had a class of that subject. Lots of students whined (undergrad students, while I'm doing my masters, but we share the same classes sometimes). The teacher agreed to shift the exam forward 2 weeks to after our midsemester/spring break.

I raged and roiled and headbutted my friend in frustration.
It is now my midsemester break. I am in a house crowded with relatives for a cousin's wedding. I doubt I'll get any studying done.

SECOND CHANCES, WOOOH!

The closest thing I can think of in my life is having a Second Chance at friendships. More specifically I am talking about having moved away from where I grew up and losing touch with some good people that I felt connected to but because of the wavering paths of life we lost each other. Some very close and others not so close at the time, but who I thought about over many years and always wondered what may have become of them because of that "connected" feeling I had with them. I've had a few of them come back into life, thanks to the internet, and while many people from other parts of life are also more present now because of the internet, there are still just that very certain few that I am thankful for having the Second Chance to have in my life again way above all others. That "connected" feeling is still there, and it is truly great.

I don't have any big stories, as much as I'd love to tell a heartwarming story about a second chance at an old flame that led to lifelong happiness, or beating an illness that gave me a second chance (and a new zeal and appreciation!) for life.

On a smaller note, I took some time away from my career to explore if I would prefer to do something else, and ended up just coming back to what I had been doing. So I got a second chance in my field. But to some extent that was "settling" as much as taking advantage of a second opportunity.

On an even smaller note, I'd say Facebook has given me a second chance at some old friendships (even with exes) who are scattered around the world. That said, a lot of these connections are still pretty superficial if you were looking for deep bonds of friendship, but I enjoy seeing what most of them are doing for work, family, travel, etc.

Since the GA was bumped, I'll bump this as well. Maybe a story or two will still drop in.

I have some stuff I could post but if you think I'm going to get that serious in here then I have a bridge to sell you. :D

not one to sit under ? ;p

Now I only remember that one when I was on my last year of high school and I had my last exam of Technical Drawing. But I didn't study, so I skipped it. When I went to get my grades report, I saw my teacher and asked me why I didn't attend the exam. I told him I didn't attend it because I didn't prepare it. But, as I had passed the first two terms, I only had to do the resit of the last one on September, instead of the whole year.

And now that I remember, the year before I also failed the last term of TD (but because I was bad, not because I skipped it) and my teacher of that year he allowed me to resit only the last term, instead of the whole year.

Two years, two cities, two schools, two teachers, and the same act of mercy. I felt relieved.

Does it burn easily?

*and in relation to the OP, I think my own tales are in the same category as tinyEs

I'll post again about a 2nd chance with friendships. Just recently my GF and I were at our local grocery store (independently owned, small, organic-focused store pretty much out of the way of everything in a small community) and I literally almost ran into this woman on my way in, my girlfriend had already gone ahead and I had been staring at some plants right next to the entrance and when I turned to go into the entrance I wasn't looking and almost stepped into this woman. I apologized for not looking where I was going and she said she wasn't either because she was staring at this woman ahead of us (my girlfriend through the glass entrance about 10 feet away) because she knew her and was amazed to be seeing her here at this store of all places, she was kind of just stopped in shock before calling out her name to be like "woah!" I said "I know her too! That's my girlfriend." at which point she had started coming back at me because she had seen that I was conversing with this woman at the entrance, and then she says to me "you know who this is too, this is ______."

It was someone that both my GF and I knew independently from each other before we had ever met. My gf knew her from an online site they had both belonged to many years ago (where they actually had met many times and hung out with the online community at camping trips and special events and that sort of thing and knew each other) and I had met her on a different internet dating site many years ago and became online friends for a while before I eventually removed her from my FB because we didn't really interact in quite a long time and had never actually met.

It's been probably 3 years since I had any interaction with her and probably 7 for my GF.

The 3 of us all used to live in Philadelphia/the immediate suburbs of Philly, and now we live over an hour outside of Philly and both frequent this little grocery store. Very interesting/weird/cool.

And while it may not be a super-deep friendship that we all have, it's still nice to have someone in the vicinity to socialize with on occasion (we don't really know hardly anyone around here, and are quite anti-social anyway, so it's good for us to have found someone else to add to our very limited hang-out list.)

I have the best one yet:
I'm giving this post a second chance.
NECROMANCY!