The Road Not Taken

1. Think about a significant decision you have made in your own life (examples include making a large purchase, choosing to attend an event, deciding which school to attend, or signing up for a sport or activity). In a journal entry or piece of freewriting, answer the following questions:

• How did that decision impact the course of your day, week, year, or entire life? Did that decision lead to other significant decisions or have a kind of “ripple effect” in your life?
• If you had chosen a different option, how would things have turned out differently?
• Now that you are looking back, do you wish you had made a different choice, or are you happy with the decision you made? Explain.
• Consider the message of Frost’s poem: In hindsight the traveler views the path he took as less travelled, although in the moment he saw the two paths as equal in every respect. Do you think that when faced with a life decision, one will always be “right” and the other “wrong?” Explain your opinion.

2. Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” for his neighbor and fellow poet, Edward Thomas. Frost and Thomas would often take walks together, on which Thomas would spend time debating which path to take, a habit that annoyed Frost.