Start going to the gym – turns out it’s actually fun (I didn’t get into it seriously until two years later).
I know you want the tattoo. Don’t get the tattoo. You will want another one later, one with a lot of personal meaning, and it will make that one look incredibly trite, even by tattoo standards.
You’re going to marry her, quit worrying.
Your dad will be dead in less than four years. Quit being a whiny little shit, quit holding a useless grudge, and just suck it up and make up. Six months of a fantastic father-son relationship will be good, four years will be better.
Go pre-med, stay pre-med. I know it’s hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Learn how to manage money, make basic repairs on your car, and enough Spanish to get by. Soon enough you’ll need all three.
Nothing, the somewhat tortuous path to my current status as a proud father is nothing I could have predicted and something that probably would never had happened had I put my mind to it.
Stop mooning over women from a afar. Just go up, ask her out, and if she says no, be a gentleman about it, then get over it and forget about her. You want to be a nice guy, not a Nice Guy[sup]TM[/sup].
And study more. You coasted through high school, but college is another matter entirely.
Feminism means having choices. It does not mean that you’re a failure as a woman if you choose to be a stay-at-home mom instead of working outside the house. In fact, for you, it’s closer to the opposite, so please, please, please don’t screw yourself out of being able to do it.
Be brave. Take chances and risks. Stop worrying about displeasing your parents. Transfer to a larger college. Transfer to a coed college, for God’s sake. All those things you wanted to do but thought you were too fat for? Do them now. You’re not that fat, and an active life will keep you from getting any fatter.
Travel, even if you’re broke. Put money in the bank and leave it there. Don’t be afraid of working hard. Judge your friends by how well they treat you, now how well you treat them. Stop believing in the expectations other people have for you. Don’t go for what sounds reasonable and safe. Go for what makes your heart beat faster.
Re-reading any of my journal entries from chaotic periods of my life, I find myself saying, “Look! It was all right here! You had a handle on the situation…what you wrote was right. It DID turn out that way! So pay attention and when you find yourself writing the same things now, look closer and take it to heart. I don’t want to see you 2 years down the road saying why didn’t I just do what I said?”
Exercise. Your college has a free weight-room. Use it! And take a golf class while you’re at it.
Widen your circle of friends. Get out there and meet some more people. There’s lots of 'em there at the college. If the cute girl you like won’t go out with you, ask out her roommate.
Hide your intelligence. People hate it when they think you’re smarter than them.
Pay attention in Calculus, it’s important later.
Exercise. I know video games are fun, but it’s worth it. Even better, take some martial arts.
Save money. Really. Even if it’s just a little at a time.
Do not go out with your best friend’s gf after he dumps her. Ask Becky out. Or Jenny.
When you get to college you’ll meet a girl named Jen. No not that one, the other one. Do not under any circumstances get involved with her. I’m not kidding.
You won’t see any of these people in 3 years, don’t bother trying to be anyones buddy.
Forget aerospace engineering and HazMat, take computer classes.
It’s easier to quit (or moderate) drinking now.
Don’t take 13 years to finish your degree, you slacker!
Don’t get a roommate. Clean your apartment occasionally (chicks dig that).
You are at your lowest weight that you’ll ever be. DON’T f**k it up or you’ll have a gastric bypass when you’re 33.
That vicodin the doctor will offer you when you leave the hospital? Run far away! And don’t trust the other doctor that said Ultram is “non-addicting”.
You’re going to meet an engineering student from Clarkson who will be crazy about you in a few years. He’s the one that will sing “Moondance” to you at Bali Hai. Yeah, he’s a bit of a dork, but he’s probably a keeper. And you’ll grow to be attracted to nerds in about 5 years anyway.
Do NOT date any radio DJs, especially Rick.
Don’t buy any exercise equipment that’s advertised after midnight.
Don’t open that Providian account unless you want a credit card with a $5000 balance.
Sleep with Nate in college.
Don’t get so damn drunk that you pass out on the bathroom floor of your dorm.
Grow a pair and stand up for yourself or you’ll never be respected.
I realize OCD is shameful and embarrassing to you. Quit expending so much energy trying to conceal it and get help now. Don’t wait until your mid-twenties to get help. It’ll just be that much harder.
That female relative of yours, just a few years older than you? Don’t worry about all the comparisons your family makes between you and her. They don’t matter, so don’t take them to heart. Ignore the bullshit comparisons because in just a few years, she is going to display her true colors and leave everyone with their mouths gaping. It’ll cause a great deal of backpedaling on the part of those family members who used to compare the two of us unnecessarily. You show them by age twenty-seven. Be patient and don’t rush it.
Oh, and dump that guy you go out with during your senior year. Immediately. You’ll thank me later!
There are some things you’re just no damn good at. Accept it and try to find ways to work around them, rather than trying to get better at them. For example, you’ll have a much easier time learning to drive if you stop trying to visualize where the back end of the car is and just try to find a way, any way, that you can parallel park. The important thing is the results, not how you get to them.
Mom is a lousy judge of your abilities, and you shouldn’t listen to what she thinks about them. Oh, and she does eventually come around and realize that you could be a lot worse, and pretty much accepts you for what you are.
You’re going to do fine at the University of Maryland, including in your first semester. I know you’re worried, and you’ll still be worried even if I show you a transcript to prove it, but it’ll be OK. Really.
Doing your own laundry isn’t hard. There are instructions on the machine. This is the case for lots of household stuff that you never learned to do- it’s not as hard as you think it is. Remember, 50% of people are of below-average intelligence, and a lot of them manage to figure it out. They manage, so you can too. Oh, and you won’t turn into your mother (and have to be a housewife, and hate it) if you do household stuff. Marie Curie probably did laundry and cooking, too.
You have depression and anxiety. Get treatment for it. It won’t make it harder for you to get a job- it won’t even make it so you can’t get a security clearance. Your family won’t cut you off for admitting to mental health issues.
Just because you personally don’t do drugs does not mean drugs will not completely screw with your life. Steer clear of anyone who gets high all the time. (cuz it turns out, in this case, weed IS a gateway drug.)
Stop making excuses for people. They have to solve their own problems.
Dump him. He was summer thing that went on too long.
Do NOT NOT NOT send that story to the campus literary magazine. Maybe another story a few years down the road, but not that one.
You’re being a judgmental snot to your roommate. Cut it out. (You are, incidentally, right, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shut up.)
That boy you can’t stop thinking about? He just isn’t into you. I’m sorry. Let it go.
The other boy you’ll meet at the coffeehouse about three years from now will be into you for a while, but trust me, you should run run run run away from that one. Trust me, you’re not going to die a virgin if you don’t go out with him. You can afford to use your judgment.
Watch it with the drinking. Learn your limits, and don’t get so trashed you throw up in public. Not fun, and not cool.
Do not write letters to the Powers That Be to complain about your professors. First of all, most of them have tenure, and the Powers That Be will laugh in your face. Secondly, someday you’re going to BE the professor, and karma is a bitch.
Your freshman Shakespeare professor, the one you really like and a bunch of other people hate? You are right and they are wrong. You’re doing the right thing by not dropping his class, because you’ll get an A+ on that first paper, and he will turn out to be one of the best mentors and rec-letter writers you’ll ever have. He’ll be on sabbatical your senior year, by the way, so you might want to think about taking another class with him before he leaves.