Okay, here are the rules. You get to go back in time, and tell your teenaged self two things. These things will “stick”. And your teenaged self won’t remember the visit from you, or why they know these two things to be true, but you will remember and follow these things (within reason), to your benefit.
The two things can be anything you like, but will be things that you think would have bettered your life had you known and followed them from the time you were a teenager.
Mine are: good sense when it comes to men (MY GOSH did I pick some losers…yeeesh). For one thing, staying with the wrong ones for way too long. Finally at 37, I found a winner (sadly it only lasted 7 years, and didn’t end because he was a loser, but had I a better decision making brain in that way, I could have been making choices like him, all along).
Two: go to college right out of HS. One of the main reasons I didn’t go was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was an extremely naive teen and didn’t know you didn’t have to pick your major right away. The most idiotic reason I didn’t go was that I’d decided I wanted to get married and have kids instead. (STUPID STUPID STUPID).
Now, I wouldn’t want to go back and “erase” my kids, but I would like to have instilled in my teen self these two ideals to the point where I’d have made much better decisions.
Buy stock in Apple when it hits seven bucks a share.
Mine is like your second one, too - finish university when you start it. I went for one year and never went back to finish it. What cost me about, what, $800 a year would now cost ten thousand instead.
Learn to nag my parents. I was the oldest child, and if my parents said that I couldn’t do something, or have something, I accepted it. My brother and sister nagged, and got a lot more privileges and cool stuff.
Learn how to work at something, and finish it. I can pick up knowledge and apply it very easily, in many cases. I used to play three musical instruments, and I could generally sight read most pieces that I was assigned, so I didn’t practice as much as I should have, and never really learned how to practice and practice. In school, I generally read the textbooks once at the beginning of the semester, and then I was able to do whatever homework was necessary (and that I felt like doing) (I felt that most homework was just busywork, and for me, it was) for the whole semester. I generally reread the textbook for the finals, but I didn’t actually need to, in most cases. I could read something ONCE and remember it. I never really had to buckle down to study for my classes until I went to college…and by then, my bad habits were pretty well established.
I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to me, though. I knew better than anyone else. And if I didn’t see the point in doing something, I frequently didn’t do it.
Dunning-Kruger effect. Understand it, and use it to ignore your parents, most of your teachers, and almost all of your peers, and listen instead to those few who can demonstrate their expertise rather than merely claim it.
Exercise is your cure for depression. Be an athlete and a scholar - you don’t have to choose between them. However, never forget the compassion your depression has taught you, and remember that you are lucky that you have such a simple remedy.
There’s a heck of a lot more I would like to tell myself (including buying some Apple stock), but those two, if I could have learned them early in life, would have given me wings.
I think the last time we did something like this, my answers were totally different than what I’m about to say. But here I go anyway:
Go to a liberal arts school. Yeah, maybe even consider UGA. You can still be a scientist, but you are not a science geek. You will make it through an science-heavy curriculum with honors, but you won’t like most of it and years later you will have horrible flashbacks of broken test tubes and episilon deltas, with very few good memories to balance it all out. No, you are a knowledge geek. You like learning about lots of different things, and a liberal arts college will feed you in the way you need. You also need to find a place where you can just be yourself, without worrying about embarrassing someone else. In other words, you probably should not go to the same school as your sister. You got scholarship money, girl. Run with it!
(Also, you need to stick up to your mother. You don’t want to apply to all those schools she’s making you apply to, SO STICK UP FOR YOURSELF. And then find some places, all on your own, that you want to go to. Politely request that someone take you to visit these places, since your parents apparently haven’t considered doing this at all. This is your life. Don’t be so passive and dumb.)
Practice your viola more instead of drawing so much. Your drawing abilities are okay, but you’re never going to be very great at it. But with enough practice, you could be a very good viola player. You’re not going to become a professional violist because that’s not what you want to be, but one day–when you’re all grown up–you will want to play with a community orchestra. You’ll play for a year and then stop because you just aren’t as good as everyone else and it’s too much trouble to keep up with them. If you keep practicing though, this won’t happen.
Your community college has a great nursing program. Go do it. Your mom doesn’t mean to denigrate nurses when she’s talking her women’s lib talk, and you ARE SO good at science!
Stay active in community theater. You’ll miss it if you leave, and it’s much harder to break into when you’re older. You’ll make the time if you keep at it, you won’t make the time if you leave it.
-The fact that your parents think you’ll never amount to much doesn’t mean anything, ignore them and make something good happen in your life. Don’t settle.
-Sucky jobs don’t get better, they just stay sucky. Fake like you’re confident and go get a better one.
1: you will finish highschool at 16. You are much, much smarter than your parents will ever acknowledge, and do not let them and their attitudes and behavior stifle you. Go to school the first chance you get, and FINISH IT, GODDAMN! IT WILL BE PAID FOR! DON’T THROW IT AWAY BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM ASSHOLES!
2: While you are in school you will meet her. Convince her to leave with you after you graduate. Staying in the town you grew up is not a good thing. It will cause problems.
