List 10 things you would tell your 16 year-old self, if you could.
I suppose I should start off by saying that my 16 year old self wouldn't have listened to much of anything that I would have to offer as advice. I was very stubborn at that point in time and was convinced, way too often, that I knew better than anyone else. I got smarter and realized that I didn't know a whole lot, but it took time. You, my darling daughter, will likely come by your stubbornness honestly from both me and your dad. I'd like to believe that you will be smarter than me and realize that people older than you might actually have something worth value to offer, but won't be horribly surprised if you are like I was.
So now I'll offer up my advice:
1. DON'T START SMOKING!! This would be the biggest and most important piece of advice I would offer. Yes, I started smoking before it was legal, because I thought it was cool. I caved to peer influence - I don't say peer pressure because they didn't really try and get me to smoke, but many of the people I was friends with then smoked and I wanted to be like them. It was the dumbest decision I made and it was one of the hardest habits I had to break.
2. Don't let bullies make you feel bad about yourself. I didn't do a good job of standing up for myself against bullies and it gave my self-esteem a hard knock.
3. Be smart about who gets your affection. Having a boyfriend seemed like such a huge part of high school and establishing myself at a new school, but in hindsight, I spent way too much time thinking about that.
4. Spend less time wishing that your life was more filled with angst. I spent a lot of time writing really bad poetry about how rough my life was and how no one really knew who I was. I look back on them now and cringe. I was so caught up in wanting to be misunderstood that I didn't appreciate how good I had it.
5. Take home economics classes instead of so many computer classes. It would have been so much more beneficial to take classes where I learned meal planning, household budgets, and basic cooking and sewing skills then it was to take so many classes working on Apple IIe computers. I had no way to predict how useless those skills were going to be.
6. Take Spanish class. While high school Spanish is not going to make you fluent if I had taken 2 - 3 years of Spanish, you might be better able to understand Spanish, which would be beneficial in my current job. Besides, Mr. San Martin is an amazing guy and it would have been really cool to take a class from him.
7. Don't be afraid to try new things. I was involved in several things (band, choir, and athletics), but there were things that I might have enjoyed even more and was afraid to try. In college I tried debate and theatre and I really enjoyed them. I would have had a better chance getting scholarships for those activities than for athletics.
8. Drive carefully! The summer after I turned 16, I completely demolished your grandfather's truck. It was a fun little truck. I was driving too fast on a dirt road, hit a washboard section of the road and slid it sideways into a guardrail and put almost the whole thing through the truck. It was dangerous and I'm pretty lucky that I was able to walk away from it.
9. Eat breakfast...and I don't mean a bag of gummy bears. It was about this time that I developed the bad habit of not eating breakfast, which started a pattern of bad eating habits. It took me years to start eating breakfast again and realize how important it really was. I suppose this one could just be to eat healthy because high school was about the time I went off the rails on pretty much all eating habits. It didn't really hit me then because I was involved in athletics, but it caught up with me soon after I stopped being an athlete.
10. Be patient. Life gets better. Enjoy your time in high school, but know that the best is really yet to come. Some things about this time in your life are going to suck, but it's okay. The majority of your life is still ahead of you and the best years are still to come. There is some really good stuff coming!
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