Dear Teenage Me,

You’re probably at school right now, doodling away on the back of your notebook, halfway listening to the teacher talk about action potentials. I know you’re not that into science now, but please listen!  You’ll thank me when you get to college (spoiler alert: that’s when you find out that science is fascinating)
Almost everything you’re learning at school will serve you in one way or another, so don’t think because you don’t plan to be a physicist that this information is useless. I know you feel like school is not preparing you for college, but thank your awesome teachers because they did great at getting you ready and able to pass every college course you will take.

Speaking of college courses, don’t buy the books! You can rent them and save yourself THOUSANDS of dollars, seriously, do not buy the books unless you have no other choice. There are many alternatives to buying them at retail price: rent them, swap them with other students that already took the course or go to the library and get them there!

Get out of your comfort zone. Dude, seriously, listen to me on this one: get out of your comfort zone. We both know you are shy to a fault (that hasn’t changed all too much, btdubs) but the sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll get used to it.  You really want to ask that teacher a million questions, I know you do, don’t lie to me! You march your butt over there, young lady, and ask the million questions. You want to talk to that cute boy in your class? Do it. And for God’s sake ask for help when you need it! (This one’s for ‘present me’ as well)

The ‘Freshman 15’ is REAL (except for you it’s more like ‘Junior 15’. Nobody is safe from The Freshman 15, not even Juniors). Remember what mom used to tell you, that your metabolism won’t always be lightning fast? Yeah, she’s right. Brace yourself, girlfriend, you’ll be highly pissed when you go shopping for clothes 3 sizes bigger. Work out! Eat well! I know you’re in North America now, and you’ve never seen so much variety of frozen and processed foods before, but do future self a favor and stay the hell away from them!

I know you probably won’t read much further, Teenage Me, and you probably won’t pay attention to this letter thinking you have it all figured out so I’ll save all the other advice I have for you for another occasion.

Actually, one more thing, those big yellow “highlights” in your hair may be trendy, but believe you me, you shall regret the day you dyed your hair that way and you will hide your face in shame because you dared to take a passport picture with that hair so as to have evidence of its existence. Hey, at least you’ll get a few good laughs in the future. That is all.

Love, Future Self

[Dear Reader]

If you’re new here, first off, WELCOME!  You might be über confused right now so I thought I’d give you the SparkNotes version of what’s going on here. TGLF is an interactive blog series; it stands for The Golden Letter Fridays. Every other Friday we write a letter to someone, real or fictional and polish our writing skillz [Yup, I said skillz. I was told the cool kids do it]

HERE you can find more info about this blog series and how you can participate. I plan on making this a full-fledge link-up in the future where we can write letters to each other (like, pen keyboard pals!), so it would mean a lot to me if you’d take a minute to leave me a comment letting me know what you think about this blog series and if YOU would participate and what suggestions you have to make this series even better!

Love and loyally,