The truth is that when I turned 20 I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to leave my teenage years behind me. It is safe to say that they were not the best years of my life like so many people said they would be. My style in my teenage years could be described as shabby, unkept and dull. My only passions in life consisted of sticking my nose in books and getting on a plane whenever I could to wherever it took me. The only half decent thing that came out of my teenage years were the lessons I learned of what not to do in my 20s.
That being said, I know that our 20s will not be pretty. I know that mistakes will be made, drinks will be spilled, and messes will need to be cleaned up. I’m twenty-one and I already made some mistakes, so believe me: I know. However, the mistakes that I will make in my twenties will not be the same mistakes that I made during my teenage years. Our twenties will be different from our teenage years just like how our 30s will be different from our twenties, so the mistakes made and the lessons learned will be different too.
I’m starting off simple with the first lesson I learned which is to get involved. All I had to do in high school was to get involved. That was all. Now, I’m not saying join every single extracurricular activity there is. Don’t do that, but please do more than just a couple of things here and there. Join a sport that gets you out of the house and out of your comfort zone. Find a club that keeps you busy and connects you with people. Getting involved is the best way to find what you like or maybe don’t, what your passions are and it could even help you discover what you want to do with your life.
This next lesson might be more for introverts and also goes hand-in-hand with my first lesson, but please don’t cancel plans. Just don’t. The anxiety that you have leading up to the event almost always disappears five minutes into the actual event, though it does depend on the situation for me. The memories that you won’t ever forget. Not to mention, people are likely to invite you to more stuff if you stop canceling their plans.
The last lesson is and maybe most important is to not assume stuff is going to happen and actually try to make things happen. I went through my teenage years thinking that things will just sort of happen on their own. I didn’t understand how much work you actually have to put into things. There is work you have to put into your social life, your school and your future. It took me so long to realize that things do not just happen on its own. You have to make them happen.
Despite having over a hundred life lessons that I could probably share, I will only stick to three and these are the three that I think are the most important. I think that if I got involved more, didn’t cancel plans, and didn’t assume things then there’s a very good chance that my teenage years would’ve been very different. I’m very glad that my teenage years taught me what not to do in my twenties because I’ve been having so much more fun in my twenties than in my teens.
Though I must say, there is one more thing that I learned that really helped me going into my twenties and that is knowing that these years will not be the best years of my life. I’ve made the mistake of thinking that my teenage years would be the best years of my life going into them and they were not. Which let’s be honest, that’s a good thing because I really did not want my peak to be high school. Nor do I want my peak to be my twenties. My twenties are the times for mistakes. They are the time for trials and tribulations.
Featured image by Allison Schmidt
