When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Never give up.

Time heals everything.

We've all heard these little cliché pieces of advice a thousand times. It's annoying, I get it. Among these classic lines are some pretty deep pieces of wisdom that we often choose to ignore. I'm nineteen years old and my life can get pretty weird at times, so I'm probably not the most qualified to be giving you any advice. However, through my dramatic friendships. subpar love life, and generally messy life, I've learned a thing or two.

1. Fake it 'til you make it.

No ones as hot as they seem on social media, I promise. The girl with perfect hair spent hours in the salon getting a blowout. The valedictorian probably stayed up until 3 a.m. crying over her chemistry grade. The perfect boyfriend probably gets annoyed when his girlfriend takes control of the radio. These people all look so perfect, but no one is. We live in the age of social media where you can fake almost anything, including confidence. Start pretending that you have your shit together, and eventually you will.

2. None of this will matter in 5 years (or maybe even 5 minutes).

This bad test grade, this endless job hunt, this horrible breakup, it'll all be over soon. You'll find new things that excite you and new things that will devastate you. The biggest part of life is learning to ride things out until it's over. You won't be sad for the rest of your life, I pinky swear. Sure, everything seems dramatic at the moment. You're allowed to cry and scream and throw stuff at the wall, but for the love of God, move on. Being sad doesn't help anything.

3. Give what you get.

Being the nice girl is cute until you get walked all over. You're going to meet people that suck all the energy out of your life. You're not responsible for anyone's happiness other than your own. If someone treats you like crap then you have every right to walk away from them.

4. Unfair things happen every day, you're not special and your life isn't a tragedy.

There's a scene from Keeping Up with the Kardashians (yes, I'm citing the Kardashians in an article about life advice, bear with me.) where Kim loses her earring in the ocean. The family is at some bougie resort on an island I've never heard of and the earring that Kim lost costs more than my tuition here at Oakland. After a few minutes of Kim crying over her earring, Kourtney replies "Kim, there are people dying". Your problems aren't any more important than anyone else's. No matter how unfair things may seem, there will always be someone who has it worse. Learn to appreciate the positive occurrences in your life and ignore the negative ones.

5. Stop letting other people control you.

This is the most cliché thing I will say in this article: you can do anything you want. I don't mean that in the way of "If you love politics you can definitely be the president someday". I hate to break it to you, but I'm almost certain that no one reading my article will ever run for president. However, if you want to go out to the bars on a Monday night, you can do that. If you never want to go out and you want to stay in and watch Netflix, you can do that. Your boyfriend can't tell you who to hang out with and your parents can't tell you who to date or what to be when you grow up.

At the end of the day, there's a fairly good chance that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I didn't have some big epiphany before writing this and I doubt any of this was new information. I just believe that we can all learn a little bit from each other and our crazy little lives.