Sixteen is a hard year. Media portrays it as the peak of the teenage years, a giant party where you’re the center of attention, and everyone is dressed all fancy, and there’s music and food, but that’s only one night, if at all. Personally, my sixteenth year was full of growth, pain, and learning, and it kind of stunk. I asked a bunch of people what advice they would give to their sixteen-year-old selves, and the answers ranged from philosophical to flat-out useful. The end result is something that I wish I had when I was sixteen, but comes in handy. My little sister turned sixteen this month, and these are still timeless pieces of advice that can be helpful to any age.
Live for yourself. Somebody else’s opinion of you is none of your business.
Don’t be concerned with what other people think of you. This seemed to be the most popular answer. Real, adult-y adults to college students gave me this one. In reality, no one will care about your weird haircut tomorrow, and in a few years, you’ll know exactly how to manage your natural hair texture. Those traits that people are calling you “bossy” for- the way you organize people and intuitively manage group work- those will be called good leadership skills at your first job. People are too busy living their own lives and dealing with their own bad hair days and weird work situations and flaky people to give more than a second's worth of thought to you. Live your life for yourself, and know that you are enough, exactly as you are.
Accept challenges outside of your comfort zone.
The most personal growth, learning, and adventure lies outside what you are used to. Go for that exciting new job; try that weird food; take that dance class. The experience will help you grow into a more complete version of yourself. Once I went outside of my comfort zone job hunting, I landed an amazing one with people who are happy to see me, that I love. I learned new techniques to use in school by refusing to do things that I already knew how to do. Going outside your bubble of what you know forces you to learn new things, and that’s a good thing.
You always have the right to say no to things.
You are worth more than enduring toxic people and situations you don’t want to be in. You always have the right to say no to anything that you don’t want to do or makes you feel uncomfortable doing. Regardless of who they are to you- a family member, a friend, a classmate, a significant other- you know what’s best for you, and if what they want you do do doesn’t align with that, it is completely within your rights as a person to say no to that.
Adulting isn't that scary when it gets broken down to basics.
Make it a point to learn how to cook while you still live at home. If you’re lucky enough to still have your grandparents, have them teach you the family recipes and write them down for you. Be able to make at least two different fancy meals, and be able to pack it for lunch. Brown bag lunch as much as possible. Spending even $5 on lunch, 5 days per week, adds up really quickly. Learn to start a stove in a blackout. Learn how to start a fire, how to change a tire, how to fish, how to hem pants, how to sew a button back on, how to do your own laundry, and how to keep plants alive. Learn your weaknesses and how to overcome them.
School is your business.
Make sure you put as much in as you can get out of it. You’ll never have as much time to be able to devote to learning new things and new skills as you do now. And stay in school until you finish it. Going back is harder than continuing. College isn’t easy, and most of the time it isn’t cheap either, but you’ll come out on the other end a more learned, more able to take life by the horns, version of you.
Save your money.
I can't stress this one enough. I have so much nail polish that I bought and never used, but could really use those $3 right now for school stuff. Put away at least 10% of your weekly income in a separate account. Find a good, safe way of investing it, and don’t take on too many credit cards. Credit card debt is easy to accumulate and hard to pay off.
Not having a girlfriend or a boyfriend isn't the end of the world.
Put off dating as long as you can. It’s harder to learn who you are as a person when you’re with someone else. This one is important. When you’re sixteen, you’re at an age where you don’t know too much about yourself, and your world view is just starting to develop as unique from your parents’. It’s much harder to discover yourself as a person when you’re trying to fit yourself into someone else’s life as well.
Learn how to network, and build a good one.
You never know when you need it. A network can be made up of people from school, teachers, your parents friends, people you work for. Anyone you meet becomes part of that network. Keep in touch with those people; keep good relationships going with them, and you can ask them for references when job hunting, rides to places, or to teach you skills… whatever you can think of.
You do belong here.
There is a place in the world for you- whether it’s a LGBTQIA support group, a religious place, a favorite website, a safe place at school- there is somewhere for you to feel safe, even though you might not have found it yet. Growing up in a community of mostly visibly straight people, hearing “gay” used as a derogatory slur, and knowing there was something different about me that made me not straight was a tough thing to deal with privately. The change came once I made a tumblr and started researching different sexualities, but that’s a story for another day. Just know that while nobody cares about that pimple you can’t seem to see past, there are people who care about your mental and emotional health.
Be able to move on.
The best friends you make in high school will probably not be the people you’re best friends with after college. The boyfriend or girlfriend you have in high school will probably not be the one you have for life. A relationship ending is not the end of the world. Being able to let go and remember the good times with those people is a good thing. Remembering why they're not there anymore is also good to keep in mind, but you will find some people who stick around, and those are the ones worth holding on to. Those are the friends that you can call at two in the morning after you get a terrible grade back, and you'll know who is always in your corner for you to fall back on. And by the time you get to be old like me (lol), you’ll have a pretty good idea of who those people are.
