At the age of 18, here are 4 things I have learned:

1. Friends You Thought Would Stick by You Forever Sometimes Don’t

From the time I was a little girl I always wanted to keep the same friend group so I could look back on pictures that were taken of us from Halloween in 3rd grade and that birthday party we all went to in 1st grade when everyone was invited to every birthday party. I wanted to be able to say “Hey remember when you dated so-and-so freshman year and the whole group thought you guys were the cutest couple ever?” I thought that those girls would stick by me through thick and thin, but turns out I was wrong. Now it is all just a distant memory. There is no hard feelings, just memories from years ago that I will look back on and cherish for years to come.

2. You Will Never Regret Staying In School

My parents always told me that there was no option for me, I was going to attend school until at least my high school graduation, no ifs ands or buts. If I wanted to be even remotely successful, I needed to have at least a high school diploma. Those eight hour days dragged on and on and to add to that, four to five hours of homework a night. It seemed ridiculous and almost impossible to handle the stress that came from those long days, but we made it out alive. We suffered through the work, stress, and tears and looking back I wouldn’t trade any of it for what I have today. You learn so much from school, even the things that you deem to be unimportant, will still make you a smarter person. I don’t regret staying in school and on top of that, I don’t regret going to college either.

3. Get an After School Job

I cannot stress this one enough. If there is one thing that I realized throughout my four years in high school, it was that having an after school job was the best decision I could have made. It was a pain having to work six to eight hour shifts after a long day at work, dealing with customers in a coffee shop that didn’t pay me very much anyway, leaving work so late that I would barely have time to get any homework done before being so exhausted that I needed to go to sleep and not do it. It was a disaster in my eyes. I couldn’t handle the stress at the time, but I look back on it now and realize that having those few extra dollars in my pocket after each shift was amazing; being able to buy stuff for myself whenever I wanted because I could afford to do it.

4. Cherish Your Family

Parents are a pain. You know it. I know it. The whole world even knows it. They are on your back about every detail of your life, making sure you do your homework, making sure that you’re not about to fail out of school, stressing you out about getting a job, and so many other strenuous things that are so unnecessary, but they love you. Your family loves you more than anything and at the end of the day are the ones who are going to be there when other people aren’t. Cherish the fact that you have people there to care about you when you have had a terrible day and just need a shoulder to cry on.