As I sit at my desk right now, I am a twenty-year-old (SO close to being twenty-one, but yet so far away) sophomore in college, planning on having married my amazing fiancé & having a house by my undergraduate graduation in a few years, and then diving into law school after that. In my academic and professional life, I am confident, driven, hardworking, and on top of things. I haven’t quite figured out the confidence part in my personal life, but I’m getting there. Looking back on who I was five years ago, I struggle with the concept that I used to be that person. Not that I was a bad person or anything, but I was so different in comparison to who I am today. I’d like to think that if at fifteen I had known a few things I know now, that would have sped up the process in making me who I am today. Maybe there will be some good advice & wisdom in here somewhere, and if so, I hope it helps.

Dear fifteen-year-old me,

I know things are difficult right now. I know how much you wish things would change. I know what your biggest fear is, and I’m so sorry that it comes true. I am still heartbroken to this day. I wish I could look back to when I was you, and remember knowing how strong, how smart, how compassionate and kind I was. I wish that I could remember knowing that things would get better. That my life was going to change. I wish I had known how much sleep I would lose once I started college. I wish I had known that the worst thing I would face would and will most likely always be my own anxiety. I wish I had known...

I wish I had known that college is hard, but SO rewarding. The first time you make the Dean’s Honor Roll, you will jump up & down in your kitchen with your boyfriend, squealing with excitement. This won’t change when you make it the following semester as well. You will spend many nights up late studying, or drinking coffee trying to stay awake before your 8:30am test. Class reading will be continuously interrupted by laundry, children’s homework, or Jack being unable to find his scrubs before work when they are on top of the clean laundry basket. Homework will command your attention for about 95% of the semester. However, by the grace of the Collegiate gods, you will be granted these magical break periods that are referred to as “intersession”.

I wish I had known that it is OK to be a random personality. Be honest, say what you think, and be yourself. It really doesn’t matter what someone thinks of you, unless you are in an interview. Go ahead & try to be funny. Make your friends smile & laugh, no matter who is watching. This is your life, your experience. You are meant to have a few red faced moments. Live it up to the fullest.

I wish I had known that love will find you, and when you least expect it at that. One minute you will have a really good friend who makes work not so horrible & reminds you to be happy in the little moments. The next thing you know, a char-broiler vent hood will catch on fire and then said friend will tell everyone to get out while he puts it out with the fire extinguisher. Then he will walk around coughing for about the next hour or so & you will keep asking if he is OK. A few days later on another shift, you will walk up to the frontline before going home to see him in a conversation with someone, and it will hit you that you have developed feelings for him that are beyond just friendship.

I wish I had known shyness doesn’t have to be your downfall. Once you start working at Carls Jr, and you have to talk to customers & to your coworkers it will become easier to talk to people. Especially when Jack decides to start trying to break you out of your shell on Famous Friday shifts. You will laugh a lot, and you will learn a lot about yourself. You will be talking to a newbie your training one day & will discover that you are actually talking to them, not just informing them of the training information. Be proud of yourself in this moment. I am still proud looking back at it.

I wish I had known that college isn’t the hardest thing you will have to do. When dealing with a hysterically crying child who desperately wants to keep her ears pierced, but also won’t even let the clean earring in your hand touch her piercing because she is afraid it will hurt, you are going to wish you were taking a short answer only test with the most difficult professor you have faced. Or when you become a (step)parent and you are reminded that you aren’t the parent. Or the time when you are labeled as a “tolerated third party”. I would take a 10-minute oral exam with Professor Townsend any day over that, and that was the longest 10 minutes of my life. I would even take a 50 question short answer exam from Dr. Clayton any day over that.

Of course, knowing all of these things doesn’t mean that I have mastered this life thing. It only means I have figured out a few life lessons. I still have many years to go and many things to learn, and I look forward to each one of them. I look forward to the adventures, milestones, challenges, and even the mishaps. They will all make me a better person, and they will all have some type of value to them. Part of the test of the human experience is whether or not you can see the value in life’s many lessons. We one day shall see if I pass.