See also, my advice for the incoming freshmen of Valley Christian High School.
Before I continue, I would like to say that I am fine. I am actually grateful for all of these hardships that I’ve faces because I know that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3b-4). In other words, it’s a canon event: you gotta get that character development arc.
Now that we got that established, let’s go through all of the things I learned in this past year (that I remember), in order of when the lesson was learned. There won’t be too many things in this post (which is a good thing), and I do hope that it will be even shorter next year (I plan to do this sort of list annually).
As a teenager, your amygdala is 30% larger than an adult’s
Ok, to be fair, this is something I learned in semester 2 in our school’s Biology Honors class. But I experienced this firsthand before this concept was taught. Your amygdala is the emotional center of your brain. The teenage brain is still developing, and you can’t avoid that fact no matter how smart you are (or think you are) or self-aware you are.
I myself am a pretty self-aware person, so when I realized that I was feeling irrational feelings, I was quite confused. In my head, I knew it didn’t make sense (or at least was wrong) to feel this way (e.g. angry at a specific someone or just being sad) but now I know it’s because teenagers are just built that like: all raging hormones can lead to mood swings, making you emotionally edgy, and—because of your developing brain—emotionally irrational.
Yes, a specific situation happened to me (yes, it’s my love life; yes it’s relationships; no it’s much better now because I got very lucky); it was a specific hardship that led me learn this lesson. But either way, it would have been very helpful if I knew this beforehand. I now know why teenagers have the highest suicide rates, and I really don’t know how I could get through this without Jesus in my life.
And no, I will not elaborate on the love life situation. I actually have a whole other document (which I will keep private until my senior year) containing my thoughts on the optimal way to live with regards to relationships and stuff. That being said…
Your happiness should not be dependent on other peoples’ actions
…because humans are volatile and will always change. Again, I am not going to elaborate on this, but it’s a pretty good piece of advice. If, for example, your love interest seems to be explicitly ignoring you or seems to be getting with someone else, you shouldn’t feel sad or whatever because they are not entitled to you and they don’t need to do whatever you want. Besides,
They’re likely not explicitly trying to avoid you or ignore you
…especially when they don’t know you too well. When your mind is full of infatuation (which isn’t real love), you have to be very careful to not fall into the trap of believing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon (frequency illusion) of your own negative thoughts. Remember, unless you’re really good friends with them, you are to them as some random person in another grade is to you. Instead,
Always assume a person has the best intent for their actions
…unless it’s extremely obvious that they are trying to harm you or whatever (which in case you should tell someone). But also, when someone seems annoying or whatever, always remember (I know this will sound very cliche but bear with me)
You do not know what someone is going through (do not label people)
You do not know their background, their reasons, their life, and what else they do. This is one of the major lessons I learned this year.
I realized that I’ve become very judgemental and filled with a lot of random prejudices (and that’s not a good thing), so I guess sometimes I need to step back and think before I make any judgments about anyone.
For example, I tend to consider people who play an instrument as smarter than others. So when I found out that one of the “dumb kids” (DON’T CANCEL ME; I KNOW DEEP DOWN AT LEAST ONE OF YOU READING WILL ALSO LABEL SOMEONE IN THIS WAY AS WELL) played an instrument, you could imagine how surprised I was.
But please don’t label people, whether it’s based on how they look, act, what they say, how they dress, etc, etc, etc. You should always give them a fair chance and only when you know them well… well I’m not going to say “only then you can judge them” because really nobody is the one to judge but God, but you get the idea. Now, to a more light-hearted lesson I learned…
Change your clothes when you go to prom (any indoor dance event) + bring hearing protection
For me, this was RoboProm (and I didn’t have a prom date, OK?) because our FRC team decided that it would be awesome if we went. Honestly, it was quite the experience. Just the music was extremely loud, and I got very sweaty.
Next time I participate in any indoor dance event (whether it be my school’s prom or something else) I will not wear any sort of sweater or suit or tuxedo and I will also bring my own music (because our school events have stupidly un-dance-able music, at least for my taste) and/or hearing protection (for me, in the form of noise-cancelling AirPods Pro). You could consider buying one of those expensive “high fidelity ear plugs” for musicians.
Be careful of what you post on the internet, and be careful of what you send to others
For the former: always assume the worst misinterpretation of the content you post (and then try to make it very, VERY clear and explicit about your actual intent). Be especially careful if the content you post contains any reminiscence of someone else (whether it be their texts, their image or likeliness, or whatever). Ask them for their permission beforehand (not a lesson I learned, but generally good advice), especially if that feels awkward (which then you KNOW something’s wrong).
Don’t be impulsive with posting (I am guilty of that). Although, you should (IN MY EXPERIENCE SO FAR; I’m still pretty naive to this whole dating thing) only be impulsive when it comes to things that will only have a positive outcome (e.g. asking someone out).
For the latter: especially when they’re not people you normally send Instagram reels to or you’re sending them stuff during your (nighttime) high. You may regret those decisions later on.
Pride comes before the fall
This is also cliche and honestly I think this probably doesn’t apply to a lot of people (but clearly it did for me), but it’s just something to be aware of. Always keep yourself in check (and make sure you have friends who can keep you accountable).
Conclusion
I really hope you learned something from my mistakes, regrets, and lessons I’ve learned this year. I sure hope the next time I write this document (for my sophomore year) it will be a lot shorter.