<ol>
<li> You’re going to college.</li>
<li> Take everything you read on CC with a grain of salt.</li>
<li> Normal people get into top colleges too.</li>
<li> Thank your teachers at the end of every class.</li>
<li> Don’t start thinking about college until at the earliest your freshman year.</li>
<li> Don’t start making “Chance me?” threads until at least midway through your junior year.</li>
<li> Better yet, don’t make them at all.</li>
<li> Don’t start the Common App before August 1st… everything you worked on WILL be erased.</li>
<li> It’s okay to say “I don’t know” when someone asks you what or who you want to be.</li>
<li>Accept change, and never underestimate the degree of change that can occur in your life.</li>
<li>Also, never underestimate the power of Ben and Jerry’s when those changes occur.</li>
<li>“Look where you’re going” - you can’t change the past, and you can’t predict the future. Keep your eyes on the road in front of you.</li>
<li>Get in trouble at least once in your high school career for standing up (or sitting down) for something you believe in.</li>
<li>Trust the process, but know when the process needs to be nudged along.</li>
<li>Money isn’t everything.</li>
<li>High school is NOT the time to start focusing your education solely on one subject. You never know what you may discover by taking a class you don’t think is related to what you think you want to do.</li>
<li>This video: <a href=“Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube”>Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube;
<li>Be open-minded.</li>
<li>Have that song that reminds you of everything else in this list (mine was Holocene by Bon Iver: <a href=“Bon Iver - Holocene - YouTube”>Bon Iver - Holocene - YouTube).</li>
<li>If you don’t learn something about yourself during the college application process, you’re doing it wrong.</li>
</ol>
<p>I decided that I wanted to go into STEM because I thought that you couldn’t make any sort of a living outside of STEM careers. People seemed pleased when I told them I wanted to be an engineer, so I kept telling them that. I tricked myself into thinking that that’s who I was. I saw the sole purpose of humanities classes as being to torture me and keep me from taking an all-STEM courseload. I dropped Latin and said no to dozens of amazing humanities related opportunities. I applied to research universities and tech schools, then decided I want to major in English for a variety of reasons. Now I’m taking a gap year and applying to college again. I have a great internship lined up and I am very excited for my gap year, but it would have been a lot better for me if I realized my true passion earlier or just applied to less focused colleges. 21. Don’t be like me in high school.</p>