As per Howler tradition, I feel the need to impart you with sage advice that you will no doubt ignore, but even though I am about to graduate high school, I don’t feel confident enough to give advice to anyone about what they should do. No matter how bleak it may sound, you are alone in your decisions. Everyone makes their own life decisions, benefitting or suffering from the consequences.

I could give you specific advice on what I would do if I could go back in time. I would be less afraid to try new things, reach out to people first, make more meaningful friendships; the list goes on and on, but my regrets are specific and personal to me. They aren’t something that the whole high school population thinks about when reflecting on what they could have done differently. And that’s how it should be.

Nobody has the same high school experience and no one’s high school experience is going to be perfect. Everyone will have some sort of problem, there’s no getting around that. Some might have problems with schoolwork, some might have problems with relationships, some might have problems with finding their identity. The sad truth is, no matter how perfectly you handle your problems, you’re bound to make mistakes.

The next step you take is where you can grow or wither from your mistake. You can learn from them and prevent repeated failures, or gain nothing but self-doubt and disappointment, which I suppose is more of a loss than a gain, but you get the idea.

Though this might not sound very uplifting in the present, the age-old saying that you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes, in my opinion, is only half-true. Making mistakes isn’t nearly as scary to me as repeating mistakes is. I trust that you will be able to live through your mistakes, even if it may not feel like it at the moment. As long as you learn from them and persevere, no matter what might be discouraging or holding you back, you can live with fewer regrets.

All I can leave you with is this cliche and very general advice: Live your life the way you want to live it and live with it. Revel in your accomplishments, learn from your mistakes and, though this is nearly impossible, create as few regrets as is humanly possible for you.