I am about to turn 21. I've been looking forward to this day since about ten minutes after my 20th birthday, when my friend Tyler said, "Imagine how awesome 365 days from now will be!" I'm the baby of my friends, so while they've all been doing cool, old people things for the past year, I've spent my time thinking about some different things I've learned. (Not really. I've spent my time being sad that I'm the smallest child and unsuccessfully trying to learn how to put on eyeliner). But, anyway, here are 21 things that I've learned in my 21 years of existence.
1. Never, ever get your bangs cut at Walmart.
Words do not describe the horror that was my hair after this incident. I've seen three-year-olds who are learning how to use scissors chop off their hair in a cuter hairstyle than I had. I wore a headband for a solid three weeks and cried a lot to my dad, who tried to reassure me that they probably had an auto-mechanic filling in for the hairdresser that day. (It was not reassuring).
2. Do not wear cloud shorts to bed.
All of your roommates will make fun of you for wearing the same pajamas since the seventh grade and convince you that you will never have a boyfriend. I'm also no longer allowed to answer the door wearing my "hair drying outfit," which consists of my dad's oversized sweatshirt and boxers with cats on them.
3. Dating someone because "they look good in hats" is probably not a very good reason.
My brother's will never let me forget that I once dated someone solely because they looked fantastic in hats. Like, that was actually my reasoning when I was describing why I was with him. I think I went through a dumb phase.
4. Dating someone that drives you crazy probably isn't good either.
I used to think that fighting and yelling and arguing over everything with someone meant you were passionate and meant to be together. I distinctly remember sitting on the front porch of the Mansion in a mouse costume, crying and explaining this to my best friend, Allie, who was looking at me like I was a crazy person (probably because I was.) Yelling at each other outside of a party does not mean you should be together. It does not make you fall in love. It just makes you look like you're nuts and will make your friend Scott terrified of you because he previously thought you were a nice, normal person and he just witnessed you and your ex trying to hit each other like small children.
5. If a boy tells you he is in the Army, he might actually just be a high schooler with a crew cut.
Seriously.
6. Appreciate your friends.
Everyone goes through a phase and I definitely had one. I don't know what came over me, but I went CRAY. On a whim, I broke up with my boyfriend of three and a half years, cut off all my hair and stopped hanging out with some of my best friends. All of the sudden, I was just this completely different person and I didn't care about anything (although I didn't get my hair cut at Walmart, so at least I had that going for me). I was acting disgustingly selfish and didn't even realize it until a particularly awful Thanksgiving break, where I slept a lot and unknowingly succeeded in upsetting my entire family over the course of a week. After that incident, I realized I needed to get my life back together and I am so, so thankful that I have as strong of friends as I do. Even though I had hardly seen some of them in three months, they all helped me figure out my life and become a better person and I will forever appreciate all of them.
7. Find a friend that will leave you notes in the shower.
I am the luckiest person ever because during my sophomore year, I got to be roommates with my best friend Allie, who always knows when I'm having a terrible day, even when I tell her I'm not. (She can also sense if a kitten is close-by and in danger from a mile away. I'm not joking. It's a very impressive skill.) When I was going through a pretty hard time last year, she would leave me notes in the shower to cheer me up. She also let me sleep in her room on a mattress for three months because I was convinced our house was haunted and was too afraid of the ghost to sleep by myself. She's the best. Find a friend like her.
8. You can miss out.
Last year, I had a terrible fear of missing out. It didn't matter if it was a Wednesday night and I had huge assignment due at 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning that I hadn't yet started. If my friends were having a party, I was going to go: I didn't want to miss out on all the stories, the jokes, the songs, the photos. This is how I found myself in my friend Palmer's room at 5 a.m., crying and typing a paper due in three hours* while everyone else tried to sleep and Chelsea alternated between feeding me Oreo's and making grilled cheese out of every ingredient in Tyler's fridge. This year, I've realized that I'm a lot more grown up. I have a lot of responsibilities and I realize that I can't do everything fun. Even though I'm "missing out," I'm getting stuff accomplished. And, that's kind of neat because it's almost like I'm a grown up. Kind of.
*That paper was the highest grade in the class and got put online as an example for future classes to use. My life was in shambles, but I was apparently still awesome.
9. Stop comparing yourself to everyone.
This is not a lesson I have learned yet because I literally do this all the time. Actually, I think that comparing yourself to people makes you strive to do better and will help you improve... but only to a limit. You can't obsess over someone who is better than you to the point where all you're doing is being negative on yourself. For example, take my awesome friend, Chelsea. She is incredible. She graduated from Ball State in three and a half years and is now working at TIME magazine as her first job out of college. Basically, she's a badass. For awhile, I would, like, freak out because I wasn't as great as Chelsea at everything (because she literally rules at life), but then I realized that, even though we're basically twins, we're also different people and it's okay for me to not be as much of a baller as she is in the design world because I'm ballin' at other stuff, like Zumba and telling bad jokes and Rock, Paper, Scissors.
10. It's acceptable to cry during a Foo Fighters concert.
I was THAT girl during Sasquatch 2011. I was the girl sitting on the hill, crying so hard that it probably should have been embarrassing. I was just really feeling the music and was so happy to be in that environment and having that incredible of an experience with people that I loved so much. Because of that experience, I've decided that Sasquatch and other music festivals are acceptable places to cry. Also, it's cool to cry anytime Bon Iver's "Perth" is playing because that song makes my heart hurt a lot, even though I'm not sure why.
11. Love always remains.
MGMT knows what's up.
12. Do NOT mess around with the back end of Wordpress.
You will delete your entire portfolio site. Twice. And have to fix it (twice) in the middle of a hot flat in London with spotty Internet service where you're living with 40 college students who are freaking out about the Olympics and living off three dollars worth of food a day because you're all poor from stress shopping and a Strongbow addiction.
13. The best bonding talks happen over Mac and Cheese.
Hands down, the best part about living in a sorority house is the fact that everyone leaves food there. I am 100% sure that if it weren't for that fact, I would have moved out immediately after Susan (the ghost) started showing up. But, because I stayed, my roommates and I had many experiences hanging out at three in the morning in our 70s-style kitchen, sitting on the counters, having heart-to-hearts and eating Mac and Cheese. They were some of my best memories in that house and can't even be ruined by the fact that Susan (or a homeless man) was listening to everything we said from the basement.
14. Breaking your tailbone (twice) is not fun.
Me falling at a club in England and breaking my tailbone is one of Drew's funniest memories (probably because it was the first time in his life that he wasn't the one getting hurt), but it really sucks. And, it sucks even more when you accidentally fall down the stairs seven months later and break it again. I would much rather have pulled another skiing incident and flown off a cliff into a pond and fractured my elbow again (real life: I did that) because at least I had a badass bruise that stretched across my entire arm.
15. Even if you don't talk to your high school friends all the time, they still are pretty neat.
I am super bad about keeping in contact with people from high school. I haven't been back to Idaho in almost two years and I hate talking on my iPhone for long periods of time ever since the toilet incident at Doc's last year. But, even though I am the worst at expressing myself across a 2,000 mile radius, I love and appreciate all of them so much because they are the people I grew up with that helped me become who I am today. The best days ever are the days that someone we all collectively dislike does something terrible and we all group text each other and it's like we're talking next to each other again senior year in Mr. Smith's government class. While this doesn't necessarily make us very nice people, I really do enjoy the days that I open my phone to receive a photoshopped image of my middle school ex-boyfriend kissing a whale.
16. Love where you live.
I will forever be asked if I like potatoes every time I tell someone that I grew up in Idaho. It's a fact I've learned to accept, although I wish I could explain to people how amazing it was to live in Sandpoint. Only 7B kids will ever understand this, but on my last day in Sandpoint, I borrowed my then-boyfriend's car to drive up to the top of Ravenwood. I parked in the cul de sac and laid on the hood of the car, looking down at the lake, mountain and town that I had known and loved my entire life. I sat there for an hour. I probably cried. Instagram wasn't invented yet, so I didn't get to take a picture and change the filter, but Sandpoint doesn't need that. It's already the most beautiful place in the world and I will forever feel like the luckiest person in the world because I had the opportunity to grow up there.
17. Do awesome things (like Zumba) so you can meet awesome people (and Zumba with them).
Zumba is basically one of the greatest activities of all time and it's the way that I became so close to one of my best friends, Anna. Toward the end of my freshman year, we both kind of knew each other, but weren't close until we decided to go to a Zumbathon together. (For people who don't know what a Zumbathon is: 1. I feel sorry for you and 2. It's a two-hour Zumba class and usually raises money for charity and it's the most fun thing ever). After that, Anna and I Zumba'd pretty much every day, even at random places, like our office or parties or my sorority informals, where she was usually my date and we'd go dressed as Zumba instructors (or eagles). We probably drove our friends crazy because we would refuse to let them play anything else besides Zumba songs at parties. I will always be glad that I got involved in an awesome activity like Zumba because it brought me closer to Anna, who is hands-down one of the most amazing people I have ever met and I am so lucky to be able to call her my friend.
18. Do not pause in the middle of a comeback. It'll be awkward and all your friends will think you have a thing for your roommate.
Awkward situations are apparently my thing.
19. It ain't no thang.
Fact: I can't design unless I'm listening to mash-ups... or One Direction. Also, designing for me is a full-body experience: I sing, dance, bob my head... basically, I'm the worst human to go to Bracken with. But, I'm owning up to it. If for some reason, listening to boy bands (and Michael Bolton's Christmas CD) helps me be more creative, I'm not going to be embarrassed, I'm going with it. (Although, I will still keep changing my Spotify to private every time I listen to One Direction because I want people to think I'm a hipster).
20. Don't be a [dirty, little] secret.
Let's throwback to some life advice from the All-American Rejects. (And not that "Throwback Thursday" stuff. The only good throwback Thursday picture is the one of Drew when he's fifteen sitting in a bathroom stall holding a guitar). Anyway, being someone's secret sucks and you shouldn't do it. If they don't want to be with you when everyone's around, they obviously don't realize how great you are and you clearly deserve someone better. To anyone who's ever done this to me: NOT COOL, BRO. However, I am pretty sure that I've done this to a select handful of people before and to those people, I sincerely apologize for being kind of a tool.
21. You will not have your life together by the time you're 21.
Whenever I thought about being 21, I assumed I would have my life together. I assumed that somehow overnight, I'd be able to complete those basic tasks that I've been somewhat inept at for the past twenty years. This was false. I still cannot paint my nails. I can't fathom how a curling iron works and I definitely don't know how to cook anything other than microwaved chicken. I have no idea what I want to do with my life and my socks haven't matched in over a year. But, I think that this is okay. Maybe, by the time I turn 22, I'll have my life together. Maybe by then, I'll have become a real adult. But, for now, I'm pretty content with my sideways ponytail and messy closet and (finally!) being 21.