A piece of advice

A while ago, my wife was filling out this scholarship application online that involved writing some paragraph long answers to various questions. One of the questions went along the line of “What piece of advice would you give to high school students” or something like that.
So it got me thinking, what kind of advice would I give? It’s harder than you might think. After all, how do you give advice to an age group that thinks they know everything. Yes, you’ve all been there. How much advice did you listen to or take when it came from pepole older than you? Probably very little of it I bet.

So here’s the advice I would give to high school students.
Listen to the advice people give you.
You’re going to get a lot of advice from different people. Some older than you, some from your peers. Most of it will sound like crap, particularly when it comes from people older than you (like your parents). Just listen to it. You don’t have to take it, just listen to it and consider it. No, we are not trying to control your life, order you around or tell you what to do (well, maybe your parents are). Just trying to pass along a little of our learned wisdom. After all, those people used to be your age, and have gone through many of things you are going through, and will go through. They know stuff. And in a few years, you will know stuff too, and you will have the same advice to give to others. Then you’ll realize that yeah, we do know stuff, and that was some good advice we gave you and you’re glad that you took it (or else you’ll say “Man, I should have listened and taken that advice”).