1. I wish I’d teched before the last show of my senior year. It’s really fun, even if I’m not great at it, and the people are nice. There are both sex jokes and /insert non-judging word for 'prudish' here/
2. I wish I’d stressed less and done my work earlier. I’m procrastinating right now, avoiding doing math review for my calc final, and I know that I’m going to regret that. I know that I’m going to wish I’d studied more so that I’d do better and have a final grade even though I’m a second semester senior in college who actually has a perfectly fine grade in calc. I also know I’m not going to end up studying very well, and I’m going to bs my English essay and just overall slack off on my homework. It’s going to be fun, and I wish I’d done a bit more of that junior year, but I also know I’d probably regret the results of said fun if I had.
3. I wish I’d started my college essays earlier and written them differently, if not about different subjects.
4. I wish I’d taken four years of chorus. I don’t know what classes I would have dropped, but every year I’ve taken chorus, it’s been the bright spot in my week, even when the Little Emperor was around. Also maybe then I’d be able to sing, instead of messing up my Les Mis audition so badly I want to vomit every time I think about it.
5. Although really that was more about the fact that I am so. incredibly. self-conscious. I should work on that more I suppose, but I think the best part about growing up that I’ve noticed is that I’ve gotten less terribly shy over the last four years. Incidentally, no one ever believes me when I tell them that—that I’m horribly self-conscious. Maybe I’m not really? I don’t know. I’m extroverted and know a lot of people and things. But I don’t like putting myself out there. I mean, yes, I’m an attention whore, but a lot of that stems from this craving for people to like me, to laugh at my jokes, to just give me some kind of positive attention. Which presumably most people suffer from actually, but I only have my own experience to judge from. But yeah, I think a good portion of my extroversion is me over-compensating, because I know that there’s the spotlight effect and that everyone else is as self-conscious as I am, &c &c ad nauseum. But that doesn’t make it natural, or easy.
6. I made a lot of friends at TJ. I’m going to miss them. I didn’t have many friends until middle school. I didn’t have a lot, or several groups, of friends, till high school. I don’t know that I would have made said friends at my base school. I’m terrified that I won’t make friends in college. But TJ gave me a lot of social skills and a lot of self-confidence. I’m friends with ‘popular’ kids! I have a boyfriend! I dress like a normal human being, and very few people remember a time when that wasn’t the case! When I was a freshman, I assumed almost everyone who was nice to me was doing so purely because they were nice people and I was a tiny, pathetic freshman. Now I assume it’s because they like me, or amused by me, or think I’m smart and need help with their homework. Which, on balance, is probably a better set of assumptions.
7. I’m still horrifically innocent. I think I’m knowledgeable, I can assume a jaded air, but my actual range of experience is fairly limited. This is true for most teenagers, but I think it’s worse for privileged old me, living in my magical suburban bubble. I will be sad to see that bubble burst, but it’s probably a good thing.
8. I really really wish I had grown up calling my external genitalia my vulva, rather than (incorrectly) referring to them as my vagina.
9. I don’t know where I’m going to college, and while I know how lucky I am to have the choices and ability to choose that I do, I wish that I’d applied to more and different places. The person I am now is very different than the person I was junior year when I was choosing colleges.
10. I know I’ll still be happy wherever I go.
11. I have terrible circulation. It’s April in Virginia and I have 4 blankets on my bed. Recently, some of them have started getting thrown off in the night, but only recently. I am terrified that I will actually not be able to handle a northern climate if I choose a college in the northeast.
12. But then I would have to admit to being worse at something than my older sisters, and I don’t think I could bear that. I love my sisters, but they are infuriatingly difficult to live up to, and I don’t want to concede any more than is strictly necessary.
13. I think having brilliant, beautiful sisters is part of what made my TJ years so difficult. It doesn’t matter how much you’re reassured that your parents aren’t comparing you, you know that they are. They can’t help it. You can’t help it. And you’re never good enough, because you know your faults better than your strengths, and it’s just the opposite for everyone else.
14. It doesn’t help to have obnoxiously brilliant and well-rounded friends either.
15. But at least I’m already used to not being a big fish in a small pond. I’ve been well prepared for the realities of not being the best at college or in the real world.
16. I’m constantly surprised that other TJ kids don’t seem to have realized that yet. My classmates need to be less judgmental and elitist. And that’s coming from me, one of the most judgmental people I know.
17. I’m impressed that I’ve kept up the Skirt Wednesday tradition for 5 years. I wonder how much longer I’ll do it. I wonder if any of my friends realized I was doing it without being told explicitly. I wonder if anyone else does it because of me.
18. Eighteen is a lucky number in Jewish culture, because the Hebrew letters which make it (chet and yod) also spell ‘life’ (to life, to life, l’chaim and all that). I’m turning 18 in May. I hope the coming year will be lucky, that I’ll remain as fortunate as I have been for the past 17 years.
