School starts on Thursday.... I need advice!

No one is prepared to be an adult. It's like a bombshell that drops on you the day you move into your own place.

Just act the same way you always do?

Sorry I can't be of much help here lol. Not the best advice giver I suppose. I was mostly home-schooled, and when I went to College, I just acted the same way as I do anywhere else.

Becoming an Adult only changes your status and expands on what you can do. It's not some magical thing that you change into once you hit 18 years old. So just act the same way you always have and don't worry about it.

My suggestion is to deal with it one day at a time. Don't worry about the future, worry about the here and now. Think about what you can/should be doing right now. As long as you do your best everything will turn out fine.

I'm 29 and I gotta say it just get's to be more and more every day till you die. Learn coping mechanisms or you'll suffer a lot and just remember it's natural to have ups and downs and we've all been there.

Does your school has in place plans for wearing masks and social distancing?

@TurdPooCharger , I am not sure yet. I think they will require masks, but that's about it.

Make long-lasting friendships. Don't ignore other people. Go out and do whatever you want. Form social connections that go beyond a phone screen and social networks that couldn't care about you or your privacy.

I know, COVID-19 is a thing, but don't let it be the thing that prevents you from forming relationships.

Also, don't go to college because "it will lead to a better paying job, and you'll be starving to death if you don't go to it and get a bachelor's degree for something that doesn't even need said degree." If you want to be a doctor or lawyer, that's one thing. A programmer or accountant? Just go to a trade school for the latter if you can, and keep up the programming on that calculator!

Remember, after this, you're going to be responsible for taking care of yourself until the day you die. That fact is not gonna change even if you get married and have kids. You're gonna need time to take care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally and, if you're religious/spiritual, spiritually. Of course, you should take care of your family if you decide to go down that route! But you also need to do the basics of self care.

Never give up. Life is gonna have ups and downs going forward for whatever reason, but you're gonna have to prepare yourself to handle these to the best of your ability.


Have fun with this last year. School doesn't last forever, and you still have a year to change things if you aren't happy with where you're at right now, even in these strange times you and I are living in.

Just don't forget...

I'm just really not prepared. I have no idea what I'm gonna do after high school. And I don't want to stay at my friend's house for longer than I need to. I feel obligated to move out asap. I kinda want to go into computer hardware engineering or maybe the software side of things. But I'm not sure where to start.

@MrMcTiller And that's OK! Move out first, learn how to manage money, what really matters, and where you want to go!

If you try to defeat the final boss at level 1, you're gonna have a hard time. Instead, focus on getting to level 73-level 99 (or level 999 for those weird outlier games who's levels go into the triple digits) before pulling out a loan and trying to see if you can handle the college workload just because someone said you have to do it when you're young!

Take your time dude. I'm a year ahead of you and I'm still figuring out what I'm doing myself. Your friends seem like cool people so don't stress too much about overstaying your welcome. I know not everyone believes this stuff but there's this great Bible verse that says not to be anxious about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. That's my mantra at least. Just take it step by step.

You should wait until september... seriously, starting school in august? What is happening in this world?

Make sure you find your significant other before your in your 30s-40s. Once you are past a certain point in your life it might become out of reach (Speaking from first hand experience on this one, I suppose I have been dubbed "The Unforgiven". )
We all know its way easier to meet your other half when your young.

Enjoy your senior year and try not to stress about it to much. You will be playing the adult game before you even realize it.

honestly, no one really knows what they want to do until much later in life. there can be a lot of influences from family and those around you, but honestly it is up to you. make sure to do your general electives early in college to test out what you really like, and move forward from there. trade schools can be good too, but they are very dependent on rapidly changing market forces.

the people who say they knew what they wanted to do super earlier either got very lucky or are lying.

Best advice I can think of is: you can't predict the future, so just don't. Stop thinking about the 1000 scenarios about your life, because none of them are going to happen exactly how you think they will. You don't know what will happen, because it's out of your control; it's other people, other countries, heck other global events that shape your life.

Think of it like a map: you say "I want to go to point A". OK, you know the general direction where A is, but you have no clue how to get there. You have roads that point in that direction, so you pick one and go. And through your journey to point A, you'll find so much stuff: forks in the road, terrible roads, friends, dead-ends, shortcuts, shitty people, beautiful avenues. Hell, you might even reach point A and realize you completely despise it.

What you do have control of, and will always have, is your present. So, live in the present. Think of what you wanna get or how you want your future to be, and work in the present to increase your chances. Because in the end, it's all about chances. Try new stuff, tinker with some electronic stuff, focus on your course, etcetera. But please, stop worrying about the future; whatever it is, it will eventually come. Until then, enjoy the present. You never know how the road looks or where it leads, but you can always choose to walk through it or not.