For the Graduates...

In honor of high school graduation coming up for lots of 18 year olds all over the country, a local radio station was doing this bit this morning where they listed the top 5 things they wished someone had told them when they graduated from high school.

Here is my top 5 list:

1. I wish someone had told me (and I had understood) how lucky I was to be so young and have so many opportunities ahead of me. Honestly, at the time of your graduation from high school, you literally have the option of doing ANYTHING with your life, the possibilities are endless. Nothing is holding you back but yourself. There’s no full time job, or children, or mortgage keeping you from devoting 100% of your time to searching for what will make your future a happy and successful one. The world is just waiting on you to make your mark, and you alone get to choose how you’re going to make it.
2. I wish someone had told me to see as much of the world as possible while I can. College is the absolute perfect time to travel, but I didn’t do it. Will I ever again get the chance to spend four months in Spain? Not likely. Now there’s a job to think about, a boss who most likely will not be too keen on allowing me to take an extended leave to backpack through Europe for a few months, and a husband who is counting on me for my portion of income to help pay the bills.
3. I wish someone had told me how quickly life moves, and that it’s important to remember to take a moment, once in a while, to take it all in, and appreciate it for what it is, a beautiful, but short journey. Maybe then, I would have taken advantage of every minute I had with my amazing friends in college, remembering to savor every single moment of laughter and joy. Maybe then I wouldn’t have gone to visit my boyfriend in the cities so many of those last weekends we all had together. I was so in love, that I let myself forget how important the people I was living with were to me, and how much I cherished their friendship. I should have realized that Dan and I were going to spend the rest of our lives together, but my time with these wonderful women was fleeting.
4. I wish someone would have told me television is in no way representative of reality. In real life you don’t sit in a coffee shop for hours upon hours with your friends on a daily basis, just like you can’t afford a huge New York apartment on the salaries of a waitress and an often-out-of-work chef. In real life you don’t buy a new dress for every date or special occasion (or a new pair of $400 Manolos for that matter), and there is not enough time or money to meet your girlfriends for lunch every day as well as for every club opening.
5. I wish someone would have told me that a very large portion of your waking life will be spent at work, so choose something that you LOVE to do, because you’re going to be doing a lot of it, for a very very long time.