People Share What They Wish They’d Known When They Were 21, and It’s Such Good Advice

Dwelling on your friends’ jobs, grades, and relationships will do nothing but make you feel inadequate. Seeing everybody else succeed via Facebook and Instagram is a dangerous thing, and it’s best just to ignore all of that. Focusing on yourself is the most important, and you should be proud of your accomplishments and personal successes without feeling the need to compare yourself to others.

Move on, stop going back, and date around. Focus your energies on your friends, your family, and yourself. People who make you cry and break your heart just aren’t worth it. Enjoy being single and young now, because when you meet the love of your life, the energy you wasted on this messy “relationship” will seem so meaningless.

I would have gone over more, stayed later, had more sleepovers, etc.

It’s a foot in the door and a paycheck, and it does not have to dictate your entire career path.

If you haven’t made tidying up, working out, or anything else “adults” do a habit, then it’s not going to suddenly happen by itself once you’re out of college. And that’s OK.

Your friendships will be deeper, and your friends are stronger and more supportive.

You’ll both benefit from it.

Figure out what you like, and start exploring that direction. But don’t have a quarter-life crisis because you think you’re going nowhere – pretty much no one has their life’s plan figured out by age 21.

Leaving passive-aggressive Post-it notes for roommates about cleaning up their mess isn’t the best form of communication.

You’ll have your whole life to go to bars. Also, Costco is a great place to buy alcohol when you’re on a budget!

Stop taking your literature classes for granted. You will never again have these sorts of thoughtful, insightful, and passionate professor-led book discussions with similar-minded peers. It’s a lot more difficult trudging through 1,000-plus pages of Russian lit once you’re on your own in the “real world.”

Just do it. It’s way better than getting Invisalign or braces down the road.

As you get older, you can still live 10 minutes away and have months pass without seeing one another.

Life will only become more complicated. Take advantage of your freedom and flexibility, and have an adventure (or two or three).

Prepare for this.

You think you’ll remember everything that’s happening, but you won’t. Write down memories of those hilarious college nights, stress-inducing job hunts, embarrassing moments, and important days. You’ll love rereading those memories years down the road. Oh, and save the screenshots of your texts; those are going to be gold one day.

If it’s giving you signs that something is or isn’t right, trust it. Don’t be so afraid of hurting someone else that you hurt yourself.

Picture two lines on a graph with your age at the horizontal axis and your time at the vertical. One line represents freedom, and the other represents responsibility. As you get older, the responsibility line on the graph keeps moving up, and the freedom line keeps moving down. Twenty-one should be the prime time: while you do have some responsibilities to study and/or work, you also should have a lot of freedom – you don’t have a family yet or a mortgage. Make sure to enjoy the limited time that you have more freedom than you do responsibility!

It’s easy to revel in being 21, but remember to take care of yourself, too. Find balance! Don’t binge drink and then crash diet. Ramen is cheap, but make sure to have some sort of vegetable every day. Plus, your metabolism only goes downhill, so you may as well give it a good jumping-off point.

The memories will last a lifetime.

You won’t regret it.