Dear Lacey,

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these posts, purely because I haven’t really done much with my life lately to offer you a lesson in it but next week, I go back to college and I’m already stressing. At least, I was.

Oh this is a real old post if I’m going back to college (spoiler alert, I dropped out again)

Now, I know that I’ve said in a previous post that you can’t learn from my mistakes but for this, just make a little exception. I want you to try hard in school, revise as much as possible, don’t mess around in class and don’t skip. I don’t want to see tears on your exam results day because you didn’t get the grades you wanted, sometimes you don’t. Exams aren’t easy and it doesn’t matter how much you know, if you’re not good at exams then you can’t help that, your best is all you can give and you should always be happy with it, whether it’s enough for others or not.

Most importantly however, have fun. Take your time. Don’t rush to grow up because it will happen regardless but you can never grow down. Go to parties, make good friends, listen to happy music, write lots, read lots, draw, sing, dance, do as much as you can whilst you can. Go on trips, travel, experience. Sometimes you’re only going to get chances once and you need to take them. Go to prom, get a paper round so you can buy clothes and books etc. go to after school clubs, you only realise how important these things are when you realise that your CV is scarce because you didn’t do anything. Honestly, school isn’t all about learning, it’s also a big part of your social life. Build strong relationships with fun people, nice people that make you laugh. Otherwise, you’re going to end up like me (a total loser who doesn’t know how to friend.)

Can I just take a second and scold myself for this – I had friends. I had really good friends. Unfortunately, I was put in a position because of someone I decided to give space in my life where I wasn’t allowed to have my own friends. I wasn’t a loser or totally lonely, I had been isolated by someone and rereading this, knowing that was how it felt, makes me so sad omg.

When it comes down to being serious, be serious, but don’t panic. No exam result is worth an unravelling of your mental health, trust me. They do not determine the rest of your life, you and your attitude does. Albeit, they will make it easier and you will need them to go to uni but to survive? They are minor details. Some of the most successful people are college drop outs, they didn’t let it stop them. I don’t mean drop out of college because you can get rich without education, I’m saying, if you decide that stressing over your education isn’t worth it and you stop, it isn’t the end of the world. There is always a second path to take so, if you’re about to sit some sort of exam, breathe. You’re not going to die if you get a D.

Lacey, try as hard as you can but enjoy yourself. You will be under a lot of pressure in secondary school, from puberty hitting you, to a pile up of coursework, boyfriends, arguments with friends and applying to colleges as well as trying to grow up when everyone expects you to act like an adult but they still treat you like a child. It all blows over eventually, I just don’t want you to crash and burn because it isn’t worth it.

Good luck, Moosh.

This entire post is so badly structured that it makes me sick but I don’t want to sit and rewrite the whole thing so i’m just going to bullet point the points I was clearly struggling to make.

1. School sucks whilst you’re there but I promise, they are the easiest days of your life
2. Take your exams and education seriously but don’t lose your mind over them. There’s no point cutting a branch with a blunt blade, you have to make sure that blade is in tact and the cutting will be easy. The blade being your mental health and the branch being your education or exams
3. Don’t drop out of college, honestly, just stay in education for as long as you possibly can, once you drop that opportunity as a whole and you have to pay to go back, some of your options are actually limited
4. Have fun. Enjoy your teenage years, the house parties, the bike rides, the memories you make with your friends in the school corridors. It will all help build your character, maths isn’t the only thing you can learn at school