When you're in highschool, you're at the mercy of a lot of things that are just out of your control.

From how good your friends are to the average douche-level of your guy peers to the average catty-level of your girl peers to how uncool your parents are to how many of your friends have already started dating to how much they talk about it and make you feel left out to whether or not you even meet one cool guy/gal worth dating before you graduate to whether or not you partake in play-by-post forum roleplaying to how many generations your hand-me-downs were handed down until they became yours.

It's tempting to draw conclusions from the result of those dice-rolls, especially conclusions about yourself.

All my friends are dating. Shouldn't I be dating too? Is something wrong with me?

Nah. It just hasn't come up. No big deal.

"Wait til college" is such a common mantra because you finally have control then. You just haven't really had a fair shot til you're out of highschool when you can finally pick who you live with, where you spend your day, how you're meeting people, and if you're meeting people. And your pool of bf/gf candidates is more like an ocean.

Finally, there's really only one thing you can do in life if you feel like you need more friends or lovers: You have to put yourself in a position to meet more people.

I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make certain things happen while giving ourselves nothing to work with.

Anyways, I'm 26 now. Ever since I graduated highschool, there's just one piece of advice I would give my highschool-aged self:

![](http://i.imgur.com/rNKdawQ.jpg)