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Don’t Peak in High School

S

OMETI MES TEENAGE

girls ask me for advice about what they should be doing if they want a c areer li ke mine one day. There are basically two ways to get where I am: (1) learn a pro- vocative dance and put i t on Y ou T ube; (2) convince your parents to move to Orlando and homeschool you until you get ca st on a kids’ show,

or

do what I did, which is (3) stay in school and be a respectful and hardworking wallﬂower, and go to an accredited non- online university. Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully

fair .