What I would have told myself at 13 years old by Jordyn

What I would have told myself at 13 years old by Jordyn - April 2021 Scholarship Essay

Five years ago I was 13 years old, which after evaluating the past 18 years so far, I realize was my prime age. There is still potential for me to have another lifestyle peak in the future which I look forward to, but that is not the case right now. I definitely am not embarrassed about who I was back then other than the cringey pictures. For me I could feel myself “coming of age” at thirteen, some may feel that inner development at different times. I was the most popular in school during that time, I actually enjoyed school, learning and always had fun exciting things to do afterschool and on the weekends that were completely moral too. I went on my first cruise, went to Universal for the first time I could remember, made a lot of friends from other local schools, talked to people older than me, started relationships with my life mentors, I think you get the point.
To my 13 year-old self I would say to keep having fun and making life experiences because without having done those things, I would not be who I am today. The more things I can do at that time, the more potential for me to carry on these skills and experiences and expand them to other aspects of my life. I would also tell myself to not overhype high school and watch a less movies because the ones that were heavily promoted at that time definitely created false expectations in my mind of what high school was going to be like. Because of how crazy my life in middle school was, I believed it. By the time high school hit and the things I saw in the movies didn’t happen, I was kind of disappointed. I feel that a lot of time during these teenage years was wasted trying so hard to be a teenager and do things that I thought I should’ve been doing because of my age. If I were to do things differently, I would try to get a job sooner to make money for my future since after my freshman year of high school I really didn’t have anything else more important to do, at the time when I was 16 and early 17, I thought having close friends, going out, taking all AP and dual enrollments were crucial and things that I could not live without. Not that these priorities were bad, but they ended up being a waste of time for me. I didn’t pass a lot of my AP classes and I spent a lot of extra time doing work for APs when I could’ve taken the regular honors class gotten an easy A and still have my GPA increase. To this day I still have no close friends made from high school or anywhere else which I have accepted and will no longer waste time trying to make happen which is something I regret doing as well. I really should’ve been working more and more on myself and growth than trying to do what is expected of me because of my age or what other teenagers around me were doing. I do not self-deprecate too much because a lot of it my mindset and choices had to do with being young and not really having an idea about a lot things. I didn’t end up starting my first part-time job until my senior year.
Everyone has their own path and at an early age I had already discovered the things I liked to do which I am very grateful for. In general, I am and have always been a self—driven person, having said that I wish I kept my drive consistent and focused it in the right places, which in my opinion is self-investment. Now I prioritize fitness, nutrition, being productive daily, and working towards my self goals like being fluent in Spanish, learning French, pursuing commercial modeling (as a side hustle, or full-time) and everything else would just go under teaching myself skills I need in order to do my hobbies successfully rather than paying for classes with my work money. All of this made me realize that there are certain things in life that you simply just can’t control and you have to make the best out of what you do have, and it’s better to discover that sooner than later.