Things I wish someone told me about turning 18

In the days leading up to my 18th I could picture this perfect life waiting on the other side for me. Friends, clubs, alcohol and partying every weekend. I was on a high from finally getting my Ps and not having to worry about school anymore since I graduated. It’s a pretty naive view to have looking back at it now, considering I ironically haven’t left my house in 7 weeks due to quarantine. But besides the Covid-19 stuff, being 18 really has its highs and lows So, here’s a list of things I wish someone told me before I turned 18. 

1. The five months after you graduate will probably be the best 5 months of your life, and then you are thrown into uni where the workload is the same as HSC every week.

2. Going out every weekend is expensive. Most clubs have the audacity to charge you an entry fee of $20-30, then you need to pay for drinks on top of that. (However having gathos at your house with BYO alcohol, your Spotify playlist and close friends is cheap and arguably a lot better than the club) 

3. Being 18 means you can have adult discussions about adult things like politics without people saying you know nothing cause you are just a young silly girl right? RIGHT!?!

4. If you don’t want to drink then don’t let people make you drink. Alcohol really isn’t that great. I promise you can have the same amount of fun without throwing up after 12 shots.

5. It’s okay to feel like the dumbest person in your uni class, cause the truth is no one knows what they are doing either, they just act like they do.

6. When 18 hits, it’s a fresh page completely. If you wanted to you could become a different person. I noticed that when I turned 18 I just stopped caring about what people thought about me. I realised that if someone doesn’t like me well then that’s their problem to deal with, not mine. And that realisation was very freeing.

18 is the age to really figure out who you want to be and where you want to go. It’s a fresh page, it’s a time to make mistakes and not think too hard about the consequences cause at the end of the day we still have our whole lives ahead of us. Turning 18 might not be like the movies, but it’s still the beginning your life and career aspirations! So if you just turned 18, Go make some bad decisions, they help you figure out who you are. (just not so bad that it ruins your life or someone else’s) 

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