Dear Brielle, (3 years ago)

Dear Brielle,

(3 years ago, age 15,

junior year of high school)

1. It's okay to go to bed with homework unfinished. Doing 80% worth is not a personal act of disobedience to your teacher (especially when your parents wish you would just sleep). It is okay to decide to not do everything. Some things are worth lower grades. Like your health and sanity.

2. Moreover an occasional B or C doesn't actually affect your grade for that class too much. Pull out a calculator and determine what really matters for your teacher's grading rubric, and give yourself some guidelines that have breathing room.

3. You don't need to solve all the problems for homework, for your life, for other people.

4. You are going to realize at the end of this year that you did too much too soon. You will end up skipping 11th grade, which is fantastic. However, you'll still not have enough classes to take in 12th grade. You really could have left one off of this year's schedule.

5. Breathe, kid, breath. You end up with good grades. The drama production goes great. The summer camp is a blast. And you'll wish you could go back and tell yourself to laugh and not cry and not worry.

6. This year is very hard, but very good. You will have so many happy memories of late nights in the lobby painting cows with Becca, taking walks around the building with her looking for a prince charming model, and you'll even fondly recall the craziness of early morning chapel setups and late night ap government cramming.

7. You did the right thing moving on from him. It's hard. You will be friends with him again, but you're too young to make this decision and it was good to get out.

8. Don't cry when your math teacher fails two of your 150 assignments. It won't affect your average, really it won't.

9. You are not fat.

10. Don't leave your caffeine in the car when you go to take the SAT the 2nd time. You end up with a massive headache and fall asleep for half of it.

11. You don't eat and sleep enough and stress way too much. You don't have your period for the freaking entirety of this year. This is not healthy or normal, please be better to yourself.

12. Don't rush life. Be responsible by working hard. But also handle the time skillfully by enjoying it. You think this time is the worst thing ever, but it's beautiful and you're going to miss it.