Advice You Would Give to Your 12 Year-Old Self?

urbazewski asks: "If you could send a message back to your nerdy unpopular 12 year old self, what would you say? I've been asking this one for several years, and the replies sound suspiciously like the lame advice I got from adults at that age ('just be yourself, dear'). The most creative answer was from an American-born Buddhist monk, who didn't think his 12 year old self would listen to a message along the lines of 'Hey, what you're doing is kind of making things suck for me right now' --- he would send a message to himself by adding extra lyrics to a song he really liked when he was in junior high school. I got the best replies from a large class at UC Santa Cruz. The modal answer was 'Buy Microsoft.' About 7% of the class said 'Enjoy yourself in high school because college is really hard.' Another 7% said "Study harder in high school because college is really hard.' (The best variant on that theme: 'Try to figure out what "studying" is'). In the hindsight-is-20/20 dept. there was a girl who said 'Do not date the following people...' and then listed six names and a guy who said 'You know how you're thinking about trying to drive your dad's car? Don't!.' My personal favorite: 'You're a dork now, but don't worry, you'll be cool when you're in college.'"

Comments

Re:register? Domain name? WTF?

[ichimunki]

Hey what? You sure you're a nerd yourself? The first Macintosh was released in 1984. Before that there was Commodore Pet, Vic-20, and C-64, TRS-80, Sinclairs, Apple II(e), Apple IIgs, and a host of other very general purpose home computers. Many of my friends had one, as did we. And before I had a computer at home I played with everything from a teletype to a card-based system to a Pet. In 5th grade I was changing the BASIC code to a little game called "Oregon Trails" so that I wouldn't lose. That would have been before I was 12 and before 1982 (considering I turned 12 in 1981).