20 Things I Learned In 20 Years

Dear Readers,

My name is Ria. I am a 20 year old college student at Barnard College, and I am a transfer student from the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside). I transferred out of UC Riverside after almost a year of being on campus and over a year of being at home, doing everything remotely. In these last two years, I have decided what I currently want to pursue in the future, I have moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City, I have made new friends and gotten into a relationship, and I have taken opportunities that I never could have dreamed of having in high school. That said, these past two years have also brought forth an unnerving amount of self reflection, tears, goodbyes, doctor’s appointments, and anxiety. When thinking about that, I find comfort in the fact that there’s good and bad in every period of life. I realize that a lot can happen, and a lot can change, in just two years.

So when I think about the fact that I’m 20 years old, it blows my mind that so much can change in two years-- and that I have had ten two-year periods in my life. Clearly, a lot has changed in those twenty years. Old worries have gone away, new worries have come up, and things that I could not have predicted come up. The most important thing that has changed, though, is the amount of lessons I have learned.

I think that there are many things that can increase or decrease in life-- from the amount of good friends one has to the amount of places to which they go regularly. One thing that can never decrease nor can even stay the same, though, is the amount of lessons one learns. Even if I had to unlearn a certain lesson, I would be learning one more lesson: that that certain lesson that I had to unlearn was faulty. Essentially, the amount of lessons that one learns is always only going up, which is pretty amazing.

With that, it is safe to say that I have learned a lot of lessons in my life from being 20– I have more lessons learned than my 18 year old self does, but less lessons learned than my 22 year old self. The lessons I have learned are different from the ones that others have learned, but that said, my lessons can (hopefully!) still teach a couple of others something they don’t know. I say this because others’ learned lessons have definitely taught me a thing or two.

I have written down 20 lessons I have learned at the age of 20:

1. Trust your gut, but don’t confuse anxious thoughts for gut feelings.

There was a brief period of my life during which I went to see a therapist after an exceptionally bad breakup. During that period, she expressed to me how weird she found it that humans are the only species that voluntarily override their own biological gut instincts. This conversation came up when I talked about the fact that I always had an underlying gut feeling that my just-ended relationship was not going to work out; I realized that if I had not consistently ignored a gut feeling that provoked me regularly, then maybe my problems would have not gotten to such a stressful point.

That said, I, like many others, am diagnosed with anxiety-- and anxious thoughts are easy to conflate with gut feelings. Sometimes I personally have anxious thoughts that I’m going to die, and I feel like it is a gut feeling that I shouldn’t ignore. Clearly, though, that isn’t a gut feeling that is correct; rather, it is an anxious thought that I should correct.

The way to differentiate a gut feeling from an anxious thought is this: gut feelings are meant to help you, and anxious thoughts are meant to hurt you. For example, “My friend isn’t back from the grocery store yet, what if she died in a car crash” is not a thought that helps accomplish anything; it just breeds a worry about a rare occurrence. It’s an anxious thought.

On the other hand, “I don’t trust this stranger to give me a drink” is a thought that assesses the safety of a situation and suggests a course of action to stay safe and happy. If you had a gut feeling that a situation was unsafe, but it turns out that the situation would have been perfectly fine, the gut feeling still would not have hurt you.

2. Your attitude matters more than your intelligence.

Intelligence, while it can be increased with practice, is too broad and too innate to matter significantly— especially when compared to characteristics like hard work and grit.

For example, getting into a college is hard. Someone with just intelligence, but no drive or resolve, will likely not have enough to get into an Ivy League. It takes drive to apply the intelligence to doing more than the bare minimum. It takes confidence and determination to withstand the complicated admissions process and to complete time-consuming applications. Someone without uniquely high intelligence, though, can get in. They can compensate for a slower innate ability to learn things by working extra hard and maintaining determination throughout the process.

Essentially, compensating for a lack of intelligence with an abundance of effective hard work is possible, but compensating for effective hard work with innate intelligence is not a thing— intelligent people who are completely lazy cannot bring themselves to go above and beyond.

To get started on that hard work, though, one must have the attitude for it. Whether it’s motivation to self-improve, discipline to achieve a goal, or determination to prove someone wrong, feelings and attitudes shape how hard someone will work. Someone with the attitude that hard work doesn’t matter will not be the person to work the hardest.

Attitude shapes hard work, and hard work shapes success. Intelligence is certainly helpful, but it is almost meaningless without the right attitude.

3. Say “yes” to going out with your friends, even when you’re feeling lazy or upset.

There have been moments in my life where I have been in a lazy mood and have wanted to say no to a call, to an outing, or to a quick catch-up. Moments where I just wanted to be alone and reschedule or cancel.

One thing I realized, though, is that in moments where I said “yes” even though I didn’t want to, I’ve never regretted it. I’ve always been grateful that I ended up saying yes.

My mom always told me that “some moments in which you really think that you need to be alone are the moments in which you should not be alone,” and I think those words apply to situations in which one is feeling a little under the weather and is debating whether or not to hang out with friends.

An important thing to note is that this lesson involves saying yes tofriends. It’s hard to regret spending time with people who make you feel happier when you are around them. If they constantly make you feel stressed, scared, or annoyed, then they probably are not your friends.

4. Don’t pass up good opportunities for the sake of familiarity or comfort.

Comfort-- whether that is the comfort of knowing that other people won’t think poorly of you, the comfort of staying in the same location, or any other kind of comfort--

is something that a good opportunity may ask you to give up. My example? Moving to New York City. I transferred out of a school that had my boyfriend and good friends, was in the state I lived in throughout my whole life, and gave me guaranteed leadership positions. Instead, I moved to a state and a school both unfamiliar and initially uncomfortable to me. In return, I received more than California familiarity and comfort would have given me.

5. Apply for opportunities that you want, even if you don’t think you’re qualified enough.

I applied to Barnard, to many of the jobs I have had, and to even UC Riverside, thinking that I was not going to get in. I applied anyway, and I got in.

There is no downside to applying to an opportunity (unless there’s an expensive application fee) that you feel like you probably aren’t going to get. Because there is absolutely no way that you can get the opportunity if you do not apply, but there is absolutely no way that you’re guaranteed to not get the opportunity if you do apply.

6. Pee enough times in a day; holding in your urine can cause Urinary Tract Infections (UTI’s).

I used to hold in my urine a lot during the tumultuous school year out of the idea that I could pee after finishing an assignment or after completing a task that was more important; however, this led to me getting a UTI.

I always thought UTI’s were only caused because of hygiene matters, like wiping the wrong way. However, after consulting a urologist, I realized that my UTI came from not peeing enough times in a day generally.

Peeing every two to three hours is the norm, and staying hydrated so that that can happen is essential.

7. Worry more about yourself than about what other people think.

In early college, I was petrified of the prospect of creating a LinkedIn. This was mainly because I knew that people from my high school would see it and laugh at me; I knew a lot of students from my high school whom I considered to be extremely intelligent and accomplished, more so than I considered myself to be. I thought that if they found me, I would be an easy target to make fun of and get gossiped about. As a result, I did not make a LinkedIn for a long time. It scared me that if anyone googled my name, my LinkedIn would pop up, and people could make fun of my choice of career or the kind of opportunities that I have chosen to take on.

The truth is, people could make fun of my clothes if I walked on the street; people could make fun of my phone if I made a phone call in a cafe; people could make fun of my voice if I talked.

People can make fun of anything, so you shouldn’t let others stop you from doing everything.

I learned that not making a LinkedIn was only holding back my career. Now that I have one, I have gotten the opportunity to connect with students, showcase the development in what I have learned, and take on advancement. I talked to students who are currently doing what I want to do in the future.

Looking back, I should have never been that scared of making a LinkedIn. My fear of what other people would say about me was not holding anyone back from saying bad things about me. It was only holding me back from opportunities.

8. Coordinate the scents of your shampoo, conditioner, body soap, perfume, and/or sprays. Having a signature scent will give you a longer-lasting good smell and make you feel more confident!

I realized this when I had used a coconut shampoo, coconut conditioner, and coconut body soap-- and had put on a coconut leave-in serum and coconut moisturizer afterwards.

Coordinating scents makes a specific scent longer and stronger, better for lasting throughout the day.

9. Exercising only because you want to look better generally makes you want to exercise less.

Wanting to get healthy for the wrong reasons can go downhill quickly. When I wanted to eat healthier a couple of years ago, I reached for a salad instead of my typical lunch of something with rice or bread. That in and of itself was not wrong; however, my mindset quickly became more and more restrictive. I eventually got afraid of having salads with dressing, worried that dressing would be fattening. Eventually, I restricted myself so much that I turned to calories instead of nutritional value-- and I allowed myself to eat junk food if it was low calorie. That dark turn happened because of one thing: if a person cares about being healthy only to be skinny, then they don’t care about being healthy-- they just care about being skinny.

The same goes for exercise. I realized that I was becoming stronger after doing things for fun pretty often-- like hiking or playing volleyball with my friends. These kinds of things did not feel like a chore. Going to the gym to get flat abs, though, did. Exercise for fun, exercise for energy, exercise for health, and exercise for strength are all productive and sustainable reasons for exercise; however, exercise for superficial reasons is unproductive and unsustainable. Not only can exercise quickly become a chore, but it can also spiral into unhealthy and energy-reducing habits.

10. Drinking too much water at once on an empty stomach can cause you to throw up.

One morning, out of fear I had a UTI, I chugged a hydroflask of water before taking two cranberry pills. I chugged a second after the fear that the first one wasn’t enough. At this point in the morning, I still hadn’t eaten anything yet.

I felt a little sick after drinking two full hydroflasks of water. My stomach felt overly full and slightly pained. For this reason, I thought about the things that I had done in the past that had worked for me when I had a stomachache. Usually, one of those things was drinking small sips of water.

In hindsight, it was clearly a bad idea to solve overconsumption of water with a little more water. After sipping three small sips from what would have been my third hydroflask of the morning, I felt an onslaught of saliva fill my mouth, and I quickly vomited out everything I had eaten from the previous night. My stomach felt terrible, I felt cold, and I felt scared of drinking more water.

Essentially, staying hydrated is important-- but there are consequences of drinking too much water at once.

11. Being 80% plant-based for many years is more feasible, environmentally conscious, and animal friendly than being 100% vegan for a couple of months.

There are specific strict vegan individuals who shame or confront daily meat-eaters and 90% plant-based eaters alike. The truth is that people who are mostly vegan, vegetarian, trying to get there, or slowly cutting out meat should be encouraged.

There is no denying that a plant-based lifestyle would benefit the environment as well as animal welfare. That said, for a plant-based lifestyle to have optimal effects, a lot of individuals would need to adopt the plant-based lifestyle. With the strictness of and “all or nothing” attitude of veganism, it is hard to persuade many people to convert from eating meat to eating plants.

If in a group of ten people, two ate vegan every day and eight ate a pound of meat every week, there would be thirty two pounds of meat consumed per month. But in a group of ten people, if there were six people who ate vegan every other week and four that ate a pound of meat every week, there would only be twenty eight pounds of meat consumed per month. Twenty eight is less than thirty two; a larger amount of plant based people is better than a smaller amount of strict vegan people.

Larger but looser is a better strategy, for this, than smaller but stricter.

12. If you fill in your eyebrows with makeup, take off the makeup at night and apply this brow serum instead. It made my eyebrows a little thicker pretty quickly and has significantly reduced my need for putting on a lot of brow pencil.

Women are generally told to not keep makeup on overnight. One of the things I learned is that the night time is a key time to reduce one’s need for even wearing makeup. For example, a lot of women have skin care routines at night; this reduces the need to wear foundation or concealer.

I started using night time to apply brow serum so that I would have to use less and less eyebrow pencil. The product I swear by is Pronexa Hairgenics Lavish Lash. It’s for lashes, but doubles as a brow serum.

13. Cutting out sugar more can help with a dry scalp.

I used to have a dry scalp, which led to hair falling out and an itchy head. I cut out sugar at the same time, more for my nutrition than for helping with my scalp. It helped significantly. At first, I wasn’t sure whether my scalp got better because of sugar or because of something else, but I realized that since sugar can cause inflammation in general, it makes sense that cutting sugar would help with dry skin flare ups.

14. Don’t completely lose sight of your creative outlets.

Growing up, I loved to be creative. Whether it was through playing piano or singing, writing poetry, or filming videos, I loved engaging in arts to ease my mind.

After mid-high school, I swapped out creativity for mindless forms of “entertainment,” like scrolling social media apps for hours and just lying in bed when I was not even tired.

Picking up a guitar for the first time before a final exam for a hard class made me realize how much I had been missing by neglecting my creative outlets. Instruments, art, and other creative outlets are opportunities to relieve stress and feel rewarded.

There’s a unique sense of fulfillment and joy that comes from them, and they should never be forgotten.

15. If you have more than three priorities, then they’re not your priorities-- they’re just a to-do list.

I was a part of an organization called the California Public Interest Research Group Students (CALPIRG Students) in my second year of college. There were all sorts of useful trainings, and one of them was a time management training; during this, my campus’ organizer mentioned that a list of priorities should be three things maximum-- otherwise, it’s just a to-do list.

This forever changed the way I thought; I learned to narrow down things to do versus priorities, and I learned to work more efficiently.

16. Wear a mask while deep cleaning your room.

If you have dust allergies, cleaning a dusty room is bound to aggravate your nostrils. I deal with this issue by wearing a standard pandemic mask when cleaning my room. It gets the allergens out and leaves me less sniffly afterwards.

17. Don’t blow dry your hair too much. Instead, wash your hair early enough for it to air dry, and use a leave-in serum on your wet hair to volumize or smooth it.

Blow drying hair, especially while brushing, or on a high heat setting, can be bad for hair. I have learned to always let my hair air dry (towel drying can be bad for hair too, especially if the towel is being rubbed around a lot).

One of the appeals of blow drying my hair was blow drying it to be smoother and straighter. A way that I have learned to air dry my hair while still getting it to be smoother and straighter is adding Chi Silk Infusion to my hair while it is wet and then letting it air dry.

This has not only helped my hair to dry smoothly and safely, but it has also helped my hair to become softer and shinier.

18. Use Google Calendar.

Google Calendar was my best friend during the pandemic. During busy times, I could go to my Google Calendar to know what I had going on at each hour. I color coded the events based on the organization, and I added Zoom links to each event so that they were all in one place. I could add friends to my events and could add documents to events if I needed someone from a meeting to look at a document beforehand.

To this day, Google Calendar is one of my favorite resources to use during busy times. Use it!

19. Progress will almost never be linear.

The 2021 version of myself was a stronger version of myself than the 2019 version of myself, but the 2020 version of myself was a weaker one than the 2019 version of myself..

Getting protein and vitamins from whole foods feels better than eating protein bars, vitamin packed packaged juices, etc.

20. There is a significant difference in my feelings after drinking a processed protein shake versus getting natural protein from an egg that I prepare.

Those are my twenty lessons! I hope my narrative of my worldview could help you look differently at your own, or that you enjoyed learning about the lessons that I’ve learned.

As you finish reading my twenty lessons in twenty years, take time to consider the lessons you have learned. What lessons do you keep with you most dearly to this day? What lessons can you give to others?

Sincerely, Ria