Any Life advice? Just random advice?

First, let me say how incredibly smart I think it is of you to ask this. Most teenagers, and I was no different, think older people don't know anything about young life. But in fact, they remember everything about it and now can see it with much wiser eyes.

You hear them say, "oh if only I knew then what I know now" and I used to want to ask them, well what DO you know now that I could use in my life here at age 15? They'd say oh I can't really say ... Well I'll say. Two big things.

One is love. Love is the fuel of the heart. And it matters.

Because that's whether you are happy or not in life. And trust me, you want to be happy - you can become VERY awfully unhappy if you don't stay on top of it. And to be happy you need love.

With other people. God won't do, nor 50 cats, nor yoga, drugs, religion, self, or that hair coloring that promises love. Not even a Subaru.

The other thing is that people lie. Not all people, but some that you just would never believe. So you have to be vigilant - I remember finding my first mistake in a textbook and I raised my hand and said to the teacher excuse me sir, but shouldn't we tell everyone that this first paragraph is wrong?

Naturally the teacher would know, right? Wrong - he looked at me and said basically WTF are you talking about rookie, shut up. (fire school) But I was right and wrote to the textbook publisher and they changed it and sent me a letter and even asked me to review that whole chapter - but I was just mortified that both a textbook AND the teacher could be wrong.

So those things. Love, like your very happiness depends on it. It does.

Keep your intelligent mind about you and evaluate everything people tell you. Some of it will be wrong. Godspeed.

(which has nothing to do with god, just means good journey).

Well, I am only one year older than you, but in my experience, a lot of "life wisdom" can only be obtained throughout the course of living. Mistakes are some of the best teachers, and for better or worse, we teenagers are very good at making them. Tidy little bits of advice tend to be wasted on us- hehe.

And perhaps it could be argued that cliches are wasted on everyone. But to humour you, here are some of my favorites: -Don't feel as if you have to have it all figured out. There's a certain serenity in accepting that you don't know everything.

Nobody does. Be okay with that. -Don't stagnate.

Read and do things that challenge your assumptions (of every kind- social, cultural, religious, scientific). -You might look at the doing of people and the affairs of the world and think "what a big ugly mess". Don't let yourself be dragged into the mire.

Be curious and happy and spunky, just to spite the world. It's very personally satisfying, as well as an inspiration to others. You might also benefit from reading some of the old classics.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorites. Life wisdom from a Roman emperor, very readable and interesting.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.