Today I have the pleasure of being part of the Dear Teen Me blog tour. This tour has over one hundred stops on it! Check out the full list here. This anthology started off as a website where authors shared letters to their teen selves. The anthology includes advice from over 70 authors (see full listing here.) I’m going to share two things I wish I could tell teen me. I also have a giveaway sponsored by Zest Books. But first, a bit more about Dear Teen Me:
Dear Teen Me includes advice from over 70 YA authors (including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, and Nancy Holder, to name a few) to their teenage selves. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends–and a lot of familiar faces–in the course of Dear Teen Me.
My advice to teen me:
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| Me, First day of Senior Year |
There are two main things I wish I could tell teen me.
1. Get over yourself. It’s not that I thought I was that great. Really, it was the opposite. I had very low self esteem yet I got embarrassed super easily and was sure everybody was laughing at or talking about me. Kind of contradictory, I know. The main reason I regret this is that it kept me from trying new things. I had (and honestly still struggle with) an intense fear of failing in front of other people. I was never one to be able to simply laugh off mistakes. I took criticism, even that meant in a joking manner, very seriously. I wish that I had learn to laugh at myself and lighten up at a much earlier age!
2. Try harder. I got decent grades at school but never really tried. I wish I would have pushed myself to get better grades and to take more challenging classes. It all worked out in the end. I went to my first choice for college but I really had a bit of a rude awakening. Suddenly I couldn’t just glance over notes the night before a test. I was putting myself in some serious debt to take these classes. Getting high grades was much more of a priority! I wish that teen me would have instilled some good habits earlier in life!
These may not seem like incredibly profound pieces of advice but I think they are the two that would have made my road a little easier without totally changing the course of my life.
Giveaway:
I have a fun prizepack with a copy of Dear Teen Me and some swag 🙂 Use the rafflecopter below to enter! US only. Must be 13 or older to win.
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