The look was one part skeptical, one part amused, and I sensed a dash of something else in there. It wasn't confidence exactly but a sense that they knew something I didn’t. 

I know that look. 

I wore it for much of that last summer before college, when well-meaning adults would offer up their advice for the year to come. 

Talking to a teenager who’s heading off on a journey you once took is hard, particularly when you care about the teen in question. There’s a natural part of you that wants to protect them from the mistakes you made along the way. You’ve got decades of hard-won knowledge you want to share. 

For those of you who will encounter college-bound teens in the next few weeks, I offer a single word of advice. 

Don’t. 

The grown-ups tried to tell me.

I knew in my bones that they were wrong. I knew I was heading off to the wide world I’d been aching to enter for 16 years, and the door closing behind me would be locked up tight, never to be opened again. 

I’m glad now that no one could convince me otherwise.

“You’re wrong” isn’t the thing to tell the teenager who’s bursting with excitement about leaving, even if it’s true. 

I left. I made mistakes. I found the love of my life. I brought him back to the little town that I’d once so desperately wanted to escape. We have raised our daughter here. We’ve made a home. We’ve made a life. 

That is my story. 

The teenager who stood in front of me with that skeptical, amused and knowing look on their face is about to write their own. Neither of us knows what it’s going to say.