My mere twenty-three years on this earth have been so very short.  I have always heard others say that time goes by so quickly, but I never truly realized how quickly until I reached adulthood.  But, within my short life I have had many experiences that have garnered priceless life lessons that I wish I would have known, better yet, truly been able to understand when I was a teenager.  These are my top five...

1. Appreciate your mother - Once I reached adulthood, and especially after my mother's death in May 2008 I realized how much I took my mother for granted.  Nightly dinners, talks about my day, sleepovers that she volunteered to host, fundraising for school activities, coming to every event that I was involved in on the smallest scale, ensuring that I had an amazing birthday party every year, starting food fights at family cook-outs, making our home spotless, and loving me more than I could have ever imagined...all things that I never said "Thank you" for nearly enough.  I took for granted all of the work that she did toward making my life as easy and cushy as possible.  I was too concerned with boyfriends who, in the grand scheme of things, didn't matter in the slightest. 
2. Break-ups aren't the end of the world - When you're in high school everyone is your soul-mate.  Everyone is "the one."  You would think that by the time you have had your second or third earth-shattering break-up, you would realize that something was off.  I am not even friends or acquaintances with any of my former high school soul-mates.
3. Appreciate your girlfriends - Don't let boys get in the way of your relationships with your girlfriends.  Make time for them.  "Girl time" is essential to a remotely successful bout with teenagedom.  By nature, girls are very very competitive, but it is important, especially during the teenage years, to stick together. 
4. Be a kid - Despite what you may feel at the time, being a teenager with a double digit age doesn't make you an adult.  AND, despite what your teachers, guidance counselors, and other mentors say, most people in college don't even know the career path that they will take.  Don't be so focused on your life's path that you forget to be a kid.  Be silly.   
5. Adulthood isn't all it's cracked up to be - Although I don't think that I could be paid to revisit my teenage years, adulthood is not the golden ticket that teenagers assume it to be.  Being able to buy beer gets boring, and you should NEVER smoke cigarettes, so don't even think about that.  Then there's earning money to support yourself and your family, parenthood, bills, cleaning your OWN home (including the BATHROOM), maintaining an actual relationship, mounds of responsibility, and sorting through life's curve-balls.