The best advice I’d give someone younger than me is to stop waiting until you’re good at something to start doing it. I spent years not starting a podcast because I didn’t have the right mic, the right voice, the right anything. Then I started one anyway, and the first episodes were rough, and nobody cared, because nobody was listening yet. That’s the secret they don’t tell you: the early audience for your bad work is basically zero, which makes it the safest possible time to be bad.

Youth is the only phase of life where incompetence is both expected and forgiven, and most people waste it trying to look polished. So embarrass yourself early and often, while the stakes are a rounding error. Take the class, post the thing, ask the question everyone else is too cool to ask. Future you will not remember the cringe. Future you will only be annoyed you waited.