When I was a young adult heading off to college, my father had this particular habit of turning every experience into a life lesson. It didn’t matter the subject, my dad found a way to use extraordinary and everyday moments to talk about how the world works. At the time, I didn’t appreciate this parental skill. After all, I was 18—I already knew how the world worked and had things figured out all by myself thank you very much.
Now that my own 18-year-old is heading into his first year of college, I recognize why my father wanted to share a few last nuggets of truth before I embarked into the wide world that was my oyster.