What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

In my serious moments with my students, I tell them that school is preparation for life.

For middle schoolers, there is no magic study genie that will suddenly appear when they get to high school. For high schoolers, there is no switch that automatically flips when they get to college. The way you prepare right now is probably the way you are training yourself to prepare later.

Yes, some people turn a major corner. Some students really do become dramatically different in the next stage of life. I got a letter this year from a former student who did exactly that. She was a D student, at best, when I had her in eighth grade, but in high school she did well enough to be accepted to a solid in-state university. I was proud of her, and I was proud to have been a small part of her journey.

But for every one of her, there are dozens of students I’ve had who did exactly the same in high school that they did in eighth grade — or worse. And while I don’t know how all of my high school students have done in college, I can’t imagine the pattern is much different.

It certainly wasn’t different for me.

I was lazy in high school, and in my first attempt at college, I was even lazier. I did not suddenly become disciplined because the stakes got higher. I did not magically become more responsible because the setting changed. I carried the habits I had built with me, and then I paid the price for them.

It’s like sports. You play like you practice.

That may sound harsh, but it’s true. If you practice cutting corners, you’ll probably cut corners when it matters. If you practice doing just enough to get by, you’ll probably keep doing just enough to get by. If you practice waiting until the last minute, you’ll probably become an adult who is always scrambling at the last minute.

But the good news is also true.

If you practice showing up, you become someone who shows up. If you practice preparing well, you become someone who is ready when opportunity comes. If you practice doing your best when the assignment doesn’t seem important, you are training yourself to do your best when the work really does matter.

So my advice to someone younger than me is this: start developing right now the habits you want to have later in life.

Don’t wait until high school. Don’t wait until college. Don’t wait until your first real job. Don’t wait until life gets serious, because life is already teaching you who you are becoming.

It is much easier to set good habits in stone while you’re young than to spend years trying to unlearn bad habits after they’ve already hardened. Start now. Practice now. Prepare now.

Because someday, when the moment matters, you’ll probably play the way you practiced.