Healthy Guidelines for Hopeless Romantics 
(It’s a Thing!)
By Renna Chambers
    Self-Love: Regard for one's own well-being and happiness” – Google.com
Hopeless Romantic: A person who has romantic notions about life. For a hopeless romantic: life = love. Especially when that person is involved in a relationship - He/she thinks about love and romantic relationships in a different way than other people. - whitesmoke.com
    I have been doing me for a very long time now. I don’t think people can hurt me anymore. Well, it’s hasn’t been too long; it’s only been a couple of months. To be more specific, it’s only been three months. In these past three months, I have been completely single, working on myself. It’s been the best three months I’ve had in a long time. I had been going through some rough times, so to actually to feel this good about myself is wonderful.
    Having self-love really does boost up my confidence. I had been feeling that I was never good enough for anyone. Believe me, ladies, it’s a horrible feeling. Please, I beg of you to never feel like you're not good enough. If you do feel that way you need to get away from whatever it is that is making you feel like that. If you're in a relationship that makes you feel like that, please leave it. No one should ever make you feel that type of way. You should be in a relationship that makes you feel good about yourself. Have you ever heard that phrase, “Find someone who will be your biggest fan”? Be with someone who does that for you. Ladies, a relationship is 50-50, never anything less and never anything more. Not even 51-49--that is not fair.
      It’s really difficult being a hopeless romantic and practicing self-love because I expect so much more from my relationships. As a hopeless romantic, I expect my relationship to be like the ones I see in the movies. So it’s a task to be a hopeless romantic and to have self love, because I feel like I'm not good enough to have a relationship like the ones I see in movies. I’m starting to believe that “true romance” is not even a real thing anymore.
    The person I’m dating will be putting 50-50 into the relationship, but then I will complain that he’s not doing enough to be extraordinary in the relationship, like impromptu dates and shopping. Even though the person will be doing enough, the 50-50, I don’t notice it until after I complain. So if you're a hopeless romantic person like I am, please don't feel bad or alone because I’m just like you and it's hard. But if I can have self-love for myself, then there is hope for you too to have self-love and boost yourself up without someone else doing it for you.
     A hopeless romantic always wants to be with someone and to never be alone. But believe me, ladies; being alone is not as bad as you think it will be. I learned that the hard way. I used to bounce from one guy to another and never give myself a break. I was so afraid of being alone that I never was alone, until one day my best friend yelled into my ear and told me to “STOP, GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK. BE YOURSELF, AND WORK ON YOU!” I finally heard her and listened and that’s the best thing I did.
     So ladies: key message here. Do you and work on you, and I promise you will feel so much better. When you're ready to get back out there and have enough confidence for yourself, go and do that, but never get into a relationship damaged and broken, because you will attract someone who will take advantage when you're down. 

​Learn From Your Mistakes
Advice from Leizhor Boateng 
        Everyone makes mistakes! You can’t do anything to change them, honestly. You just need to learn from them to make sure the same ones don’t happen again. Humans are meant to learn and grow, so don't live your life focusing on bad things you’ve done. Every experience is a learning experience, so take advantage of that.
   The story I am about to tell takes place in 7th grade. I was having a good start to the school year from about September to December. That’s when all of the problems started. I thought my science teacher was cool, but I was actually wrong. She used to do a lot of cool things for us, like bring us food, have us watch movies, and do a lot of fun things while still having them relate to science. I considered her a really good teacher, but after Thanksgiving something happened to her. I don’t know what the problem was. The day we came back from Thanksgiving break was when she was just in the worst mood ever. You’re probably wondering what this has to do with mistakes, but as the story goes on it will make more sense.
     In science class, people used to talk during the videos and one day the teacher just had it with one student. My friend said something to me and I started to smile when the teacher was talking. She immediately yelled my name and told me to sit in the back of the class. She told my father that I was laughing at her, which was false. After that day she constantly did little things to me, like move my seat every time I talked, send me to the office if I said anything back to her, and even gave me lunch detentions. She was like this with almost everybody. There was more drama and conflict with students than actual work being done.
     I made the mistake of feeding into her nonsense. Other teachers would tell me to just get my work done and not to go back and forth with her. Sadly, I wouldn’t listen. That teacher and I had an ongoing problem until the end of the year and the beginning of 8th grade. My science grades even reflected it. To this day, I’m not as educated as I should be in science. Instead of doing the work or watching the movies, I would be in the office or with another class because this teacher and I always had problems. To this day, I regret not listening to the people that told me the right thing to do, but this experience helped me learn that not every teacher is the same, so no matter how they act or how they teach I need to do my best to stay out of trouble and just get my work done.
     On the other hand, this experience taught me to learn from my mistakes. And I've been able to carry that lesson forward and do better with difficult people both in and out of school.