Update: I've received over a dozen emails and phone calls from companies who want me as an intern this summer. I'm inching towards the final phases of my search, and plan on making a final decision by the evening of May 1st. Thanks for all of your support and encouragement!

The past few days have been intense! In a nutshell, I've been looking at an internship -- yes, a JOB with a real COMPANY. It's come to my stark realization that I never thought about working for a company not so much because I thought corporations were dumb, but because there are few places that would allow me to explore my own projects. In other words, I would only work for a company that allowed me to be an entrepreneur within the company. While there aren't many companies with such a culture, I've started to look at a few companies that prosper on having creative and fast moving "intra-preneurs." My partial list includes Ning, Six Apart, PBWiki, and Ustream.

Of course, being that I'm bratty Jessica Mah, I'm super picky with the companies I would want to deal with. Here are my thoughts and reasoning behind the companies I've talked with so far:

1) I'm picky with the companies I interview with, and I immediately look for a culture fit. If anything, culture fit is the FIRST thing I look for in a company. If I'm not going to be happy there, it's not even worth a legit interview. What does culture mean? That deserves a blog post on its own, but it's so crucial for a startup to be fast-moving, communicative, open-minded, friendly, and enthusiastic. If the company has high-walled cubicles and segregated "departments," I have no interest in spending my summer there.

2) I don't accept offers from companies who don't thoroughly interview me. Sure, I think I'm a moderately smart person. However, I want to work for a company where people are brilliant. If the company doesn't bother to test my knowledge and skills, it shows that they don't take hiring seriously. With that said, if I get a job or internship offer from a company that doesn't spend the time needed to test me for culture and knowledge fit, I don't see the company as being good enough for me. Lesson: I only work for startups that make it difficult for me to get in. The next time you interview a "rockstar" prospective employee, keep this in mind.

3) Companies and employees need to give and take equally from each other. In my search for a summer internship, I'm not looking for a big name brand. I want to work for a company that lets me play around with my product management, business, and coding skills. I want to work for a company that wants me as much as I want them. One of the companies on my list offered to fly me out for a visit -- that shows a lot of dedication. It proves to me that the company wants me as bad as I want it.

4) Do programming ninjas talk to the business people? In other words, do the complaints and desires of the users get seen by the people working on the product? Sounds like a silly question, but so many companies (United Airlines among them,) don't have any connect between the customer support people and the executives who implement the changes. With that said, I like seeing companies where coders and business people are in everyday dialogue with each other. I love how Ning's customer advocate team also works in product management -- since they talk to customers everyday, they are more likely to know what changes should be made.

5) Money!!! As you've probably read before, compensation is not my #1 priority. However, it's not something that can be ignored. Living in the Bay Area this summer costs a LOT of money. I'll be paying $2000+ / month in various living costs that include food, apartment, transportation. Then I somehow need to pay off the $5,000 summer tuition bill that Stanford University is soon to send me. The startup scene is competitive -- In most cases, I want these companies just as much as they want me. If they want me to join on board, a competitive offer is definitely in order.

6) Networking, colleagues, and mentors. Last, but not least, I look for any potential to grow my network. I'm looking for executives who are well connected in Silicon Valley and beyond. I'm looking for colleagues who are open and willing to help me just as much as I'm willing to help them. With all of the companies I've applied to so far, I've either personally met an executive there or had one of my friends refer me. Never underestimate the power of a personal network!

With that said, I'll keep you updated with my internship hunt. Now you know the supposedly secret thoughts on what a self proclaimed teen entrepreneur looks for in an internship! Having this summer internship won't slow me down from being an entrepreneur. It's simply a way for me to further my learning -- a way for me to figure out how fast-moving companies survive and grow.

By the time I graduate with my Bachelor's degree in two years, I'll be fully prepared to take on the world with a company of my own.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

This post was inspired by a discussion in my psychology class about how money doesn't buy happiness

Few of us are born entrepreneurial. We're geeks! We're engineers. We love computers, we love programming, and we've known this from an incredibly early age. Many people ask me when did I get into this geeky entrepreneur stuff. Well, easy! I remember tinkering with my Windows 3.1 desktop since kindergarten days. Daddy would teach me how to use the control panel, how to install/uninstall my kindergarten computer games, and I got hooked. I went to computer camp starting in 5th grade and started coding in C and C++. I didn't know that I'd one day call myself an entrepreneur. Ask the Google guys or Bill Gates what they were doing in elementary school and they'd probably reply with something quite similar. All of them stumbled on doing their entrepreneurial ventures not so much for the purpose of getting rich, but rather because they truly wanted to pursue their own projects and interests. The money is great, but the means are even greater.

This precisely answers why multi-level-marketers are NOT entrepreneurs: they don't care about what they're doing or what they're selling. They're obsessed with the idea of getting rich, and the means of getting there doesn't matter. They aren't invested in the process of creating a business and few of them are capable of it anyway. To start a company based on the idea of getting rich is probably not in your best interest for two reasons:

1) High expectations = high likelihood of being disappointed. Chances are, your business is going to fail. I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who start new companies that fail, but with low expectations, they're able to get on their feet and start anew. If my expectations for starting a company are to have a good learning experience, there's no way that I can fail.

2) Money seeking entrepreneurs often fail because they over-plan, over-expect, over-demand, etc.. For small web/tech startups, it makes most sense to get a startup off the ground without much planning. If it fails, great. If it doesn't, even better! Plans are good for thinking things out, but they're often irrelevant because your company is likely to go in different directions from originally planned.

Entrepreneurs in business solely for money will hate their jobs. They'll get bored and impatient until they cash out their millions. Because of their disinterest in the means, these money seeking "entrepreneurs" prioritize short term gain over long term benefits. The term "money doesn't buy happiness" has some truth to it -- sure, money is what all entrepreneurs inevitably want, but it comes down to whether or not they're interested in the process of creating a project and turning it into a business in order to better pursue their interests.

Real life example: For the project that I just announced I was starting, one of my partners was thinking about planning things out and revenue models and all of that jazz - but personally, neither me nor my cousin are interested in that. We just want to make something new and awesome. I'll take care of the business development and revenue, but only because that's something I have A LOT of fun doing.

The point is, we didn't start or end as "entrepreneurs." True entrepreneurs always had a love for doing what they do, and they decided to be entrepreneurial because it gave them more opportunities to explore their interests and to create cool things. They care about money, but wealth isn't a requirement for entrepreneurs to want to start companies. Keep this in mind before you start your next company.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Isn't it frustrating when you do something "wrong" and a random person tells you that you can't do it because it's against the company/school/organization's rules? This can be in reference to virtually anything -- a hotel employee or restaurant waitress tells you that you're not allowed to do something because it's against company policy. The issue being that this so called employee has no clue why the rules exist in the first place! If your company has rules in place, make sure that employees know why they exist. Make sure your employees can offer good explanations for why they exist and reasonable alternatives around them. Real life example:

1) As I write this blog post, I'm in Boston. As I was checking into my hotel, I noticed a hotel customer and hotel employee arguing over something. The hotel customer was clearly a tourist and had brought in a cooler box, when the employee stopped him. Apparently, cooler boxes weren't allowed into the hotel. What? Why? Of course, the hotel employee didn't know why. He responded by saying, "it's just against hotel policy." Now why isn't this explanation good enough? Because the customer gets even MORE aggravated. He's thinking what to do with this cooler box he just bought. What does he do with the many drinks inside? The proper response would be for the hotel employee to say something among the lines of, "You can’t bring the cooler box inside because it's against state law, but I'd be happy to hold onto your cooler box until the end of your stay." Except how many employees are trained to do this?

2) Or another example I've dealt with throughout my childhood: Teachers asserting authority by punishing kids for rules that haven't a reason to exist: I was sitting on my friend's lap when a random school aid told me not to. I got off her lap and asked the school aid why I wasn't allowed to sit on her lap. Of course, being that I'm Jessica Mah, I get accused of being an arrogant teenage brat because I'm curious enough to ask about the reasons for rules existing. Next thing I knew, I was being threatened detention and a trip to the principals office. Had it ever occurred to the school aid that it was a stupid rule that should be changed? Probably not -- it makes them feel good about themselves to assert their authority over me. In an ideal world, the school aid would tell me why I can't sit on the persons lap. If the school aid doesn't have an answer, she would tell the school principal that the rule was meaningless, and that it be removed.

The bottom line: If your customer does something that's "against the rules," be prepared to give them a good reason as to why the rules exist, and promptly propose a suitable alternative. If no alternative exists, make one, even if it isn't your fault. If my flight from New York to San Francisco is delayed, I don't care that your plane broke down and I don't care what your reimbursement policies are. I want a suitable alternative or reimbursement. Make sure your employees know precisely how to react in these "unique" situations, and what they are authorized to offer as alternatives. Better yet, tell your employees that they can do whatever they would like in order to please the customer. If customer service is your number one priority and you give employees full authorization to do whatever they want to meet that mantra, your customers will be satisfied even when they can't do something or if you're not allowed to let them do something. I promise!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

The following post was inspired by Jim Collins, author of best selling books Built to Last & From Good to Great

A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is something everybody and every organization should have because it creates a goal to aspire to. It creates meaning for yourself and your colleagues. It gives you a sense of purpose! Without a big hairy audacious goal, how does one motivate him or herself to do remarkable things in life?

When I was thirteen years old, my first BHAG was to setup a cool company. My last company thrived on the fact that it was run by 13/14/15 year olds. Once we had something going, we reset our BHAG to owning a rack full of servers. After that, we reset a BHAG to getting an entire cage at multiple datacenters, and that's about when we died. It was good that there was a mental gap between our confidence, wisdom, and capability for taking risk. In other words, young kids are ignorant. Setting a BHAG is fun and motivating, regardless of how stupid or farfetched the goal may be. In fact, that's the point! If we had gone through the conventional planning of business, we wouldn't have started a company until graduating from college. I probably wouldn't have gotten into early college. I probably wouldn't have decided to start a blog that's based on my few experiences. I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting all of you!

Big hairy audacious goals don't have to be limited to business. Apply this to your personal life. Do the non conventional because it'll foster your motivation and success. The idea of going to college early sounded outlandish to my parents and my friends, but that was precisely the point. If they had supported me on making the change, it wouldn’t be a big hairy audacious goal, now would it?

Of course, if the goal is achieved, there no longer is a BHAG. Once achieved, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps this is the reason why entrepreneurs are "never satisfied," regardless of the success they previously achieved. So let's say I run a company called Powerset and my goal is to oust Google from the search market. Once I've succeeded in doing this, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps, to oust the leader in online advetising -- and after that, to oust the leader in online entertainment… etc.

Of course, sometimes it's reckless to go for your big hairy audacious goal. A lot of the time, the critics are right in that the product you want to create will go nowhere, depending on the capabilities of your team. If I ever faced such an issue, I would turn to my "board of life." (click here if you don't know what the super important board of life is) I'd see what they thought about my BHAG, and I would ask what's needed in order to execute on my outlandish vision.

Once you've established what your BHAG is, YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO IT. Set milestones. Make sure your team meets those milestones. I set a BHAG to own my own datacenter within 3 years of starting the company. I invested 80% of the company's profits towards buying assets and renting DC space. Of course, we failed at achieving the BHAG, but at least we died trying. As I'll mention in another post, there are a few things a company can do: 1) grow, 2) fail, and 3) go nowhere. Going nowhere is by far the worst. Not growing is not an option for me. The opportunity cost in going nowhere exceeds any cost of failing. So we chose to sell out prematurely, thus failing. It was unfortunately the right choice to make based on the circumstances.

Committing to a BHAG is obviously 1000X harder than setting the BHAG. You're putting your money on the line. You're putting your business on the line. You're putting your personal well being on the line, and it's a tough commitment to make. Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach someone to feel content when committing to a BHAG. It just has to be done, and if it doesn't get done, you're going to find yourself paying a much heavier opportunity cost. True entrepreneurs are willing to make these commitments. If you’re not willing to make such a commitment, I suggest you join one of those multi-level-marketing schemes.

It's important that BHAGS take on a life of their own. They must be goals in themselves that your team members will always seek to achieve. The main question is, will the BHAG outlast the leader? This poses a problem for super charismatic leaders, or overly-demanding disciplinarians. At that point, the goal is to satisfy the leader -- not to reach the goal. Perhaps this is precisely why over-protective parents are ineffective in parenting. Children do what the parent says, but they don't understand the underlying goals and purposes for achieving those goals. Once the leader (or in this case the parent) is gone, there's no longer a sense of purpose.

If you don't currently have a BHAG in your life, set one now. Matter of fact, I won't let you leave this blog post until you've established at least a basic idea for what your BHAG for life may be. Think it through and remind yourself everyday how you might be a step closer towards achieving your goal.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of requests to be added on Linkedin or Facebook. From now on, I've decided to take my insider network a bit more seriously. Unless I know who you are, I do not feel comfortable adding you on either network. Matter of fact, if I have no more than a superficial relationship with the people on either of these networks, I'll begin to remove them.

Some may see this as cruel, but I see it as being practical because I care about who has access to my connections. I care about who I associate with, whether they be friends or business partners. My mentors have suggested that I never add anyone who only wants me in their linkedin network just for the sake of having me on their linkedin network -- there's no way for me to tell if the person is taking advantage of the superficial relationship or is just obsessed with numbers.

As for Facebook, I've begun to realize that adding people for the sake of just adding people creates noise. When I log into Facebook, I don't care if Joe and Jane broke up or if Jake changed his interests or status because I'm not actually friends with them. Why should I have to sort through their notifications when all I care about is what my friend Scoble is up to?

For those who don't personally know me but would like to follow me in some way, add me on Twitter. Enough said!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Over the past year, I've learned a lot about successful leaders and entrepreneurs. The remarkably successful ones aren't working 247 on their businesses because they were smart enough to recruit a brilliant team for both their personal and business lives. A fellow TEDster I met this weekend told me about ways he manages his life -- he recruits experts in all fields of knowledge to assist him with his financial life, his children, his home, his vacations, his appointments, his company's technology, his company's marketing, etc… To guide his decisions in life and business, he has what he calls a "board of life." In other words, a group of remarkable individuals who feel personally invested into his future.

Firstly, no entrepreneur should be expected to know everything about business, but s/he should be able to know enough in order to recruit help from remarkable individuals in their respective fields. And if the individual is anything short of remarkable, look for someone else. Remarkable entrepreneurs don't need to be baby geniuses, but they need to be able to network with the individuals who will influence their businesses for the better. If the entrepreneur manages to hire and manage a remarkable team, s/he will have more time to devote to a personal life.

While I ran my first (failed) company, I managed to do just that. I recruited incredibly smart techies to help manage all of the issues related to my dedicated server clients while I enjoyed time on the beaches of Puerto Rico. My team didn’t exist to assist ME -- their purpose was to serve the company, and my existence was to make sure that their ideals remained that way.

This unnamed TEDster proposed the idea of having a "board of life," which caters more to the individual entrepreneurs. This board should consist of accomplished entrepreneurs and experts who feel personally invested in one's future. They'll get you the connections you need, offer you limitless personal support, and encourage you to do amazing things. In a way, I see members on my board of life as being my aunts and uncles. While it takes time to build a relationship with them, you almost have an inherent instinct from the moment you meet them as to whether or not you can provide meaning to each other. They literally feel like family in that both you and your "mentor" would go out of the way to do anything for each other. I call them "mentors" because they're far more than mentors. The TEDster I met with made clear the distinction: while mentors are there to give you sound advice, members on your board of life have a family-like relationship to you.

The ideas of recruiting a dream team can also be applied to managing one's personal life. My parents employ multiple people fulltime to manage our family's finances, home, appointments, travel, etc… In fact, I'm the only person in my family who hasn't yet taken advantage of the ideas that I'm proposing to you as I write this. Why? Because I enjoy making my own appointments. I enjoy comparing the prices between a Jetblue and a Virgin flight. I prefer to email my blog readers than to have my publicist send generic replies. I still utilize my mom's accountant and secretary, but only because it makes more practical sense for me to do so. When it comes to emailing people and managing my own schedule, nobody can do it better than me.

In the end, you need to come to terms with the fact that you're not superman. You don't know everything and you don't have the experiences and perspectives of everyone on this planet. You're hopefully smart enough to realize this -- recruit the necessary help in whatever part of life you need. By surrounding yourself with accomplished people in their respective fields, you're more likely to see your own success.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Businesses often fail when it comes to doing something as simple as talking to their customers. I'm not sure if it's because they're lazy or if because they don't feel the need to, but it's probably the one big thing that can make or break a company Don't ignore your customers! Few thoughts:

1) Ignore the customers and they'll flock to the competitor. When I board an airplane, I expect the pilot to greet me. (thank you, Jetblue) When I buy my clothing from Barney's, I expect store assistants to help me with figuring out what I want to buy. When the help isn't there, I'll just cross the street and buy from the better company.

True story: I was looking for sun glasses in a shopping mall, and I was prepared to buy. I walked in, but the store assistant was too busy tooling around with his Facebook, so I left. I went to the store next door and spent $400 because the man at the door greeted me and gave me his honest feedback on which sunglasses looked good and which didn't. Lesson of the story, always talk to your customers.

2) Ignore your customers and miss out on what they're actually looking for. Company executives are apparently so busy working on their companies that they have little time to solicit the feedback of customers. Problem is, how are the execs to know what's working and what isn't? I think a great example would be Mattel: they sell Barbie dolls to preteen girls, but the execs are probably in their 40's. Unfortunately, girls don't aspire to elegantly dressed dolls anymore. How are the execs to know that the girls of today aspire to be anorexic sluts? Without the constant feedback, the execs would never have known this!

3) Talking to users = Making new friends. I love it when people talk to their users, whether it be about the product or about nothing at all. Hair stylists do this best: You're stuck in a chair and they're cutting your hair. What else is there to do besides talk to the hair stylist about the latest gossip on Valleywag? Encourage casual contact between you and your users and maybe you'll meet your most loyal word-of-mouth marketers.

All of this comes back to how I run this blog. I write a lot, but I want to hear from readers. Matter of fact, this blog post was inspired by a blog reader! Without the feedback, I wouldn't know what you guys wanted to hear. As always, please feel free to reach out and/or comment with your thoughts.

With much love to my passionate readers,

Jessica

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

My young entrepreneur friend Mazy told me about a Facebook group where everybody was talking about what they would do if they knew they couldn't fail in life. In anything! Of course, the majority of the people in this group were raving about how awesome it would be not to fail, but my friends Matt and Mazy knew better: without the potential to fail, how could we motivate ourselves to do more with life? How could we feel satisfied with whatever we did? Sure, there's an exception when it comes to altruism, but with anything else in life, we would feel like empty souls.

Here's a quote from my other young entrepreneur friend, Matt:

Losing the ability to fail? I'd get depressed and eventually shrivel up and die. Failure is what makes everything worthwhile - what the hell is the point of life if there's no challenge?

I decline your offer of success.

And I also decline the offer of guaranteed success. If I knew that I'd succeed in business, I'd be settling for mediocrity. I could be super wealthy without spending any effort on my company, but I'd feel like a total shmuck. Without the chance of failure, you lose the motivation to work, you lose the desire to succeed (because you already know that you will,) and the concept of adventure is completely lost.

On the other hand, while it's good to be able to fail, it's a waste of energy to focus too much of your attention on the potential of failing. These things tend to be self-fulfilling prophesies.

If your company fails, (as the one I was just working on has) no big deal. You failed, but the company you work on that eventually succeeds will bring you much more of a reward. You would have earned it! The bottom line: The fear of failure is no reason not to try. Embrace the idea of failure, go into the real world, and do something amazing!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

I've taken a look at many companies and called them lame, boring, or generic... only to find that years later, they've blown up to be the hottest companies on the block.

I didn't actually have the opportunity to invest into Google back in 1999 because I was only nine years old, but I've heard of so many people passing on the idea of either working for or investing into Google. Firstly, there's no possible way for people to completely know which companies are bound for success. Instead, it's much easier to tell which startups are destined for failure, mainly by looking at the management team.

I was reading a blog post by Ben McConell from Church of the Customer, and he was talking about the idea of predicting the outcome of something like the superbowl:

"It's impossible to know. Too many other variables are at play. It may be fun to talk about, but it's not very productive."

When I was asked to speak on the future of web at an upcoming conference, I immediately knew that I couldn't make a prediction about the future of web, let alone the future of a startup. Practically speaking, trying to predict the web is a philosophical sense seems to be unproductive, but knowing what WON'T happen in the future seems more worthwhile. (and much more entertaining!) You see this happen in all realms of business and life: as an investor, you decide which companies not to invest into. As an entrepreneur, you decide which ideas not to pursue. As an admissions officer at Harvard, you decide which students not to admit. As a student, you decide which classes not to take. The list goes on forever.

I have a friend who was classmates with Sergey and Larry back in the late 90's, and he heard about the opportunity to join the duo in a weird search indexing startup. Like most of his classmates, he took a pass. Many of you are probably thinking, "WHY WOULD YOU PASS ON SUCH AN AWESOME COMPANY?" Well, everybody has a startup! Everybody is doing their own thing, trying to attract other people. There was no way for the students to predict which startup was the one worth joining. Instead, they decide which ones not to join because it's a much easier task.

Bessemer Venture Partners, a well known venture capital firm, has a publicly displayed anti-portfolio. It lists all of the amazing companies that include the likes of eBay, Google, HP, and Apple that the venture firm decided NOT to invest in. This just comes to show that not even the best venture firms are always able to see future success.

Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.

A venture firm that's able to showcase an anti-portfolio must be incredibly secure with itself. They get thousands of business plans per year and can only invest into a select few. If you don't get a pass, it doesn't mean failure. But if your team sucks (just as many of mine have in the past,) you're destined for failure before you even brainstorm your idea. Bessemer Venture Partners can't possibly look at each startup in heavy detail because it's unproductive. Just like college admission officers, they weed out the majority and focus on only the one's with most potential.

But bottom line? Success is unpredictable, but failure is much easier to spot. If you're in the position of making a choice, first focus on what not to choose.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com.

All of us presumably live freakishly busy lives. As I write this blog post, I'm counting down the minutes I have left to send out my college applications. There is just SO MUCH STUFF TO DO.

So, I suggest that instead of just creating to-do lists, you create yourself not-to-do lists as well. If you don't do the list thing, it's important to be mindful of how many opportunities you have to do different things. Accepting every opportunity available to you would hinder your ability to do what matters most to you. For example, this year, I felt like I've done way too much. Or at least, I've committed to way too much. At school alone, I'm the treasurer for my student government, a Social Action Service Leader, and student taking a full load of credits (even though I don't need any more to graduate). By trying to run a business at the same time, I was being careless. By trying to add a social life to the mix, I was also being careless. Thus, in order for me and any of you to live happy fulfilling lives, it's important to prioritize the many things you'd like to do with the many things you can and should do.

This may come off as being a ramble, but I think it's serious. Look at your life, write down everything you're doing with the hours per week you spend on it, and prioritize what means most to you. Cross the stupid things off the list. Cross interactions with any dimwits off the list. Your life is hectic as it is; no need to deal with any stupid assholes who critique your everyday existence!

And as of right now, I'm crossing blogging off my list of things to do. That is, until I send in the college applications I'm supposed to be doing.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com.