>People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it.
"Youth is often wasted on the young" - George Bernard Shaw
"Youth is often wasted on the young" - George Bernard Shaw
I'm actually sincerely curious, since somehow lately I've been feeling that I'm not doing anything significantly awesome or useful - nothing I'll remember in a year or two.
It's pretty liberating to pwn both worlds. B/c once you realize you're not limited to other people's pigeonholes (OPP), you look at the world differently.
For a good look on how not to do it, look up "The Game" By Neil Strauss. http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society-Artist...
Date girls and get use to rejection - Things don't 'just happen' for guys (assuming you are one), so get out there and make some magic happen. Keep in mind that girls (and guys) sometimes have no idea what they want, and it's not always you. I use to think this was a natural thing, but like most anything else, it just takes practice. The skills you learn here you'll find applicable to a lot of situations where you'll have to deal with others.
Cultivate a sense of curiosity - For that, I refer to you Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes http://home3.inet.tele.dk/stadil/spe_kc.htm
Once you're at college, you'll find a better and more diverse community of smart people, where you'll be able to have a more valuable social life, find more stimulation and still be relatively insulated from real world repercussions when you make mistakes. A university or college will have much broader resources to offer you, and there will be others like you.
When I was 27, I went undercover back to high school to research a screenplay. It was a shock. It's not the best environment for anyone to grow and develop, except for a very few super-average people who look good. For everyone else, it varies from eh to outright hostile - a holding tank to live out your adolescence until your hormones normalize enough for you to join the workforce or go to college.
If you can actually seek out a better environment, you'll flourish that much sooner and have that much more to contribute, and be that much happier, confident, and yes, laid. No one I know who has gone to college early has regretted it. You don't have to be a genius, just want something other than what high school offers and convince the admissions people at the school where you're applying that you'll flourish there and have the maturity to do well.
Not to mention that you'll make an average of $100,000 per year more during your lifetime for each year earlier you leave high school for college. (I have no attribution for this, read it somewhere on the web so it _must_ be true!)
I know some folks that have gone to college early (like 14ish) and regretted it, sometimes so much so that they have to give up and come back home.
I prefer the path I took: go to college late (I was 20), but start taking college courses early (I took my first one when I'd just turned 15), and sprinkle liberally with internships and work experience. That lets you stretch the adjustment process out to a time period that makes sense for you, and gives you perspective that you wouldn't otherwise have, eg. working for a startup before going to college.