School is hard, your parents suck, and the mindless routine that is your life is starting to feel meaningless. Well Alex, there is only one cure for that. What you need is a girl. No, no, not a random s*** that you can hookup with in the pool stairwell. I’m talking about a girl whose beauty is matched only by her sense of humor, a girl whose quirkiness seems perfect in your eyes, a girl whose aura is simply entrancing. Your own personal Summer, if you will.

Now, finding this girl should not be very difficult. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you already have someone in mind, and you’ve been thinking about her ever since I said the word “girl”. Her name is Charlotte, right? Congratulations! You’ve completed step one. But, sorry to break it to you, winning her over is going to be much harder of a task to accomplish.

You will lose sleep, your grades will drop, your friends will start getting frustrated with you, and you will become equally as frustrated with yourself. You may even become frustrated with the object of your desires. It sucks, but it’s worth it.

Because after you build up the nerves to talk to her, fail miserably in your first attempt at conversation, continue to talk to her anyway, finally find a connection, fall into a routine of talking every night, spill your deepest secrets to her, realize you’re in love, realize you’re in the friend zone, feel sorry for yourself because you’re in the friend zone, drink because you feel sorry for yourself, confess your love in a sexually explicit drunk voicemail at 3 A.M, get slapped by her the next day in school, cry, get angry at her, hookup with Amanda to spite her, and then cry some more, you will become conscious of the fact that you’ve actually enjoyed the entire process, and realize how good it feels to be so emotionally invested in something.

And hey, maybe you’ll get the girl too.