At the start of my first summer in Evanston, I was pumped for a big campus full of empty buildings and decaying fields, ripe for the frolicking. Instead, billion-dollar landscaping, a trigger-happy sprinkler system and 400,000 screaming little children greeted me.

These are the students of the National High School Institute, a Northwestern program that brings a few hundred rising high school seniors to campus every summer for a jump-start on college.

I know you little punks are reading this, and I have something to say to you: You are dumb.

“Woah!” you say. “Who does this guy think he is? I’m dumb? He’s just angry at everything.”

Yes, I am. But heed my advice, little ones.

I see you on campus. I see you in Evanston. The swagger, the self-imposed cockiness. I can read the minds behind those puffy red faces. You made it through the one-two punch of middle school and puberty. Chances are good that your mommies and daddies are pretty well-to-do. You’re thinking to yourself, “I’m smart. Next year, I’m gonna get me into a good college, and then life will be easy.”

Ahh, youth. If you knew how wrong you are, my tiny bambinos, you would weep.

Soon you’ll pick a college. Many of you will lose months of sleep and clumps of hair over this. It’s a difficult decision, but a choice will be made. You’ll get to college. College isn’t so bad. But the decisions don’t stop. They compound. Not “is making out cheating?” decisions, but something resembling life choices.

This stuff might seem easy now, but once you actually have to face it, life becomes impossibly intimidating. Your future melts before your eyes. Your life path fissures, taking the ground out from under you. And this is only college, which is just a rehearsal for life.

Then, young reader, as you pick up the pieces there shall be an epiphany: You are dumb.

And that is growing up. Learning you are dumb.

I look back on myself at the start of college. Everything was great. I was smart. I knew what I was going to do with my life. I was in control. Then everything blew up in my face. It happens to everyone.

So far I’m doing OK. And I’ve learned an important life lesson: At 22 years of age, I am dumb. And I will always be dumb.

When my grandma was 18, she had her first child. By the time she was my age, there were two more kids with another right around the corner. She lived on a farm. Instead of graduating from college, she was feeding babies. Somehow, the babies all grew up to be amazingly successful, and grandma eventually went to school and started a career. She went through a lot and came out on top.

And she is dumb . She told me as much. Not in those exact words, of course.

But if you ask anyone over the age of 60 about life, they will talk for a while — a long while — but the conclusion is the same: Life is far too complicated, and it only gets more confusing.

We are all dumb. And we will always be dumb.