“Just be yourself” is hard advice when you’re still figuring out who that is. Try things. Notice what feels like home.

The instruction assumes a finished person is sitting there waiting to be expressed. At sixteen you are closer to a set of experiments, and the self in question gets built out of what you do rather than found by looking inward hard enough. The useful version of the advice is not introspection; it is attempts.

Try three things this term and pay attention to the kind of tiredness afterwards, the good sort or the drained sort. Notice where you lose track of time and who you are least guarded around. Those readings are more reliable than any answer you could think your way to.