Being curious will take you farther than being cool. Cool has an expiration date.

Cool depends on one particular room agreeing about it, and the agreement keeps changing, so the skill needs constant renewal and expires the moment you leave. Curiosity compounds instead. Asking questions makes you better company at forty than you were at sixteen, and nobody has to approve it for it to work.

Ask the question you are slightly embarrassed not to know the answer to, this week, out loud. Learn one thing nobody expects you to care about. Notice that the people who are interesting in their thirties are rarely the ones who were most careful at your age.