When I was younger, my parents called me Spock. If Iím being honest with myself, Iím still not a person with many emotional attachments nor am I the best at practicing empathy. On a daily basis, I tend to be pessimistic and irritable and too overtired to be enthusiastic.

However, a strange thing happens to me when I turn on my favorite TV series. Movies are great and I watch a lot of them, but there’s something particular about the sense of intimacy a person gains with characters after watching their lives progress for five or more years. TV provides an escape and a chance to be someone else for one hour, once a week. In one episode, I meet the love of my life, lose the love of my life, win a state championship, have a near-death experience, learn a valuable life lesson, and then win back the love of my life. I laugh so hard sometimes my mom thinks I’m on the phone with a friend. I cry so hard I have to pause the show for a few minutes. I get so stress-ridden that I cross every limb in the hopes of changing an outcome that I know is pre-written and pre-recorded. Even though I’m not yet done with high school, I get nostalgic about high school experiences that weren’t mine. A person could argue that sitting and watching other people’s lives isn’t really living, and that I should be going out and making my own memories. But maybe, as I’d like to believe, unrealistic teen TV shows provide the perfect companion guide to growing up: a world where anything could (and will) happen, but everything will always work out the right way in the end.

Here are the top five lessons I’ve learned from watching some of my favorite shows:

1. There are things more important than basketball– Well, okay, what Coach Durham of One Tree Hill really meant was that relationships are more important than accomplishments, because these are the things that will last if you somehow fall on a piece of glass and lose feeling in your legs…or something. 
2. Love your family over everything (even if you just found out they’re your family)– In Gossip Girl, while it takes poor Dan six seasons to finally be included in the Upper East Side clique, Lola, Serena’s half-sister/cousin, is accepted right away because sisters over misters, am I right?
3. It’s cool to be smart– The Wonder Years’ Winnie Cooper was the original quirky girl, but was also smart and had her own interests. Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks hung out with freak 1999-era gorgeous James Franco, but was really a math geek at heart.
4. Give people you don’t know a chance– Seth Cohen started off on the OC with no friends, and ended it as a member of the Core Four – if they had continued to ignore each other, Seth would’ve never known that he and golden-girl Marissa had the same appreciation for punk music, bagels, and Ryan Atwood in a tank top.
5. Give people you do know a second chance– And, finally, the Most Epic Romance of Our Generation never would’ve happened if Blair hadn’t forgiven Chuck, Meredith in Grey’s Anatomy didn’t slowly learn to let people in, and, Kelly and Zack got back together multiple times in Saved by the Bell? I guess forgiveness just needs to be essential when everyone’s so hormonal.