"People say 'It gets better.' about various things, and they are partially right. First it gets insanely worse for many many years, then it slowly gets better over the course of many many more years. By the time you yourself get better then the country itself goes completely insane and implodes on itself and the human race ends."

So really nothing, as I already mostly knew that when I was 17. Actually by 13 or 14 I had predicted the vast majority of what turned out to be my life. I was kind of skeptical any of it was going to happen but most of it did (mostly bad things, some good).