Advice for young investor with $250k saved

I saw a man post earlier in Staten Island asking for advice and it gave me the idea to do the same. Since our numbers and locations are different, I imagine we will need to both handle our situations much differently. I'm young (22) and will be coming into a large chunk of money soon. I refuse to be the type of person that blows it all. I have only been studying real estate investing for about a year and am nowhere near comfortable enough to dive into this world without guidance. I am currently searching for a mentor, but until then, could someone with experience give me some ideas with how they would use this amount? I'm in SoCal, but would also be comfortable being an absentee landorld to somewhere not too far away (Vegas, NorCal, etc). I have good credit and am very ambitious. Any help is greatly appreciated!