Dear younger self,

I remem­ber you at sev­en­teen, about to start your senior year of high school as the new stu­dent at a pri­vate, Catholic school in the Los Ange­les. The ear­lier years of high school were a chal­lenge for you – your mother being diag­nosed with breast can­cer and con­stantly feel­ing out of place within the LAUSD school sys­tem. You had too many pas­sions and too lit­tle out­lets for them. Would col­lege be the solu­tion to your feel­ing out of place? Would col­lege allow you to make up for the social and extracur­ric­u­lar expe­ri­ences you missed out on, when you came home early to pro­vide sup­port to your mother because you could not bear to be out when some­one you loved so dearly was in such tremen­dous pain?

You con­stantly won­dered what the fol­low­ing year would bring. You were uncer­tain as to which school you wanted to attend, but for you, being close to fam­ily was essen­tial. Despite this, you knew you were ready to live in the dorms and expe­ri­ence col­lege life to its fullest. Your father whom (unlike your mother) had attended col­lege in the United States (instead of Iran) informed you that it was the best years of his life. Hands down, your high school years had been your worst, so you were hop­ing for any degree of pos­i­tive change. You were also hop­ing for new avenues to explore and peo­ple to meet who shared your goals and pas­sions and inspired you in ways you could never imagine…

Look­ing back, I’m pleased to say your wishes were granted. Per­haps you chose the right col­lege, Occi­den­tal Col­lege, or it was the col­lege envi­ron­ment and abun­dance of pas­sion­ate, dri­ven indi­vid­u­als that you were con­stantly sur­rounded by as a whole but some­thing felt “just right”. You were able to pur­sue many extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and meet many life­long friends. Sure, the aca­d­e­mics were much more chal­leng­ing and stress­ful at times, but they made you a stronger, more con­fi­dent indi­vid­ual. Despite the finan­cial bur­dens, you have to always remem­ber how much you gained as an indi­vid­ual and how your newly-discovered strengths and courage will pro­pel your endeav­ors at this point in time and well into the future.

In addi­tion to becom­ing wiser, more intel­lec­tual, and socially-conscious, you have made solid ties with bril­liant indi­vid­u­als you call your friends and all your feel­ings of lone­li­ness that haunted you dur­ing your most vul­ner­a­ble times have dis­si­pated… Your jour­ney is, yet again, a truly pleas­ant one and you are extremely fortunate.

Keep smil­ing and mov­ing forward…

Love,

Your revived self

Author: Parisa Vas­sei
High Schools: Taft High (Wood­land Hills, CA), Cham­i­nade Col­lege Prep (West Hills, CA)
Col­leges: Occi­den­tal Col­lege, Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity — Long Beach
Now: Grad Stu­dent — MS Com­puter Sci­ence, option in Com­puter Engineering

This let­ter was writ­ten as part of the Bet­ter­Grads spe­cial series: "Write a Let­ter to Your High School Self." Con­trib­u­tors are asked to answer ques­tions or con­cerns they may have had in high school, such as "What's the pur­pose of col­lege?" and "Is it worth it?" If you'd like to sub­mit a let­ter for pub­li­ca­tion, please read our edi­to­r­ial guide­lines and let us know here.