Dear Eliz­a­beth in March 2005,

Even though it’s been five years, I remem­ber what you’re going through all too well. Let’s see…you’re freak­ing out about pass­ing pre­cal­cu­lus, wait­ing on pins and nee­dles to hear back from col­leges, and won­der­ing why senior year has been the com­plete oppo­site of the idyl­lic year promised by year­books and teen movies. Am I right? Thought so. You’re down­ing way too much bad cof­fee and even worse food (hello, Pop­tarts are not lunch) and things seem pretty bleak.

The thing is, it will work out. Over the past four years, you’ve stud­ied incred­i­bly hard, earned lead­er­ship posi­tions in extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, and poured your heart and soul into 14 col­lege appli­ca­tions. You already learned to deal with dis­ap­point­ment when Vas­sar rejected your early deci­sion application—that still stings a bit, I know. But going through that expe­ri­ence means that you can han­dle the harsh­ness of the skinny enve­lope, so you will be able to do it again. Get­ting accepted is an awe­some feel­ing and get­ting rejected sucks—but you will look back on the lat­ter expe­ri­ences and know that you learned way more from them than from the former.

The deci­sion of where to go will come down to two schools and you will feel totally con­fused and frus­trated. You will receive advice from fam­ily, friends, teach­ers, and many oth­ers. And then you will sur­prise many peo­ple with your choice because, ulti­mately, you trust your instincts. You’ll be so glad that you did.

I don’t want to give too much away, but you’re going to have the oppor­tu­nity to spend more time with your extended fam­ily. And that will be one of the great­est gifts of this next chapter—cherish it.

Col­lege, like that elu­sive idyl­lic senior year, will be very dif­fer­ent from what movies and mag­a­zines por­tray. You’ll fall in with a great group of friends at the begin­ning and then that group will fall apart. Things will seem insur­mount­ably dif­fi­cult at times before they bounce back and then some. Roll with it, take time for your­self, and don’t be afraid to ask a new col­lege friend if s/he is feel­ing just as topsy-turvy. She’s going to say “hell yeah! Thank you for say­ing some­thing.” Phew.

Speak­ing of friends, share your expe­ri­ences with friends from home. It will feel strange at first, try­ing to pic­ture each other’s cam­puses, classes, and new friends. It will take time for all of you to recal­i­brate, espe­cially after that first win­ter break at home when every­one is feel­ing pulled back and forth between old and new lives. Don’t under­es­ti­mate the worth of an e-mail, text mes­sage, and the oft-undervalued clas­sic greet­ing card. When you grad­u­ate from col­lege in what seems like the blink of an eye, you’ll be glad you worked as hard as you did to main­tain key child­hood friendships—and maybe wish you’d done even more.

As a fresh­man, you will map out an extremely spe­cific plan to com­plete a dou­ble major and minor. And then as a sopho­more you’ll ride out a series of dizzy­ing rev­e­la­tions and real­iza­tions and rework “the plan” to a (dif­fer­ent) major and minor—and trust me, you’ll be glad you did. As good as it is that you relaxed on that ini­tially strin­gent plan, I wish you’d been even more open to dif­fer­ent classes and dif­fer­ent depart­ments. And when you decide to take a soci­ol­ogy class as an elec­tive, know that you can take a 200-level course that prob­a­bly would have been more dynamic that slog­ging through the 101 course when you don’t have to. Just a tip.

You’ll keep a spo­radic jour­nal, often just in times of con­fu­sion and stress, but try to write in it more often than that. Mem­o­ries can fade into fuzzi­ness, mak­ing even a mun­dane anec­dote com­mit­ted to paper all the more valuable.

And last but not least, embrace the uncer­tainty. It’s scary, but it can also be excit­ing. Try to think of it as pos­si­bil­ity instead of the unknown. You are going to suck the mar­row out of col­lege life through intel­lec­tual pur­suits, engag­ing cam­pus life, explor­ing a diverse range of extracur­ric­u­lars, study­ing abroad, and so much more. I’m proud of you. Now take a deep breath, fin­ish that pre­calc home­work, and go to bed before mid­night. Also, tell your par­ents to buy some stock in YouTube.

Love,
Eliz­a­beth in July 2010