Letter to Self — For the Love of Learning.

Dear Jacob (the 17 year old version),

Your 23-year-old self thought your 17-year-old self should be aware of the following:

Please start questioning yourself and take some time to reflect on the choices you make and how they define your character. End this robotic non-sense. There’s no instruction guide this time around, but you can start by seeing what meaning you can extract from Socrates’ quotation, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Stop thinking that the universe of colleges exists only within the top 25 teams in the ESPN / USA Today college football weekly poll. As much as you want be that “guy” on Saturday mornings and afternoons who paints his chest in his school’s colors and helps rally the student section in the large Division I behemoth of a stadium, you’ll realize that such fan behavior extends to the smaller schools who play in D-III conferences and you should consider applying to those schools too. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

You already push yourself in the classroom and consider your schoolwork to be a top priority. I know you had a quasi-nervous breakdown when you had to write that String Theory outline for your chemistry class at the last minute. That was no easy feat. Wait ‘til second semester of your sophomore year of college. There will be plenty of nights where you begin your work at 10 PM and finish writing the paper at 4 AM. Not that I recommend you develop such habits but understand that that you will have to continue to work hard through college. FYI: you will spend some Friday and Saturday nights completing your schoolwork. And that’s quite all right seeing that you currently do this now. Just goes to show that past behavior is a true predictor of future performance.

Oh, and you can say adios to scantron-based exams once you exit the realms of high school. You’ll realize quickly that there is a significant difference between memorizing concepts and understanding them. Here’s how you are going save yourself some trouble: you’ll know that you’ve mastered a concept when you can clearly explain it to a fellow student. There’s your litmus test.

Additionally, don’t assume that because you will enjoy your AP Macroeconomics course during your senior year of high school that you were clearly destined to major in Economics. Take the risk and dabble in some hard science courses, like kinesiology, or perhaps, chemistry.

I bet you’re marginally concerned about your Spanish language skills. Having studied the language since the 7th grade and with no more available classes after your completion of AP Spanish Literature, que te va a pasar con su habilidad para dominar esta lengua? ¡Ay Jacobito, no te preocupas! Bueno, pues, te vas a seguir con sus estudios de los autores y literatura de Sur America y España, y a la misma vez, tendrás unas oportunidades para brillar sus destrezas de escribir atrás de los ejercicios de investigación. Va a escribir una autobiografía corta (¡será súper guay!) y comentar sobre cines españolas como El laberinto del fauno. Además, vas a estudiar afuera de los E.E.U.U. en Granada, España. Allá te vas a mejorar sus destrezas para dominar la lengua Español  y desarrollarás su apoyo para el equipo futbol FC Barcelona. Cuando regresarás, vas a hablar con fluidez y con un acento que suena un poco mas castellano (¡por ejemplo, el sonido de “z” se cambia a “th”. Jaja!) Oye, Jacobo, te vas a dejar su huella, en todos de los sitios que visitaras. Be thankful your mom made begin your Spanish studies, in Middle School.

And speaking of your Mom, continue to take pride in your family. Despite the fact that certain family rules might have cramped your social endeavors (i.e. the “No parents at the home, no going to the party” rule), you’ll have plenty of opportunities to chase the night and shindig to your heart’s content in college (I’m confident you wont’t make this a priority). And for all those Friday evenings when you were reveling in Shabbat family game night, you will develop some wicked talents to throttle your friends in epic games of Scrabble. No one will be able touch you when it comes to well-played two-letter word scores and the sneaky words that begin with the letter q, and the second letter is not a u.

Your passion for Judaism, its values, and its morals will not desert you. When you make your way to a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles, you will find that you are one of a few Jewish kids on campus who keeps kosher. And you will find that said school is very flexible in constructing a kosher meal plan to meet your dietary needs. Score! While your school’s Hillel organization will not be your cup of tea, you’ll find that you are comfortable and just as content performing certain rituals on your own. And you should not degrade yourself because your younger sisters know how bake Challah while you simply watch in awe. You’ll feel inspired, rise to the challenge, and your new friends will come away impressed and somewhat envious your baking talents.

I think that’s plenty of information for you to digest. I’ll leave with a few closing remarks:

Continue to say “please” and “thank you.” Do everything you do with 1,000 cm3 of passion and enthusiasm. Never stop trying to learn more about what makes you, you!

Your future self,
-Jacob Weiss

PS: Stay away from those French toast sticks. They will go straight to your stomach and make you an honorary member of the statistical club otherwise known as Freshman 15. And learn to love more fruit, beyond granny smith apples!

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.