Dear­est Yours Truly, Hello. It's you. I just wanted to take the time to con­grat­u­late you for mak­ing it to high school. The ninth grade is the begin­ning of a brand new adven­ture that you will (believe me, I know) look back and smile at. I know you are excited. Scared, but over­all excited to start the […]

Dear Amy (high school senior ver­sion), You’re prob­a­bly freak­ing out right now because you feel over­whelmed with every­thing that’s going on in your life at the moment. You’re wor­ried about acing those AP tests and finals, grad­u­at­ing with a strong GPA, and being able to bal­ance your numer­ous extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. On top of all that, […]

Dear High School Matt, You are about to make the biggest jump of your young life, try not to worry about it so much. It is a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion, but you will soon find that you can han­dle it, so embrace it as soon as pos­si­ble. And I know that you stum­bled on UC Davis […]

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.

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?

Dear 17 year-old high school senior self, Stop being such a chump. And stop whin­ing. Senior year's about to start, and I think you should know a few things. You're going to spend this year cavort­ing like a mad­woman with a bunch of crazy Rus­sians, par­ty­ing, ditch­ing school and lament­ing about your ex boyfriend. But […]