Dear 17-year-old Nora, who is amid applying for colleges in summer and fall of 2016,

How’s writing going? I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, what with college applications, additional essays, and normal schoolwork all happening at once. You’ve just begun writing the council story for real. You’re on chapter one, right? Editing it over and over again so it’s fit to send to colleges as a creative piece. Keep going with that! It will help you.

But it won’t go the way you expect.

You probably knew that already. I tend to create grand views of the future and how my writing will come to pass but a part of me always knows nothing is set in stone. You’d be surprised to what degree that’s true:

You will finish the council story. Congratulations! It will be short with only ten chapters and a little over fifty thousand words. You will edit the whole thing a few times but hit a roadblock during your second year of college. That’s when you start working on your next big project, which won’t immediately take over the council story, but will eventually. Meanwhile, you will first realize you need to rewrite the whole book of The Council of Intelligent Beings on Earth, then realize the problem goes beyond the structure, and set it on the backburner for a long time.

But that’s not a bad thing! You put so much work into that book and that is so important. The work you put in doesn’t go to waste just because you don’t use whichever version of it you currently have. You get to learn a lot about writing and creating worlds from that story alone. You learn that it’s okay to change projects no matter how far along you are with one of them because it will still be there, it will still have an effect on you moving forward.

Think about it: what excites you most about your council story world? Maybe it’s Mysty and Kami’s relationship, or the dynamics between the four main characters, or the cultures and governmental structures of the fairies, elves, and mermaids. Guess what, you don’t have to throw those away! I’ve already started brainstorming ways to reuse the magical cultures for a new idea, either including the idea of a council or not, and I might even get to use the same characters! Everything you create has value, even if it never sees the light of day or remains in your head.

You’re probably really excited about Reed College right now. If you just got back from visiting it, you are already conceptualizing your future at the school. You made so many friends just from visiting for an overnight stay, the classes look so interesting, and even the idea of college sounds so much better than high school. Well, college is so much better than high school, you got that right. But there’s a fuckton coming you wouldn’t have predicted. You view Reed with this green and yellow haze, seeing it as the epidemy of college life and the best possible option. It doesn’t hurt that the school is in a city you know and love, the campus is gorgeous, and it’s the only college you visit before acceptance letters arrive, before you even submit your applications. 

I won’t lie, even while writing this letter, well into my last year at the college I did choose, I remember Reed fondly. There will always be a part of me that wonders what my life would have been like if I had chosen that school. And I almost did.

But in the end, I didn’t. I chose Hampshire College instead. Yes! That one that you remember vaguely as the school that seems kind of desperate in their emails. The hippie school that might be a little too freeform for your taste. The school you haven’t visited yet and have little concept of it beyond seeing it at that college fair and meeting with the interviewer, who didn’t even go to the school. Well, your vision of the school will change a lot once you visit. 

No, it’s nowhere near as beautiful as Reed. Instead, it’s the environment that draws you in. You will feel instantly at home here, just like you did at Reed, but in a different way. There, you felt a little weird at one point when you got overexcited about a song you adore (by the way, that’s just you talking about your special interests and there’s a reason for that I will get to later). Here, everyone is weird! (Clarification: not everyone. A lot of people are weird and you will find people who share your excitement). There, the classes excite you because they are college classes, already miles different and better than those you took in high school. Here, the classes excite you because they go more in-depth, have more student involvement, and allow you to explore outside what you originally think you’re interested in. There, the structure is very stereotypically college-like, with rigorous classes and intense finals periods. Here, the structure is self-driven and better fit to your needs, with classes that intrigue you and finals that build on what you learned rather than testing you on it. Hell, eventually you’ll take Hampshire’s unique system for granted so much that taking classes at the other five colleges throws you off because what? We have to take a TeSt? And there are GrAdEs???

In the end, you will have to decide between the two. After visiting Hampshire, you already have strong feelings for it, but you will need to visit Reed one last time to realize it’s not for you. Good thing it’s only three hours away and multiple visits isn’t hard to do. You won’t see a single person from your first visit and you will be unimpressed by the writing program. Hampshire isn’t perfect in any way. There will be things you felt you were promised that don’t pan out (they say in a video about Div III’s that you can write a novel. That’s a lie. Or at least they mean “novel” as in something under forty thousand words aka a novella no I’m not still salty about this). But despite its flaws, Hampshire was the right decision for you and the lessons you learn, the friends you make, and the ideas you create while you’re there will be integral to how you develop in the next four years.

You’re not doing so hot at the moment. Or is that next summer? Sorry, I don’t want to stress you out for the future, but I know you have a number of assignments you have been putting off. That’s usually a sure bet. Guess what, there’s a reason for that. You have ADHD. Surprise! But you won’t learn that until your senior year of college, and there will be several roadblocks you encounter before then – many close calls. Also, your mental state, it’ll have some issues going forward too.

Yeah, I know, that sounds shitty. But it’s not all bad. There are tons of great moments going forward too! Also, you learn a lot as you encounter these mental troubles. It will get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. I promise. Therapy helps a lot.

If I were to give you advice going forward, I’d say, “College won’t be the solution you think it’s going to be. Your problems won’t all be magically solved by the academia aesthetic. It’s better than high school, sure, but it’s got its own set of problems. The expectations you put on college to be your savior will just make it hurt more when it turns out to not be every single thing you expected.”

Friendships will be formed, but also lost. You will be hurt many times. Yes, again. I’m sorry. Romantic relationships will also cause a lot of confusion and hurt. It’s tough, and can be anxiety-inducing and depression-inducing at times. But you will get through it. You will make some really fucking amazing friends who will have so much in common with you, be such kind people, and leave you thinking how unexciting your life was before you met them. A few tips: stick with that person next door, the one you meet second in your tap class, and the language-lover in Argentina. Yes, you’re going to Argentina, calm down, I know it’s exciting, but you have to be patient. You’ve got a few years still. Also, don’t count out your friends from home. Sometimes the ones closest to you are the ones who stay with you the longest. No, I won’t explain myself! You have to live through all of this on your own time. No explicit spoilers coming from me! Only vague ones 😉

You will have a lot of learning to go through in your romantic life. I know you think you’re fully allosexual, but you’re actually totally on the ace spectrum. Tip: libido and sexual attraction aren’t the same thing. Also, your ability to differentiate between romantic and platonic attraction sucks, and you’ll learn that the hard way. Basically, your attractions are complicated and messy and hard to pin down and that will make dating really difficult. You will be hurt by people you get really attached to, cross milestones in an unfulfilling way, retract or reexamine feelings and desires, and fail at online dating in two different ways (one of which will be a funny story to tell people but also annoying). Let yourself go crazy your first year, because how you feel about it the following years will only be worth it if you fully enjoy it when it’s happening. Does that make sense? I don’t care, I had to figure it out the hard way and so do you, because you are me.

There will some really hard fucking times. The stress you face now when you procrastinate on homework or don’t get it in? That will double more than once in the coming years. But you will also have a higher percentage of successes at school, and you’ll learn tricks to not procrastinate as the years go on. A certain world-changing event will put a dent in that, but that’s beside the point (and I’m not telling you what I’m talking about because you really won’t want to know. Enjoy your outdoor social life while you have it). Your anxieties around friendships will get worse because you’ll get more intensely invested in those friendships. It will take a bit, but through therapy and learning from your mistakes, you’ll get a better grasp on how to deal with those anxieties, and when to know that it’s not you, it’s them. You will also feel really low and depressed at moments. It’s connected to the other two, but also a range of other stuff. I can’t give you a proper analysis of it now, because I’m not feeling that way now. That will be a common theme: lots of highs and lows that make you wonder how you could possibly feel the way you don’t feel in the moment. Still figuring that out tbh. 

So, circling back to the writing stuff. You may not be focusing on the council story, but you will find a new story, one you haven’t even begun to think about yet! And you’ll conceptualize many other new story ideas to use for years in the future. Some are inspired by religion classes you take (yes, it’s worth it! Both of them!), some by your study abroad, some by the colleges and area around you, and at least one by walking in a new part of the farm on campus that will suddenly fling a new idea into your head. Keep the ideas you’ve had before, but be super open to new ones. There’s no limit, and I know that’s what you love about being a writer.

I would tell you to plan your stories out before you write them, but honestly, if I hadn’t pantsed the book I’m working on right now (yes, it will be a whole book, and yes, it is significantly longer than the last one), it wouldn’t have panned out the same way it did. The story I would have planned before writing it is nowhere near as layered as the one I’ve developed since writing it. And you’ll learn that plotting will be necessary in the future, not the hard way, but the important way. Let yourself grow naturally, it will happen, I promise.

Okay, reaching the end of our metaphorical/meta/conceptual/etc. talk. I hope I haven’t stressed you out too much. Just know that everything you go through, you will learn from (or are still learning from). That’s what life’s about, you know? A few remaining bits:

• You know Steven Universe, that show you love? Keep watching shows like that, they will hit you emotionally in ways you never expected and get you through some really fucking hard times.
• Explore! Classes, the places you live, the places you visit – explore it all! From experience, you will partly follow my advice, but not as much as I would like. This is something I would definitely go back and change.
• Accept that you will cringe at yourself, but also cringe culture is dead. Those are two ideas that can and should coexist.
• Returning to old interests can be really great sometimes. Reflecting on the past is a complex thing, but both helpful for learning and for understanding how you got to where you are now. Hey! That’s what I’m doing in writing this letter!

So yeah, enjoy the next four years!

Best,

21-year-old Nora, who is in her final year/semester of college and also it’s 2021 so that’s something