Dear Quinn... Love, Quinn
Towards the end of my senior year of high school, one of my teachers forced all eleven members of my Chinese class to spend fifth period writing letters to our future selves. I took Chinese all four years of high school, and if I’m being honest, I remember very little [but if you want to talk about fruit or transportation, or exchange a basic greeting, I’m your girl]. It’s actually not that surprising considering how many memories I have of doing things besides learning Chinese during that class. We often talked about our dreams and goals, Eastern versus Western definitions of success, and what it was like to be a teenager—and the class was likely much more impactful on my life than actually learning Mandarin would have been. Of all of those nontraditional learning experiences, however, writing a letter to myself was one of my favorites.
I found that letter two summers ago. I tore open the envelope, the outside of which read “To Me, Open 2017.” It was dated a week before my birthday, from the previous year. Having just finished my freshman year of college, I expected to read my high school thoughts and find them childish, naïve, and otherwise irrelevant in terms of my new collegiate life. As you might imagine [by way of me writing about it], I surprised myself immensely. Apparently at almost eighteen, I was insightful and curious as well as self-assured and hopeful. I wrote about feeling both excited and nervous to move from Massachusetts to Virginia in order to attend William & Mary. I described my aspirations of teaching high school and writing on the side. I wanted to write a book, I wanted to move to the west coast after college, I wanted to join a sorority—I had it all figured out, but I also noted to myself that it would be okay whether I did all or none or even just some of those things. At almost eighteen, I was surprisingly comfortable with the idea that I didn’t need to know for sure.
In addition to cataloguing my values at that point in time, I posed questions for my future self: what are the most important things in your life? Who are your friends? Are they your best friends? Do you still want to teach, or have you changed your mind? Did you ever get a tattoo? Have your values changed? Should your values change? [I had some deep questions.] Inspired by that letter, I decided to write myself another one each year, answering the questions from the year before and describing my ideas in the present. It was a short-lived resolution—I did one around my nineteenth birthday, and then I never finished the one that I started around my twentieth last year. Today, however, in a frenetic bout of organizing my room, I found the journal that I had written the 2017 letter and half of the 2018 one, and I wondered why I had left it half-complete. I guess last summer I didn’t have anything to update myself on—my life didn’t change that much between freshman and sophomore years of college, unlike the dramatic shift of the previous year’s span. But I wish that I had written a little something more. Not only is it nice to look back on, but I think it’s important to define my priorities and values so that I have something to reflect on when situations come up that call them into question or make me think a little bit harder about what parts of my life mean the most.
In that spirit, I decided to pen a mid-year note to myself, and I decided to share it with you all because I think this process can be a great tactic in the pursuit of learning more about yourself and finding the larger meaning in your life as well as appreciating the smaller things that you do have. I know, that sounds so drastic. I think my blog has been a little bit angsty lately, but I’m fine with it. Above all, I want this to be somewhere that I can freely share my thoughts and ideas with you guys, and hopefully provide material that you can relate to. So, if you’re interested in knowing what I’m all about this year, read on!
To Me, Open 2020
Dear Quinn,
Today is February 8th, 2019. Yeah, it’s a little bit past the time I intended to write this letter, but I wanted to make sure that you had something to look back on when you’re eighty or something and wondering what the twenty-first year of your life was like. I’m doing pretty well on the whole, I’d say. I got another tattoo over the last summer—the lightbulb on our left forearm. It’s an illustration from a Rupi Kaur poem about being complete on your own before you love and give to someone else. I love that idea, the concept that it takes two complete people to form a whole relationship rather than two halves of people making one whole together. You should be your own individual before you commit to someone else.
I am part of an incredible relationship right now with an amazing guy, and I feel very lucky and grateful for the time we get to spend together. Dave is something special, and I hope he’s still around when you read this letter a year from now—I guess if he’s not this portion of the letter is kind of going to be a bummer in hindsight. Sorry, future me. Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with that situation. I did want to mention it though, because no matter what happens in the future, being with Dave is an exceptional experience that I have learned a lot from. Back to my point—one of the best parts about this relationship is that we’re each individuals outside of being a couple. No matter what happens in your future, I hope you always hold on to that.
What else do I value in my life? There are a lot of things that I care a lot about right now. Rowing, of course, remains important to me. I love my teammates and the sport and I enjoy competing. That said, it’s been stressful balancing that commitment with a variety of newer passions that have come into my life recently. I’ve started running, something that I thought I would never do, and I’ve fallen in love with it. I’m curious to know if you’ve kept up with that or if you’ve lost interest over time. I hope that you’ve stuck with it, but I understand if it became too much or you decided to prioritize other things instead. Did you do the half marathon? I bet you did, and if not, there must have been a really good reason. At the moment, that’s the thing I’m most looking forward to. In other news, I recently got a job on campus, which is exciting. I know that doesn’t sound that awesome, but I’m really excited about it. I loved working [even though it was at McDonald’s] in high school, because I loved both the independence and security that it gave me. I’m also just excited to have some spending money for the things I want rather than spending all my money on cell phone bills, water bills, electric bills, etc. Sometimes I think living off campus is giving me a taste of adulthood, but I’m sure I’ll look back on this one day and die laughing at that idea.
I’m still writing—in the past I’ve always asked myself this in letters, so I’ll ask again to you: are you still writing, Quinn? If there’s anything that I hope for you, that’s what I hope the most. Please keep writing. I love it more than almost anything. It’s what I do to relax [besides trashy television, of course]. I’m working on a short story collection centering around the theme of what it means to be a grown-up. When are you actually an adult and what qualifies as maturity? Is it getting your driver’s license? Turning eighteen? Having that first legal drink at twenty-one? Is it graduating from college? A job? Paying taxes? Paying your own rent? I’m curious if I’ll ever feel like an adult, because I certainly don’t now. I think college is a strange sort of limbo-type environment where we’re suspended between childhood and adulthood, with many of the privileges but few of the responsibilities of the latter. I wonder if by the time you read this again, you’ll know more of the answers. I’m excited for the future; I’m excited to gain all the knowledge and experience that you’ll have in a year or so when you come back to this or a few years after that when you read it again and feel a wave of nostalgia about your good old college days. And I have to tell you, they’re pretty damn good.
Right now, I’m a big believer in the idea that I wouldn’t change anything about my life, even if I had the option to go back and alter some of my “mistakes.” I think that everything that I’ve done up to this point has been part of my life’s education and has shaped me into being the person I am today, which is a person that I’m really happy to be and really proud to be. Have I always made the best choices? Certainly not. [Did I eat only French Fries for dinner on Tuesday? Certainly yes.] Do I often get overly stressed out about things that almost definitely won’t matter in the grand scheme of my life? Yeah, I do—although maybe by the time you read this, you’ll have improved in that area, even just a little bit. We have our whole life to work on that though, so no worries if not. My point is that my life isn’t perfect, but I don’t want it to be. If everything always worked out and I was never stressed and never upset and happy every second, I feel that I wouldn’t be having a very full life, because in my mind that would imply that I didn’t care deeply enough about anything for it to affect me. I’m glad that I feel passionate about what I have and do, even if that makes life challenging sometimes.
Speaking of challenging, I’m working on the preliminary stages of an honors thesis within my English major. I’m not even doing the actual research part yet, and it’s already really hard. All I’ve done is write a proposal for a competition to get summer research funding. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this again, that thesis will be well underway. I’m excited about the topic and I’m excited to get the opportunity to delve so deeply into something I’m so passionate about [images of Helen of Troy in the Renaissance period in England and what her varying levels of agency say about the gender politics of that time]. I wonder if by next April that topic will even be remotely the same. Hopefully it will be more eloquently worded. In the next year, you’ll be looking at grad schools, you’ll be looking at where to live after college, you’ll almost be graduating. That’s crazy to think about—but don’t worry, we still have time before we get there! Enjoy college while it lasts. In my limited life experience so far, there’s nothing quite like it.
What are you imagining that you’ll do after this experience is over? Do you think you still want to pursue an advanced degree in English and delve into the world of academia? Or have you switched back to wanting to teach at a younger level—high school? Elementary? Whatever we do, I imagine us working in a field where we can share our love of learning with others. I wonder if you’ll still feel that way. Do you feel more like an adult now than you did a year ago? Have any of your values changed? What has stayed the same? Have you gotten any more tattoos? If so, what else became so important to you that you decided to dedicate space on your skin to it forever? I’m excited to find out.
Just one parting thought before I sign off: you can do this. You are brave, strong, and thoughtful. You are worthwhile. You never know where life is going to take you, but wherever we go, I know that we can make something amazing out of it—that’s what we’ve been doing our whole life. I think that might be what everyone does, actually. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do this year! Wishing you all the best!
Love,
Quinn
