Letter to Younger Self

Dear Amy

I hope your voice has come back after being sick in ‘o-week’ and trying to keep up with the partying and drinking every night. The term has now begun and you should be prepared for a hectic year ahead. And yes, now it’s time to knuckle down and work! I know you think University is going to be one big party and you are going to have so much fun, but I’m sorry to say it’s not going to be like that. Many of your nights are going to be spent working into the early hours of the morning or sometimes not sleeping at all, only finishing your assignment half an hour before it’s due the next day. You will become very familiar with the term “all-nighter”! This is because the night before (and all the weeks before when you already knew about the assignment) you chose to go out to the Union, Rat and Friars, got drunk (‘cane-trains’ are dangerous) and stumbled into Res at 5:am the next morning. Because of this you will most likely miss all your lectures the next day and can only start recovering from your hang-over at 8pm, about the time when you realise you are ‘screwed’ for your essay. You will do more work this year than you have ever done in your life and often wonder how it is humanly possible to do three major assignments in one night, but this is your fault! So stop feeling sorry for yourself. Learn to manage your time and work in advance, instead of watching every series possible on DC++, and you won’t put so much pressure on yourself in the future. I’m not saying you are going to do badly at university, actually you will do pretty well (amazingly), but you don’t want to spend your days tired, hung-over and guilty with an assignment looming in the back of your mind. Stop letting other people influence you so much, especially when it comes to going out, maybe if you listen to yourself for once you won’t make half the mistakes you are going to make. Don’t care about what they think or even feel because half of them won’t be your friends by the end of the year anyway. What is important is your happiness, not their's. Tell yourself everyday that everything will be alright.

Love,
Your older self