Dear 18-Year-Old Grace,
You’ve just had your birthday and you’re excited to get into a club without borrowing someone’s ID for the first time. You’re still living at home in England and getting ready for your final exams. I’ve just turned 21 and I’ve been living in America for the better part of a year. I’m over halfway through my degree and my future plans run out in June when I go back home. I haven’t considered what I’m going to do next but it’s so much less scary knowing that the last time I felt like this, when I was you, it all worked out for me.
Firstly, you won’t get into the university you want. It’ll be a stressful day, you’ll try your best to get into Exeter anyway and you’ll have wished you studied a little bit harder. In the long run it won’t matter. You’ll end up having the best time anyway. After a month, you won’t really think about it again when you’ve met some of your new best friends at Warwick. You really won’t think about it when you’re moving into a new house with everyone you met there. It’s a good exercise in letting go of a path that’s been closed to you and probably learning to work a bit harder.
Some people will fall out of your life and you’ll miss every memory you made with them when you were younger. Unfortunately, not everyone is made to stay in your life and I hear that just gets worse from here into your twenties. Luckily for you, your very best friends stay pretty much the same from now onward. You meet lots of amazing people but you never lose the friends you started out with at 18. They are your biggest supporters and you feel lucky to have them everyday. You cheer them on as you watch them from halfway across the world and you never feel that far apart from them, even if you could love a hug every now and then. It wasn’t even scary moving abroad because you knew they’d be there ready to hear all about it when you get home. It is so wonderful to be surrounded by people who love to see you happy, whatever you’re doing, and whatever you had to sacrifice to get there.
You’re also going to meet some people you don’t like or that make your life more difficult, and some days you’re going to hate university, hate being away from home and hate the way your life is going. But, you will wake up some mornings feeling like you’re the luckiest person in the world. I don’t think that happened all that much until now because you’re still stuck in a ‘the whole world is unfair’ teenage mindset. This will be emphasised when you’re doing the things you didn’t even realise you wanted to do a few years ago: paddle boarding in Mexico, eating dumplings in Chinatown in New York City, or sipping piña coladas at a rooftop bar in Miami. But you feel it too when you’re having Thursday night drinks at Ted’s with your new friends, walking to the stables on campus, or catching up in your friend’s apartment.
Lots of things have changed but there’s one thing I’m so glad you stuck with since we were 16; being absolutely desperate to study abroad. This year abroad will be the best thing that’s happened to you. You’ll watch your friends graduate before you, miss out on birthdays, and miss your family so badly, but you were right in knowing we needed to do this. I feel so much more capable and secure in myself than I did when I was you. There is nothing that can’t be fixed and nothing I can’t do without a little help. Even travelling for 20 hours with 3 suitcases and missing trains and buses or getting locked out of a hotel room at 5am doesn’t seem that bad when there’s people to laugh about it with at the other end. You will be so glad that you were selfish and stuck to your plans after you knew that it’s what you wanted so early on.
Now I’m done with the recap and I have one piece of advice for you that I wish I took 3 years ago; worrying about what people think of you doesn’t make them like you, it just makes you unhappy. Although you roll your eyes at your mum for saying it now, I’m writing this looking at a poster she got you for your 21st birthday of a quote from Roald Dahl, ‘If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.’ It’s a good reminder to worry about yourself first instead of what other people think about you. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at liking who we are, which means less focus on looking ‘perfect’, wearing the right thing, and impressing the right people, and more focus on the people and things that you love.
Now, I’m going home with no plans except to finish my degree next year back at home. I’m so excited to live with my best friend and to have a year as good as the last few. After university, I don’t know what I’ll do. But that’s fine because I remember being you and not knowing what to do either, and that turned out great. I’ll have the rest of my life to choose a career, settle down, and make plans for years in the future, but right now I’m happy living out the last of the plan that you made for us.
Love,
21-Year-Old Grace
P.S. Please don’t dye your hair purple. It will turn green as everyone warned you and you’ll have to start university with green hair. Yes, it says that it’s only semi-permanent. Yes, you think bleach will fix it easily. This is one thing you’re wrong about, trust me.