Hey Junior,

Who were you your junior year of high school? Maybe you were an athlete, the class president, a serial gossiper, on the High-Q team, or just a face in the crowd. Your junior prom dress probably cost half as much as your current rent for your college apartment. You probably had a "weekend job" to pay for Dunkin' Runs and clothes.

Junior year of college, you're a very different person. You're probably wearing the same clothes from high school, sleeping half as much as a normal person should, only in contact with a few of your "best friends" from high school, and you're probably working forty hours a week to pay for an apartment you hardly get to enjoy. If this is your life right now, be thankful. You have grown immensely as a student, citizen, and worker.

In these four years, you have grown, so celebrate it. Looking back, your obstacles from four years ago seem so small when they used to frighten you. Your fears turned in to small victories whether you finally learned to eat alone, got over your fear of public speaking, or got out of a toxic friendship.

Four years seems like a long time; when you were sixteen you probably cringed at your twelve-year-old self. Now, you're twenty and still wondering how your eighteenth birthday already passed. You learn very quickly that time only goes by faster.

My advice? Get up and go to that eight AM class, make your advising appointment weeks in advance, stay up and write that paper, study for that GRE and bug that person for an internship.

You're going to feel like you're still sixteen for a while, but you must understand that you have grown so much from your junior year in high school to your junior in college. Enjoy every moment you have left of college, and make your sixteen-year-old self proud.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Junior.