Dear 2021/2022 James,
First of all, I would like to apologize for all the times I’ve said “eh, that sounds like a problem for Future James.” I hope you’ve curbed your procrastination habit, though I doubt you have completely.
I’m supposed to have foresight now. Planning. GOALS. However, life throws many a curveball and I’m always paranoid, waiting for the Big One™ that will destroy everything. However, I know that while things are unpredictable and change, the capacity for a person (including myself) to adapt and cope with stress is great. I sincerely hope that you have finished your physics degree and are looking for a job relevant to your education. As is the standard didactic requirement of these letters, I must lay out some more detailed plans, which will hopefully see some degree of fruition. Please have taken classes in major-adjacent sciences such as chemistry and computer science, and others in the humanities, so that you will be well-rounded. Please have done PRISM (Longwood undergraduate research program, for the unaware) in the summer of 2020, so that you may get another summer research job or an internship following that to establish yourself as a good candidate for good jobs. (So you may work for several decades, then die, etc.) I really don’t care what you do so long as it is worthwhile and you do it well. All things job-related and money-related should be directed towards allowing yourself to be able to give more of your time, energy, and other relevant resources to those in need. Wealth, should you accumulate it, should be a side effect and not a goal, and should be rid of wisely.
But future/futurer past/paster future/free-range pasture James, I hope you’ve done some work on yourself. I am unhappy and stressed. Fix it. I hope you went to therapy soon after writing this letter. Figure out how to stop worrying so much, and get more out of life. Quickly. Continue bettering yourself. Think more like Atticus Finch and less like Jean-Paul Sartre. Also, I hope you know that it’s alright if absolutely nothing has gone as planned in the above paragraph. Be yourself and remember that life is what you make of it. Play the cards you’re given with everything you’ve got.
And please, for the sake of all that is good in life, keep it between the ditches.
—James Cox