Letter to My Senior Self
Dear Senior Madison,
For a split second, you almost got teary-eyed when you sat down to write this letter. How can your first year of college already be over? How did so many blessings get jam-packed into just eight months? How can you already have Honors asking you to write a letter to your senior self? It doesn’t seem fair for them to make you think about the year you will have to graduate and LEAVE the place that you have made your home!
You have grown so much in the past year. Leaving your high school and moving to a bigger place has done wonders for you. I’m sure you remember how humbling this experience was. You got really, really lucky. Never lose sight of that. You were blessed with a roommate who was your first real friend on campus. You stayed close enough that you decided to room together your sophomore year! Kaitlin had an entire campus full of girls she could have decided to room with, and she chose you. That doesn’t just happen to everybody. What is two years ago for you but next year for me, Mary Zell, one of your best freshman-year friends, is one of your suitemates, and Bri, whom I don’t know very well yet but whom you know very well, is the other. By now I imagine you know that you were right about the fact that she would quickly become another of your incredibly close friends. I hope you stayed in touch with Emily. She was the greatest blessing you ever could have dreamed of asking for as a freshman. I know watching her graduate a leave you behind must have been so, so tough, but I hope you were strong for her and carried everything she taught you – on purpose or otherwise – with you through the rest of your college career. Always remember how much she believed in you, and always remember to tell the underclassmen how much you believe in them to return the favor. You couldn’t have gotten a better adoptive mentor if you had tried.
This year, you had a pretty darn fantastic Spring semester. You were elected president of the Honors Student Association and were accepted as a Longwood Ambassador all within less than 24 hours! Talk about a killer day! Little did you know then how overwhelmed it would make you in the coming month, in both the stressed-out and joyfully-emotional senses of the word! What an incredible month April 2016 was for you, Madison. You automatically gained 75+ new friends when you were accepted an Ambassador, and you fell right into place. I’m so glad that I feel so much like I have found my niche. I hope you feel that way as a senior even more than I do now, even though I know that would make saying goodbye a million times harder.
I hope you are still proud of yourself for your academic achievements as a freshman. I know how much you doubted your abilities and how much you thought the Honors College was overestimating you when they awarded you your scholarship before you even started at Longwood. I know you thought that you would not be able to handle the workload or the coursework of a college student as well as you handled it in high school, and that might have been a tiny bit true, but for the most part, you proved yourself very wrong. Big things were expected of you, and you delivered, not just during Fall semester, but during Spring semester as well. Your being placed on Dean’s List both semesters and your additional scholarship that you were awarded are just two things that exemplify that.
Becoming a Longwood Ambassador might possibly be the best thing that has ever happened to you. As a new Ambassador for only a month, you have already proven so much to yourself, your friends, and your family. You have proven that you can juggle a heavy workload AND two organizations extremely well. So well, in fact, that you were able to not only stay on Dean’s List, but actually pull up your grade in one course and take on several organizational duties as well. The stress of it all was a little overwhelming for you at times, but it was simultaneously exhilarating. It was so nice to be back in the swing of being “the good kind” of stressed out!
I hope that, since your freshman year, you have continued to improve when it comes to acting confident in your positions. I hope you have gotten better about shying away from stating your viewpoint, and I hope you improved upon leading meetings more assertively. I know I can do it, I just need some more practice. Practice makes perfect, and while I never expect to be perfect, I’m sure going to try. Hopefully you have made great strides by now!
I hope that as time has gone on, you have continued to stay confident in your juggling abilities. I hope you haven’t let yourself get discouraged in times where things have been crazier than you ever could have imagined. I know, because I proved it to myself, that we are capable. That is something you would not have been willing to say to yourself at the beginning of your freshman year, and I am so proud that I can say it now.
I imagine that you are incredibly sad about being a senior in college. Depending on whether you read this at the beginning or the end of your senior year, you either soon will or recently did step away from being a Longwood Ambassador. The thought of having to do that two and a half years from now makes me sick. I can’t imagine having to leave such a supportive, encouraging, positive, uplifting organization in what seems like such a short time. I was only just accepted as an Ambassador two and a half months ago, and I am already so, so attached. Watching the seniors pass down their belongings and cry during their slideshow made me cry as a newbie! I know you will be (or were) a mess when it will be (or was) your turn. I hope your time with Ambassadors has been everything you imagined and more.
I hope Honors has continued to make you feel just as “at home” as it did from the very beginning. I can’t believe that your last Honors Retreat has (or is about to have) come and gone. I hope Dr. Jordan was (or will be) still there to do ghost stories prior to the senior sob fest, but regardless of whether he is or isn’t, I hope you still carry with you the quote he shared at the Christmas tree lighting during your freshman year: “Here would I find a settled rest, while others go and come. No more a stranger, nor a guest, but like a child at home.”
Honors gave you everything you have at Longwood. If it hadn’t been for Honors, your entire life would be different. Never, ever, ever lose sight of that or stop being grateful for that. Honors is at the root of everything you do. Carry that with you for the rest of your life. Forget about the grades or the classes if you must, but don’t forget what the unique Honors experience taught you, both inside and outside the classroom.
I don’t know if you already have a job lined up, but remember that if you have faith, everything will fall into place when it’s meant to. Honors taught you that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to accomplishing. I know you are using that knowledge to your advantage as a real, full-fledged adult. Keep it up and make me proud.
All my best,
End-of-Freshman-Year Madison <3
