Dear Student,
Congratulations on choosing to further your education and for achieving all that you have achieved so far. Welcome to your first slice of adulthood, as someone who stood in your shoes not long ago, I have one lone piece of advice. Slow down, that's it, just slow down.
Don't race through the summer after your senior year, enjoy the time you have with those friends, some of them you will never see again, slow down and enjoy every minute. Slow down and enjoy preparing for college with your parents. Treasure those target trips and bookstore runs with your mom and dad eagerly helping you pick everything you could possibly need for college. The moments you share with them will slowly dwindle, and this time will one day be more important than you can possibly imagine.
Slow down and choose your organizations carefully. The college involvement fair is one of the most exciting time of the year, but signing up for a hundred clubs you'll never actually participate in, just adds a burden to your calendar, your wallet, and your time. Choose these organizations carefully. Slow down, talk to people, find people you mesh with and organizations you're actually passionate about. These people and causes become your life long friends and passions, choose them carefully.
Slow down and enjoy your classes. You're in college to learn, to grow, and to cultivate your passions into skills and tools you'll use to turn that passion into a career, don't let stress rob you of the enjoyment. Slow down, make a plan and enjoy the lectures, projects and professors. Some of those professors will teach you things you never knew you needed to learn.
Finally, slow down and be present. Our modern world is filled with a million distractions and devices, pulling us out of the here and now. Don't live on your phone, don't live in your screen, live in your world. Slow down and put the phone down. Look up, enjoy that walk through the quad, because there will be an afternoon when you realize it'll be your last time. Slow down and put your phone away in class, be present, these classes are profoundly more interesting when everyone is present. Take a moment, breathe, slow down.
Slow down, adulthood comes too quickly when you race through. These years are some of the most important, valuable, and enjoyable years of your life. Slow down, enjoy the ride, you have your whole life to work. Leave no corner of campus unexplored, leave no semester with regret, be present in the here and now, let adulthood wait, slow down, take in every experience you can, make the most of these years, make the friends you need for a lifetime, and become the best possible version of you that you can be.
Slow down, because if you don't, it'll pass in the blink of an eye, and you'll miss all that you never did, and there is no going back. Slow down, that's it, slow down.
