Dear Terry,

I know you’re exhausted from worrying if your SAT scores were high enough this last time around and if your college application essays were good enough, but I’d really appreciate it if you could pause for a moment, read this, and listen to a few things that an older and slightly wiser version of you has to tell you.

College is going to be an experience unlike anything you’ve lived through yet. You will change in ways you never expected and learn the most valuable lessons from the most unlikely teachers. As a general rule, your professors will tell you that nearly everything you learned in high school was wrong. While this is partly (only partly) true, don’t take it to heart. Doing so can convince you that high school was an utter waste of time and that you should never have gone. But what good would that have done? You had to go through high school to get to college in the first place, didn’t you? Besides, a lot of professors will say that just to sound impressive and trick you into paying better attention in intro classes.

Grades will never be the end of your world. Seriously. I promise you, you’re smarter and more capable than what you give yourself credit for. I’m not saying that you won’t mess up at times and feel stupid for doing so, but trust me—it’s never beyond repair, no matter how much it might feel like it at the time.

Even though people can be horrible sometimes and figuring life out on your own for the first time can be so confusing and painful, you will make it through. The tough nights will come and go, and that flighty, frightened feeling of wondering if you messed something up lessens with time. It doesn’t ever fully go away, but it does get easier to manage.

Also, you’re doing really well at not being in a hurry to grow up so fast. That’s so good. You usually don’t know this when you’re in high school, but college affords you a lot of chances to be a kid again, even while you’re learning how to become an adult. Here’s a news flash—becoming a good, healthy adult isn’t about ditching everything that made you a kid—it’s about learning how to keep those childlike elements and incorporate you into your adult life. So when student government organizes a campus-wide dart war, you better believe it’ll be a good investment to go out and raid Walmart for some quality Nerf Strongarm pistols.

Basically, just don’t sweat it, ok? Worrying only makes you suffer twice. You’ll make it through just fine.