Senior Column — Roselind Zeng ’20

Roselind Zeng, Executive Copy Editor
May 30, 2020

Dear Little Kid Me,

No, I haven’t stopped being sarcastic, that’s not going away.

You’re probably wondering what kind of character development I’ve gone through in the past four years. Well, I’m just gonna say that I still haven’t forgotten that you waltzed into Calc BC instead of Algebra 1 the second week at the high school. And no I haven’t forgiven you for making me look like a clown because of it.

I remember you thought you were a cool little dude who thought straight As were easy and that AHS would cruise on by. Well, you weren’t wrong about the last part. Ninth grade was when you were on training wheels. They came off and you didn’t like the ride for a while.

But here’s what you will like. In ninth grade, you found out you really liked having an opinion, and writing it down. That’s why you’re still part of this newspaper in senior year. In tenth grade, you got back into drawing again, and by now you’ve probably earned $250 from doodles on the side. In eleventh grade you found out how much you liked staying up all night… but not if you needed to do so to do homework. In senior year, you finally got into college. You’re going to UCSB. It’s a really nice school.

But now here’s the part that you won’t like. Instead of digging through the mountain of misery piece by piece (it’s way too depressing), I’ll roll it up into words of advice.

Time. You’re running out of it.

Uh, that came out sounding like a threat, sorry. But you think that every day you can just come home, snack, and binge YouTube for three hours before starting homework… You kept doing that on and off this entire time and I’m not trying to sit here on a high horse, but you’re actually going to regret it. I’ve just burned an afternoon rewatching Demon Slayer instead of writing this letter (good show, by the way, definitely keep watching anime in your SPARE TIME ONLY). Stop wasting time and get things over with. You’ll feel a lot better about staying up all night if it wasn’t because you had all that work you swept aside after school. You’ll complain that you never had enough time— that’s a lie.

Find your goals early on.

If you have high hopes for high school, I’m sorry that I’m about to crush your dreams. You’ve basically ended high school the way you started: unassuming and unmotivated overall. You only figured out what major you were going to submit on college apps the summer that you started them. I really wished I had more stuff that I liked around campus to exert my energy into. Change that for me, please.

Be thankful for what you have.

Alright I sound like a hypocrite, I just asked you to fix all that stuff up there. But really, if you think about it, your life is pretty good. You’re going to one of the best schools in the county, even the state, and you have all these opportunities at your disposal. You’re going to get your own Chromebook with a touchscreen, and when you inevitably smash it on the concrete out of sheer stupidity, you’re going to get the hand-me-down family laptop. Then a drawing tablet. Then when that breaks you’re going to buy an iPad, Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard, and eventually an iPhone after that. There’ll be an endless supply of stationery. Mom and Dad are gonna find a bunch of random knick knacks to keep you happy. Focus on yourself, on the things happening around you, and not the stuff. Why? The stuff I just listed is all on my desk, and I’m telling you, my baseline of happiness still hasn’t increased four years down the road.

Grades aren’t everything.

I gotta congratulate you. You got salutatorian. Only one B+ this entire time. And there’s a white ribbon you wear with your grad gown. But that’s about it. Was it really worth that weird perfectionism towards your report card? You skipped out on so many fun things over the weekends when friends asked you to go out with them. Granted, Mom and Dad aren’t going to let you out anyways, but you shot down the chance already by being a try-hard on all those assignments and shutting yourself in your room. Take a breather and only study for the things that really matter. The world isn’t going to end if you didn’t finish a Punnett square worksheet. You got an A in that class anyways.

Why am I telling you all these things? Well, if you thought 2016 was bleak (Donald wins the election, have fun with that) then I’m the bearer of bad news again. 2020 is the year you graduate, the year I’m at now. The college applications did you a number. You started all the way in August, and you only got a break in February. They made you realize your insignificance, all these things you left out as you crawled through each school year. And now, in 2020, senior you been sitting in your room for two months. The world hasn’t ended… uh, kind of— No, you haven’t dropped out and become a shut-in.

You and I are going to end high school holed up at home because a worldwide pandemic makes it unsafe to exist within six feet of other people. I miss all the things you have. And you shall miss the things I’ve got to say until you get here.

Have fun with that paradox. Hope you’re listening.

Roselind.