Dearest Penn Freshmen,

There’s a lot of things that’ll happen to you at Penn that you would never expect. Attending a BYO at Wishbone with your squad (highly recommend); taking a class called “Hipster Philosophy”; staying friends with your freshman hall all four years; deciding to get a PhD; wholeheartedly embracing your roots; 4:00AM hot tub nights senior year; becoming civically engaged; discovering how much you can ​feel​. In our case, we’ve been best friends since the day we met as random freshman year roommates on August 24, 2016. Through our many, many successes and failures, we’d like to impart some advice and insight as you begin your own journey through the many, many seasons of Penn.

Freshman Year

Fall: A whirlwind romance

It’ll be a whirlwind, and will be over in a blink of an eye. By the end of speed dating all kinds of personalities at NSO, you’ll have perfected your personal elevator pitch (What’s your name? Where are you from? What are you majoring in? Where do you live? Oh, the quad? What part?). Regardless of how exciting it will be, at one point or another, it’ll get rocky and you’ll find yourself crying in your dorm. Everyone has to adjust to new circumstances, even if they’re having a great year. At times, you’ll miss home and feel lonely, but you’ll rebound. You’ll meet the most diverse and interesting group of people and be exposed to new ideas and opportunities -- leave your inhibitions behind. You’ll start to fall in love with Penn and it’ll be hard to take a break come December. You might even catch yourself calling it home.

Spring: To Rush or not to rush (that is the question)

You may amp up your social involvement this season. Rushing greek life is an exhausting process, but it can also be fun to put your NSO skills to the test (lol). Some of your friends, or even you, may decide to join greek life. But, don’t think greek life will define your social life -- it’s just one way to pursue a social life. Whether you rush or don’t, you can come away with a fun and social semester. Maybe you’ll join some clubs -- social, academic, pre-professional, sport, cultural, or community service - based -- and bond with others who share common interests. While you are on a path to discovering yourself, don’t change yourself for anyone but yourself. Stay true to yourself and your values, and you’ll find friends who appreciate you for you.

Sophomore Year

Fall: You come first (mind over body)

As you come back on campus, you’ll get excited for round two and find comfort in knowing the lay of the land. That said, in all the craziness of freshman year, you may not have given yourself enough alone time to truly recognize your own needs. Be proactive about your health, whether it’s through daily meditation, taking exercise classes at Pottruck or off-campus, running along the Schuylkill, or go to Weingarten or CAPS. Endorphins are real, friends, and they’re also your best friends when it comes to balancing your life at Penn. Prioritize yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s power in opening yourself up and being vulnerable, sometimes Penn’s atmosphere makes it easy to forget that.

Spring: A Passionate Affair

YOU CAN NOW CLAIM A DEPARTMENT AT PENN -- Congrats! This is no small feat especially if you came in undeclared and spent your entire freshman year experimenting with different classes. You have found a major that inspires you and lets you see the world through rose-tinted glasses. This passion you have found for your newfound academic love will help supplement the possible lack of passion in your romantic life. It’s no secret that dating life at Penn, let alone college, is elusive at times. While Penn courses and projects are invigorating, companionship can be lacking. This may be one of the more frustrating aspects of Penn culture, but finding solace and love in your friends will help you develop long-lasting friendships. Easier said than done, but try to not spend too much time getting stuck in your thoughts. Trust us when we say the best part of Penn is the people and that lasts beyond the four years in West Philly.

Junior Year

Fall - The Sound of Penn

Junior year is a weird time and will be one of the more difficult and intense years at Penn -- at least it was for us. You might become disenchanted with some aspects of Penn culture you were once originally drawn to. We urge you to appreciate Penn -- flaws and all. There are so many incredible people still around you and the university has so much to offer you. If you need to gain perspective (or distance) we recommend bursting the bubble and appreciating Philadelphia (as a native Philadelphian and new-comer to Philly we have both always loved this city). You might even go as far as to travel an hour every week to take a class at Swarthmore to pursue your love of social psychology. Or you might happen to fall in love with a new field through taking an introductory neuroscience class on a whim and decide to double major. Take yourself to wherever your passion leads you!

Spring - Growing Pains

Junior spring you’ll opt to stay at Penn or explore a new city. Studying abroad doesn’t have to be the best time of your life, and oftentimes it’ll be incredibly hard. A place without any trace of Penn or Penn people IS an adjustment. You’ll learn to get comfortable with the uncomfortable and have way too much time to reflect. You’ll also get to experience a multitude of cultures and cities with freedom you have never had before. Even if you do stay at Penn, you can visit your friends abroad.

Then comes the daunting preparation for a junior year internship or job. Penn’s pre-professionalism and your own ambitions will burden you with pressure. You will face NUMEROUS rejections, your ego will bruise a little. That’s okay. It’s not a reflection of who you are or how qualified you are -- as a Penn student you will be competing for top positions amongst sometimes hundreds of other qualified candidates. Don’t take rejection personally and instead learn to value your skill-set and experience no matter what -- rejection will make you stronger. If you keep at it and explore all your options, by the end of the semester you will work somewhere. Funnily enough, where you end up can become ​career changing​ and you will be thankful for the rejections that once hurt so much.

Senior Year

Fall: This is what dreams are made of

Hey now, hey now! This marks the beginning of the end of your Penn career... it’s highly likely you won’t be fully ready for it. The biggest question of this season is “What are you doing after Penn?” Chances are you won’t know for AWHILE. Penn pre-professionalism hits its peak here and don’t be afraid to forge your own path that doesn’t include banking, consulting, or tech. Finding a job is its own part-time job, keep this in mind as you budget your time.

One of the biggest pieces of advice we can give to freshmen (and really anyone) is to develop a mentorship with a professor or two. Go to office hours when you’re intrigued by the subject material. Ask about the industry. Seek advice. Having mentors at Penn has been an undeniable highlight. Our mentors have supported us academically and personally. Even better, the job process becomes so much better when you have someone rooting for you and advocating on your behalf. Mentors have both supported our interest in graduate schools and transition into new fields of research. Reach out to Penn professors -- they can only help you.

Spring: 75% complete, wait... what?

Quite honestly, you hopefully won’t experience this season like we did. But, we can offer advice for the short time we did experience a normal senior spring. There’s going to be high expectations for senior year as a whole, and this season brings the best opportunity to live up to them. You’ll come back to campus and hit the ground running. Everyone is ready to make the most of their last semester, and you’ll see faces you haven’t seen in years at Feb Club events (which you should make the most of). Make social time a bigger priority this semester because you’ll want to leave this campus (whether that’s two months before graduation or in May) with lasting, final connections. Allow yourself to celebrate your accomplishments these past four years. Be open to experiences that come your way, whatever they may be. Once you do have your final stroll down Locust Walk, plan ways to stay connected with those who matter to you.

We hope that one day, too, you’ll be sitting with your random roommate-turned-best friend excited to write your own letter to Penn freshmen. Reflecting on our journey, we’re overcome with a sense of pride, knowing we are, and, always will be, Quakers.

Love,

Zoe & Hadeel

Dear Penn Freshman,

It is surreal to be writing this letter in the middle of Senior Spring from the comfort of my childhood home in Singapore almost as if Penn is a distant, blissful dream. It was a period of my life I never wanted to end. Alas, it has, and it will only live on in the flicker of my memory, in the familiar faces of some trusted friends, in photos that I may occasionally glance at, and in some memorabilia that will also inevitably fade away. This is not a perspective you typically consider as you embark on your exciting journey through the hallowed paths of dear old Pennsylvania, but it is one you will inevitably arrive at all the same. I begin, thus, with an old cliché. Your time at Penn will be far shorter than you can ever realize, more transformative than you could ever dare dream, and more challenging than you would ever dare hope. You are not prepared for what you are about to face, and that’s precisely why you must embrace it. Every tear. Every cheer. Every fear. The world is counting on it.

Your first day on Locust Walk will be like entering a grand buffet line with the covers still closed. You will ride in on a blaze of glory, rightfully proud that you have made it here. You will be cheered, congratulated, egged on. NSO will be a blast. Even then, it will just all be starters. Soon, you will realize that you cannot be nourished by drunken late nights in the Quad or frat parties. The entrees still await. Don’t fixate yourself on Mac & Cheese or Chicken Strips as many will be tempted to do. You came all this way for fine caviar. It is there, somewhere, even if you cannot see it yet.

The clubs will soon offer a first hint of what is to come. It will be a chorus of voices pulling you in this direction or that. By all means, push your boundaries. Try something new. But do not lose sight of yourself. It should already be clear to you that this ocean is one you could never possibly empty. Some dishes will not suit your palette. Stop going back to it just because people seem to enjoy it. You will not be worse off for it. Some dishes really will seem like all they are made out to be. There will not be enough of it. You will soon learn that better flavors await just in the next section. Let others gorge themselves. They seem to be handling it better. That’s great for them. Your time will come too. After all, you’ve barely just set foot in the door. Save the tears for when they truly count.

The first course comes around. You have a new system to adjust to. You grew up in a Western-leaning Asian country and assume you’re used to the dishes but here, portion sizes hit different. Let your stomach adjust. These are mandatory pickings anyway. Don’t mind if people look at you strange. They’ll move on after a quick “how’re you doing”. (They do truly mean well, so say that, and you’ll be fine.)

The second course comes around. You realize you can barely stomach anything. Your system is too full of cheap booze, mandatory pickings, and late night Wawa hoagies. Moving on is a terribly heady spin. You can barely see what’s ahead. You can’t help but feel it’s all going to come crashing down one day. It will. That extra can of Red Bull is going to end up on Locust in a messy heap next to a pile of broken dreams. That Public Safety Officer has seen it all before. Don’t bother telling him it was just a case of food poisoning. You’ll get a citation anyway.

The third course comes around. Oh, did I mention Penn will be non-stop? Yea, this is a buffet on a travelator. Oops. Things are looking really bad. That girl finally leaves you. Looks like she’s finally found her taste. You’re starting not to recognize yourself. You speak different. You can’t remember the last time you used chopsticks. The loneliness hits.

The fourth course comes around. This is starting to get really old. Commons can only butcher Singapore noodles so many ways. You start picking up the phone wondering what you’re doing here. You want out. That blue buffet line up in New Haven looks better, so does that red one way up in Boston. Why on earth would you be so dumb to choose both red and blue? It makes as much sense as doing two degrees instead of one. Dang, you’ve really done yourself in haven’t you. What good has knowledge in action ever done? What does that slogan even mean?

The fifth course comes around. You realize New College House serves premium options. The steak actually hits right. You find that you’re starting to get good with the fork and knife. Fine wines begin to accept your ID. It puts you all in Good Spirits. You’ve found a chef specialty. She guides you well, makes you realize that there are far more delights on the horizon. For the first time, you open your eyes to the thousands of students who’ve also been retching up their previous ‘delights’. They’ve drunk the ocean too, forgetting that it is salt water too.

The sixth course comes around. Most of the buffet line is open now. You did not realize food could get this good. You begin to realize there was no scarcity after all. You ease off, learning to take exactly what you want and in the right amounts. Sometimes, you leave the buffet line to go get some Cheesecake Factory. It’s not classy, but it’s you. And you make no apologies for it.

The seventh course comes around. You’re in your element now. You flit effortlessly through doors you never knew existed. You realize that for every Chinese section there is a Persian one, and a Mexican one, and an African one, and a European one. You learn how to love all these things. You develop taste. You don’t hoard. You learn how to discern. Most of all, you learn how to give.

Dessert never arrives. You hear it has something to do with a contaminated bat from a Chinese market somewhere. You’re stuffed all the same. It’s time to leave and do something with all those calories.

Yours is my Penn story. I do not remember what I got on my first mid-term at Penn. I do not remember most of the things I worked my butt off in Huntsman till 5am remembering. I do not even remember half the clubs I cried myself silly getting rejected from. I remember being humbled. I remember getting my perspectives challenged and leaving some classroom discussions with an exuberant ‘wow’. I remember the slow last two weeks of aching, mundane normality, of slow walks through gardens, happy hours, café hopping, games, and songs with people I love. These, ultimately, are the moments from which I found greatest joy. One day it will all end. If not through an email from Dean Prichett about online classes, then with a turn and twist of the mortar cap. We will not realize how fast that day comes. So live each day with the end in mind. Choose well. Live intentionally. Be present in each and every moment. For people. For knowledge. For dear old Pennsylvania. Leave knowing you would not have done a single thing differently. Live knowing that this is your time and Penn is your place.

Hoorah. Hoorah.

Timothy Lim

April 14 2020

Dear Penn Freshman,

2016. You’ve arrived at Penn, and excitement, wonder, and anticipation quickly turn into anger, loss, and confusion as you begin to navigate and understand what it is that you want and how you plan to spend these next four years--all in the midst of American political turmoil. Politics have always striked you as unstable, but this time around, it just hits differently, so much so that you end up switching your major from computer science to sociology. There’s a spectrum of emotions and self-doubt that follow, but slowly, you find your footing again. You allow yourself to reach and to search and to not be satisfied with easy answers or solutions--they don’t really exist.

It’s usually been difficult for you to distill your thoughts and consolidate your arguments, but here are some lessons for you to revisit and digest.

Truth. You came in thinking that was simple to define. It’s not. You’ll realize that you can find fiction in truth and truth in fiction. It’s convoluted, contingent, and contested, but that doesn’t mean your own truths and experiences aren’t important or deserving of a platform and a space. What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be an Asian American? What does it mean to be a first generation college student? The intersectionalities of identity are worth exploring, unpacking, and understanding. The conversations that used to intimidate you will intimidate you a little less. You mostly listen, but you also have things to say; don’t be so afraid to say them. Discovering and speaking your own truths will offer you a freedom that not many things can.

Travel. You fell in love with it in 2015, and you get a whole lot of opportunities to fall deeper in love. These experiences are your most enriching learning experiences. Despite what some may think, your Penn journey doesn’t have to all take place at Penn. The farther away you get from one thing, one place, one person, the closer you get to another thing, another place, another person. Connection--you will find it at Penn and all around the world. It’s a difficult process, and you will be misunderstood. You feel lonely sometimes--a lot of times, but you’re not alone. Your heart breaks, but your heart also finds ways to heal. There are mishaps and misadventures all along the way, but you find beauty in the unknown and joy in the unexpected.

Time. Yes, this is such an arcane concept, and its presence and meaning elude you now as you are sitting here in the middle of a global pandemic. “Unprecedented,” people say. “Uncertain,” they echo. But each new day is unprecedented and uncertain in some ways. The time that you think you have is not guaranteed. But endings can be new beginnings, and doors closing can signify other doors opening. Life comes with a coexistence of tranquility and turbulence. One can’t be what it is without the other. You strive for balance, but things are constantly being recalibrated, pushed and pulled. Your life might look like a circuitous route at some points; that’s okay. You always appreciated a nonlinear narrative. You can live your life looking backwards or forwards, but you’ll find that you get more fulfillment from choosing to live right where you are now.

2020. You might end up where you first started--a little bit angry, a little bit lost, and (a lot) confused--but that doesn’t mean you’re in the same place. You continue to be blown away by how much your circle has expanded, by how many people you have chosen to let in who truly care about you and you about them. You are astounded by your and others’ capacities for growth. You came in discontented with your studies and questioning your abilities, but you are burning with a desire for justice and change. You once asked in a room filled with students and administrators, “how am I supposed to pay it forward if I keep asking for help?”.

You can pay it forward while still asking for help. Getting to Penn and getting to where you are now has not been easy by any means, but nothing worth fighting for ever is. Keep going.

Yours in truth, in travel, and in time,

Penn Senior

Cindy L.

P.S.

Somehow, some things are still about your mom, but they are also about you too. Call her more than you do. Thank her more than you do. Finally, let go--of the things that you can’t change, of the things that you can’t control. You’ll live, you’ll learn, and you’ll start piecing it together.

Dear Freshman Karim,

Pick up your phone. Open Apple Music. (Please switch to Spotify btw). Play Blonde by Frank Ocean. Yes, I know you’ve been listening to it nonstop. Except, this time, cue the song you always skip over. No, not the weird Facebook Story. The other one, the one with the voicemail from his mom. So, funny thing. These are the lyrics you should actually hold onto the most.

“Be yourself and know that that's good enough

Don't try to be someone else

Don't try to be like someone else

Don't try to act like someone else, be yourself

Be secure with yourself

Rely and trust upon your own decisions

On your own beliefs”

On all those long nights and lonely walks, the key was there all along. You just won’t realize it until four years later when Blonde coincidentally plays as you’re struggling to start this very letter. Only then will it hit you that Frank’s mom was right–

Be Yourself.

You don’t drink. And you’re embarrassed, even ashamed of it. Don’t be. I assure you that, as much as you feel like you should, you don’t need to hide it. Not from your roommate, not from your friends, and definitely not from the random person at a party.

While it might feel like how many nights a week you get drunk is the most important measure of cool right now, no one really cares whether or not you drink. Anyone who does care isn’t worth caring about. Don’t waste your freshman fall hiding in your room, because you’re scared of coming across as lame or weird. Just own it. Casually tell that first person who offers you a drink, start dancing like an idiot at the next party, and go for that 2am Allegros run after. Yes, your dance moves suck right now. Arguably, they won’t get any better, or so the two dance groups you’ll get rejected by seem to think. But that’s okay, as you get more comfortable, you’ll turn into the life of the party – sober. At least you’ll think so, and that’s all that really matters.

Eventually, believe it or not, you’ll become confident enough with this fact that you’ll share your story with everyone you know on Facebook. And it’ll feel absolutely amazing.

The truth is though you won’t even remember most of the parties you’ll go to. Rather, you’ll cherish the impromptu 3am ZipCar trips to diners in Jersey, the random adventures hopping around from place to place being absolutely ridiculous, and the quintessential shisha post-game after every concert. You’ll treasure the little things, most of all the countless nights spent talking to your best friend all night, unravelling every little detail about yourselves – until he has to walk across campus, waving once more to the Dunkin employee as he opens up for the day. Don’t worry, while it may not be right away, you have to believe that–

Your People Will Come.

So, you know virtually no one coming into Penn. You debate using that as an opportunity to “reinvent” yourself, because you’re just an idiot like that. You decide against it (see principle #1 if you’re still considering). But somehow, being more of yourself makes the fact that you don’t have “your people” or a real friend group yet feel that much more lonely.

You look around and it seems like everyone has found their best friends. Here’s a little secret: it’s just not true. The lucky few have, but I assure you the majority have not. You’ll meet a bunch of quality people right away who will stay in your life much longer than you think. But, overall, you’ve always been picky with your friends, and it takes you a while to get close to someone. That’s not a bad thing. It just makes it that much more worthwhile once you do find your people.

When you least expect it, over a Chipotle dinner, at a rush event, during a summer internship, in engineering class, while out campaigning, or dancing at Made in America, you will meet your best friends. The beautiful thing is you won’t even know it happened.

You’ll get close by showing them your dramatic, idiotic, and most importantly, weird self. Don’t worry, I’m talking good weird. Even though it only comes out in small doses right now, everything gets worse (or better) with age. Please embrace the hell out of it, and share it with your world and your people. They’ll love you for it and mutually feed off that energy. To let that energy shine, you first must know that–

You Deserve To Be Here.

Even though the last twelve years of school were a breeze, suddenly, you’ve lost all intellectual confidence. You call your mom, scared and anxious, claiming you have no idea how you got into this school and how you’ll survive surrounded by “the best of the best.” You shrug off anything she says to calm you down, because you think she just doesn’t get it.

Hey, maybe she doesn’t. But, you definitely don’t either. Admissions officers don’t dish out acceptances for fun. Penn saw something in you, and rightfully so. You’re just as brilliant and just as deserving as you’ve always been. Amidst the unnecessary overthinking, it may be hard to wrap your head around that. The fact of the matter is, the people around you just leveled up. That’s more exciting than anything else – if you look at it the right way.

Instead of being intimidated by the brilliance of those around you, strive to grow and learn from them. Don’t compare yourself to others, because you’re all simply running a different race. The amazing thing is that, contrary to the cutthroat person you fear you have to be to survive here, nice guys don’t finish last. In fact, being a good person with strong values will carry you further than anything else. Use that to overcome your fears and tackle your dreams of founding a tech company, starting a clothing brand, becoming an actor, getting into–

Okay, clearly, you have no idea what you really want to do. So, don’t procrastinate conquering your insecurities, because you need to get started ticking adventures off that list.

I wish I could tell you more, but the thrill truly is in the unknown. Regardless of what happens, know that everything happens for a reason. Yes, everything. There’s a reason you won’t see the value in that inconspicuous track on Blonde until you really need it. There’s a reason you’re probably alone, homesick in English House right now waiting till the time zone allows you to phone home. There’s a reason you initially rejected your admissions offer to Penn and committed to Berkeley, only to end up a freshman here.

Penn is a beautiful, chaotic time. Embrace the spirit of the collective experience, and as a good friend once told me, let yourself feel the full range of emotions, regardless of what may be on the other side.

Go get it.

Big bet,

Karim

Dear Freshman Rachel,

Brace yourself.

In the coming weeks after classes begin, you will try, but get rejected from, almost every student group on campus you apply for. The phrase “after careful consideration, we are unable to proceed with your application at this time” feels a bit like a punch to the stomach, with each new email a fresh reminder of your supposed incompetence. Even things that you thought you were good at in high school—playing tennis, dancing—aren’t nearly up to the caliber that is required at the club level. As you walk around campus, sitting in lecture or eating at the dining halls, you can’t help but listen to the conversations of peers around you, talking about how they have to prepare for their second round of interviews.

“Second round? Couldn’t even get an interview in the first place,” you’ll think.

Safe to say, you’ll take these rejections pretty personally. You start to directly correlate this lack of acceptances to your own self-worth, thinking that you’re not as smart, not as skilled, not as creative as those around you.

As a freshman, you probably want to hear someone tell you at this point not to worry, that with enough hard work and determination you will eventually be able to succeed and be accepted into a well-respected group or organization. Certainly, that worked for you to get into Penn. And those who give you that advice aren’t wrong. You will eventually get into the clubs you want.

But here’s the problem: the self-doubt doesn’t go away.

Because after the club applications comes sorority recruitment, and then job applications, and then case competitions, and then leadership positions, and the list goes on and on. You will get some things, and not get others. For every acceptance, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief, feeling that you’ve proven to yourself that you are at the same level as everyone else. But for every rejection, the thoughts of not being good enough and being a failure come back to paralyze you.

You’ll hide these feelings in forms of self-deprecating humor, saying things like “Honestly, it was probably because I told my interviewer how much I loved his fashion taste and red-framed glasses that got me the job” or answering questions asking how you are with “still alive, but barely breathing.”

But guess what Rachel?

You are not your resume.

Contrary to what profiles on LinkedIn might look like, your success cannot and should not be defined by the number of job experiences you have, the list of extracurricular activities you are involved in, or the grades you’ve received in your classes.

Success isn’t defined by whether or not a club or organization decides to accept you.

Success isn’t defined by others’ opinions of you and your past actions.

Success is solely and completely defined by the way you view yourself.

When you are able to view yourself as a daughter who remembers to call home at least once a week, or as a student who decides to take classes outside her comfort zone just to explore a new discipline, or as a friend who spends hours up late at night listening to and empathizing with the issues your roommates are facing, or as an individual who commits to regularly exercising to keep her mental health in check, only then, can you start to tear apart the self-doubt and believe that you are a successful human being.

The sooner you are able to start deriving your worth from the things you are already doing, rather than the things you think you need to do, is when you can start to achieve some self-actualization.

And guess what?

Once you realize your own value, you will be able to let others embrace that value as well. The compliments you receive from friends can now be met with a “thank you, I appreciate it!” and the reactions to setbacks with a “it’s their loss, I'll try for another one tomorrow.”

So, remember to embrace yourself for all that you are, because when you look back on the memories of college 3.75 years down the road, the ones that come to the forefront won’t be ones that will be talked about during a job interview, but rather the times you hiked up Masada and watched the sun rise with your supply chain class, the super bowl party you hosted to celebrate your hometown, the late nights spent at friends’ houses playing board games, the birthday parties celebrated at Ken’s, the excessive amount of Thursday happy hours, the movie-like spring break vacations, and the random conversations about life after watching one too many romantic comedies.

I hate to be the person that ends things on a cheesy Pinterest quote by an author you have never heard of, but I do think it encompasses much of what I’m trying to say. It goes, “doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” I know your dreams are large and ambitious, so don’t doubt anymore, and just do.

Much love,

Rachel

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” - A. A. Milne

Dear Lina the Freshman,

You definitely still remember this Winnie the Pooh line. As your high school yearbook editor, you thought that this was such a cheesy senior quote - I mean, high school was fun, but it wasn’t really worth crying over.

After all, you haven’t gone to Six Flags instead of studying for a final exam, or jumped fully clothed into the HamCo pool, or ice skated drunk at midnight, or gone to iHop instead of the Fling concert. You haven’t drunken beer on an Airbnb rooftop in Belgium, closed out a Vegas club after seeing Calvin Harris, woken up on a boat in Punta Cana, spontaneously bought tickets to LA, flown out to Paris during finals week, or made Singapore your home for a summer. You haven’t biked through Philly while trying to not get hit by cars, made a best friend on an elevated surface in the Fiji house, had late night DMCs at 6PM instead, or played a “cutesy” Japanese horror video game in a haunted NYC apartment. You haven’t learned to fully appreciate your Asian identity yet, belted out 童话 at karaoke, or allowed someone to randomly convince you into co-directing a CSA Cultural Show despite having no experience in acting or directing.

You haven’t gotten rejected from three jobs on your birthday, or fallen two letter grades in ACCT 101 after doing so badly on the final that you didn’t even know what you didn’t know. You haven’t slept through a phone call interview that was at 12PM before. You haven’t stayed up so late that when you walked out of Huntsman the security guard said “Good Morning” to you. You haven’t cried in the first floor bathroom of Mayer because you didn’t want anyone to see you cry. You haven’t faked a smile even though you were secretly hurting because you didn’t want to stress other people out with your problems. You haven’t been afraid that something you loved was going to fall apart and you weren’t good enough to save it.

You haven’t experienced game nights with Avalon and Werewolf as the troublemaker, or stayed in Platt House past midnight on Saturday choreographing a random dance instead of going out to party. You haven’t woken up before dawn and withstood the cold on top of the FroGro rooftop to create a concept video. You haven’t rewatched your own dance videos an embarrassing amount of times on YouTube because you were just so proud of something you created. You haven’t had the magical feeling of dancing on stage with the audience cheering your name. You haven’t cared so much about a group of people that you couldn’t eat or sleep - mainly because you didn’t have time, but also because you were so excited and anxious at the same time that you didn’t know what to feel.

No, you haven’t done any of these things. Not yet.

But when you do, you’ll realize a lot of things. Like how people matter more than numbers on a piece of paper. Like how chance encounters, random people, and spontaneous experiences can change your life forever. Like how the first time you do something may be the last or only time you do it.

These four years may not be easy, but the best things never are. Cherish the time you have at Penn. You may not have been lucky enough to have something that made saying goodbye hard before, but you definitely will now.

<3 Lina the Senior

Dear Freshman Tyler,

When you first came to Penn on move in day you had so much family that everyone in the quad thought they might be moving in with you. You hated the extra attention at the time, but you should have been grateful. That was your support system. They saw you through every step of the way these past four years so don’t forget them or their sacrifices no matter how far you go in life.

You will see your mother, father, grandmothers, and younger sister and brother age and mature before your very eyes until one day, your perceptions of them will become memories. They will no longer be the people you wish you could escape but the ones you miss spending time with because of all the new places college will take you.

As a freshman, you were terrified of the world. As a senior, you’re still terrified of the world. But now you know to not let that fear stop you. Freshman Tyler, you loved comfort zones. You loved fitting in. You loved being accepted and would do anything to keep it that way. But you will learn that comfort zones are not your friend, even if they are a protection. Taking risks and braving the worst outcomes of those risks will only make you stronger. Ditch the comfort zone, you’ll find better companions.

You’ve struggled with imposter syndrome because everyone from your high school convinced you that your race was your only attribute that landed you in the Ivy Leagues. You let them make you feel like you didn’t belong to the school they will never attend. And even though you will let them take up too much space in your head, you will prove them wrong with every accomplishment and every triumph. You will face bigger enemies in college. You will learn to never give anyone that power again. You will learn the meaning of victorious. You will learn how great it feels to overcome your biggest lows to reach your highest highs.

Freshman Tyler, you had big dreams and big goals. You wanted to join the sorority your mother was in. You wanted to prepare yourself for law school. You wanted to study abroad and learn French. You wanted friends that would last forever, and maybe a boy that would. Four years later, and you not only met those goals, but exceeded them. You became the president of your sorority and made yourself and your mother so proud you think about it everyday. Who knew you were capable of running a chapter that includes five different colleges all by yourself for an entire semester?

Your life changed when you went abroad. Everyone says this but it’s true! You learned how to be on your own and adapt to new environments. In 2018, you traveled to two continents for 6 months straight! You will never forget your ride to the Bangkok airport to go home after a 2 month internship in Thailand. Your eyes were blurry with tears and your fingers lingered on the window of the taxi as you looked out and said goodbye to the first of many international journeys. You used to worry that you would never be able to be by yourself. Your biggest fear was to grow up. But you lived in another country all alone for two months without knowing a single soul when you arrived. And you left with memories, lessons, and an insatiable hunger for adventure. I think it was your biggest accomplishment to date. You made sure that family always visited when you travelled. It’s crazy they would follow you because you don’t come from a travelling family. But you’ll make them one, just see. Living in Lyon, France for four months and only speaking somewhat comprehensible French was hard. But you will learn to embrace being uncomfortable. You will learn to fail. You will learn to deal with difficult situations. You will learn to have good days and bad days. You will learn to appreciate everything and be fearless in every endeavor.

Remember, comfort zones are bad! Exploring, traveling, crying, laughing, making bad decisions in the streets of another country at 2am are worth it! Dangerous yes, but worth it nonetheless.

Who would’ve thought that your freshman friends would be your lifelong friends? The boy down the hall you argued with every night until the sun rose? Boyfriend of three years. Your freshman roommate? She’ll be your senior roommate. That girl from another part of the quad who never left your room and essentially became your second roommate freshman year? She’ll be your actual second roommate senior year. Your first friend in the Africana pre-freshman program? He’ll be your favorite law school student. Your best friend from high school who only attended Drexel? She’s still your best friend. And who would’ve thought you’d be planning your law careers with each other.

But you’ll also lose a lot of friends in the process of finding the best ones. Even through senior year. As you go through the years, you’ll learn what it means to care for people. You’ll learn that it is better to have just a few friends that love you more than anything than several friends that don’t even know how to love themselves. Never be afraid to let go of those who don’t value you the way you deserved to be valued. It’s better to know your worth sooner than later. It will save you so much energy and so much pain.

You didn’t address it in high school, but you will learn what mental health truly means. Over and over and over again. You’ll learn how to help your friends cope with their mental health issues and you’ll learn how to cope with your own. You will spend so much time trying to save those you love from the harm of Penn and life but don’t forget to save yourself.

Don’t forget you matter.

You’ll learn what rejection is and fast. Insecurity, depression, sleep deprivation, unhealthy eating habits, and self-hate will cling just as tightly as happiness, self-fulfillment, self-love, and success will. You don’t have to embrace the bad. But never let it hold you back. Never let it define you. You will overcome it all and you will learn that everything happens for a reason. So remember what it feels like to hurt. Use it as fuel to keep going. Push through, push, through, push through! Because what’s waiting on the other side will be worth it, I promise.

Lastly, as a Freshman you could never comprehend graduating. One day on the terrace of the quad as you watched one of several amazing Philly sunsets, your mentor said to cherish these college moments because it goes by too fast. You thought she was wrong. You thought this would last forever. You’ll learn some things can never last forever. You’ll learn some things never go as planned. This was not the ending to your college career that you wanted by a long shot. You had final memories to make. You had lasting goals to accomplish. You just wanted to continue those special, drunk nights with your roommates and spend time with your boyfriend who lived a floor above you. So if there’s any final advice I have for Freshman Tyler, it’s to not wait for closure. You never know when you’ll be thrusted into a world defining event that will cause you to uproot your life completely. So don’t wait to make those memories. Don’t take advantage of the close proximity of all those you love. Don’t hesitate to live. Don’t worry about the little things. Capture every moment. Remember these experiences forever, even the bad ones, because they will be the good ole days before you’re ready. Celebrate yourself. Don’t let a moment go by without cherishing how far you’ve come, how much you overcame, and how much further you’re determined to go.

You won’t be the same when you come out. But you will be better. So much better.

Love,

Senior Tyler Class of 2020

Dear Frosh Zarn,

This won't be super long because I put off writing it till the last couple of hours (some things never change). By the time you’re a senior, you’ll probably be a pro at reading and retaining the bare minimum of everything but for now:

TLDR; Nothing about the next four years is going to go the way you thought it would. But it turns out okay anyway.

In moving to this country, you’ve just made the biggest decision of your life to date. You feel a little bit like singing “I Wonder” from Mamma Mia 2 as you make your way down this sick looking locust walk. You’re ready to reinvent yourself, take dope classes, meet 600 interesting people and also, have your college ~glow-up~. But, I just want you to know… none of those things are going to happen when and how you want (if at all). That’s fine. You aren’t in high school anymore and life isn’t going to follow your neat little map anymore. That’s also fine. Don’t stress, I know you live to stress about uncertainty, but please, please chill. It turns out so totally fine anyway. Learn to appreciate the uncertainty (advice I’m dishing out but also probably need to hear during this pandemic).

I know you think you already know this, because I still think I know everything, but college will come with some wild ups and downs. You think you can predict them, but they will come when you least expect them and you won’t always know how to handle them. You will mess up, over and over and over again. What I wish I’d known earlier is that you won’t ever stop messing up, but you will learn to see the humor in the muckiest of situations. Life is short, but in some ways college feels like it lasts forever. Many mistakes are made over the course of forever, but again, I swear that’s chill. The mess ups are the best stories to tell at the end of senior year. Have fun being your dumbest self, and learn to like yourself even when you can’t make yourself follow the map in your head.

Starting out, there will be days where you feel like everything sucks, you suck and college sucks. I promise you, they pass. I also promise you that at the end of these seemingly endless four years, those days are not what will stand out. It’ll be the days you were up laughing till 4 am, the days you were inspired by a lecture and the days you got over the suckiness that you look back on. Those days may not come for you as quickly as you had planned, but they will come.

You got this,

Senior Zarn

Dear little me,

I can see you sitting right now in the little room you were so excited about with the blue duvet and bookshelf waiting to be filled, looking at the next four years like they contained more time than you could imagine. I know you're feeling wonder and fear and trepidation at the mountain in front of you, with no idea who the person who comes out the other side will be.

Infinite possibilities have collapsed into the four years that are memories now. Turns out, even though it felt like you went through a caterpillar-to-butterfly raze-down-the-buildings-and-start-again transformation every semester, you're still pretty much the same person. You're still convinced you're going to fail things until the last minute when you realize everything was fine. You still try too hard to be the person other people want you to be (although with the help of long conversations with friends, some crazy adventures, and a slow process of realizing that you love yourself, you've gotten a lot better at just being).

I want you to know a few things. First, get out of your bed, take that chip off your shoulder, and go and meet people with your heart wide open. The boy you're crying over right now – he fades into the terrain behind you. The friends you make, though, they become rivers flowing alongside you – they are there for the crazy idea sessions and midnight bike rides and all of the (many) times you co-opt them into some new weird social experiment. I know exposing your heart to every gust and quake hurts sometimes, but it will also bring you the deepest, most magical relationships you've experienced. Slowly, those around you will open their hearts too and one day (after so many hours of anxious uncertainty and rejection and wanting to give up and trying again anyway) you will look around you and realize that you developed the community you always prayed for. There will be many years and long nights of loneliness, but eventually (without fanfare, and almost without you noticing) the uphill will end and the downhill will begin – you've almost forgotten what it felt like to not be sure if anyone understands you or would catch you if you fell.

Second, know that you have everything you need already. When you're curled up on the floor falling apart because you're far from home and you don't feel like you belong in the strange place you are, it will feel like you have nothing left inside to keep going. You do. Every single time, you stand up again. Go to therapy (and don't stop, even during junior spring when the messy complexity of the relationship you're in leaves you too ashamed to talk to anyone) – your therapist is an actual magician and gives you so much insight into yourself. Trust yourself. When you break up with your best friend and it feels like the home you were building for yourself uprooted and floated away, don't keep running back looking for it. You are your own anchor, and you already know the answer if you just listen.

Third, you don't need to try so hard. I know you're not sure what you're worth, and so you let every external event tell you something about who you are as a person. It turns out, life is so much more stressful when your worth is determined by your performance. It will take you many years, long hours of introspecting in cafes, and a lot of therapy sessions to realize that you don't need to view everything that goes wrong as a signal of who you are. You are valuable, no matter what, and the world can never tell you otherwise.

And finally, because you still love to give strategic advice about how to optimize your life (yes, you have many documents written up about this): Invest in things that compound. Get your foundation right, and everything comes more easily.

• True, ride or die, friendships. Your closest friends don't look quite how you expect them to. Let people in (really, I know you think you're good at being vulnerable but you're not). Reach out, more than you feel comfortable with. Respond to people a little more (ok, a lot more. You're still pretty bad at this but for your own future self's sake, please start working on this asap).

• Be into what you're into. You think of yourself as a generalist, but really it's just a facade to cover the fact that you're insecure that you don't have a niche. It's ok – in fact, the people you end up respecting the most love this about you. Your weird combination of interests gets you your dream job, so keep pursuing things that are interesting (without needing to justify why!) and keep resisting the tidal wave currents to go in the directions everyone else is going. You spent so long running from uncertainty and seeking ground beneath your feet – at the end, you'll look back in awe at the fact that you had the entire world gaping in front of you. You don't need to have everything figured out, you don't need to have a perfect narrative tying everything together, and you really don't need to optimize for the best possible thing you could spend your time on. Truly. It's pretty liberating. Spend a little less time contemplating which things are the most optimal to do, and a little more time just doing them. When you start putting things out into the world, it is so empowering and uplifting to have the world respond back.

• Mental health. I promise you, everything is easier when you can get up in the morning without anxiety descending on you or sadness holding you down. Don't pride yourself on being high-functioning depressed – it's really ok sometimes to let yourself not function. Feelings are meant to be felt (another gem of wisdom from your magical therapist), so let the sadness in when it comes. You still need convincing, even now, but the truth is that you will be ok if you miss that meeting or drop that extra curricular – you can just be happy without needing to achieve so much.

I'll leave you here to continue your adventure. A little sneak preview: you're about to buy a purple pennyboard which you ride obsessively, dye your hair blonde, learn to drink way too much coffee, and end up climbing the most gigantic, pitfall-ridden, beautiful, rewarding mountain of your life. Go and let the world break your heart. I will be, and have always been, here to catch you.

Love,

Amanda

Dear freshman Dama,

If I tell you that on the other side of the four years you’re about to embark on is a scary-as-hell pandemic, you’ll tell me I’m joking, so I’ll try not to dwell too much on that, because truly, nothing you know will prepare you. Instead, I’ll tell you about the three and a half years between now and then, when you can make assumptions and take it for granted that they will hold.

Right now, you’re incredibly excited about a lot of things, even though you’ve tried for months to hide it. The therapist you’ll be seeing three years from now (shocker, right? Girl, same) will tell you it’s something about not feeling like you should enjoy good things because you fear they may be taken away from you. That somehow, by welcoming goodness, you could jinx it and cast it away. That you shouldn’t have your hopes too high because what if they come crashing down?

I’m here to tell you that the scarcity you see these things through is artificial. Whether or not you think you are deserving (you are, though, okay?) has no effect on the abundance the universe has. Reach into that plentifulness, grasp the multitudes it contains. What is for you is yours and on its way. Not on anyone’s timeline, and not resembling convention, and that knowledge and belonging will hold much more comfort for you than swimming with the current will.

So I’m not going to tell you exactly what you should do over the next couple of years. Instead, I’ll just share some lessons that I think will serve you well as you allow yourself to take that first hope-filled step now, as you begin these four years.

Wait actually, I lied. Leave that terrible situation you’re in, and fast. Just...run. You’re better than that.

Whew, I’ve been holding that in for a while.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin.

I’ll tell you the bad stuff first, because when you left home, you made a pact with your family that you wouldn’t sweep the bad under the rug of distance and time difference, and so neither will I.

You’ll be sitting in your bed on a Saturday afternoon two months from now, debating whether you should go to Huntsman to get work done in this cold (spoiler alert: you won’t call November weather cold ever again once winter properly sets in) when your phone rings. It’ll be Mom on the other end of the phone, her voice all official-sounding like she’s on one of those work-meeting calls of hers. She will tell you that your aunt has passed away, in such a calm, matter-of-fact way that she might as well have been talking about the weather.

You will make a pact with God, or whoever’s up there, when you wake up sobbing in the middle of that first night, and say that you’ve never felt a pain that visceral, and that you imagine that he must be up to his Godly ways, and that’s all well and good with you, but you never want to feel that pain again thank you very much. But life....happens, and you will, again, three years later. And it will break you in ways you didn’t think you could break.

I could say a lot, but I’ll just say go to therapy early. Learn how to let your communities take care of you - you don’t have any of the answers, and neither do they, but you’ll be surprised at how love can save you. When you’re asked, “how are you”, try to answer, even though, but especially because, it gets you thinking about how you really are doing. Make those calls, name a thing a thing, and go get the help you need. And in those times when you wonder whether you, with this omnipresent sadness of yours, belong at Penn, with its seemingly ever-happy, always-motivated, highly-efficient people who seem to jump out of bed in the morning without as much as hitting the snooze button, please always remember you do.

There’ll be other fishy stuff, like MGMT 100, and the “you speak such good English!” and the “so-and-so’s point is really brilliant!” when you said the exact same thing five minutes ago in a group discussion and were largely ignored. 19-year-old you still loves being underestimated, and she will take this as a chance to prove the naysayers wrong. That’s okay - that works for now, but 22-and-a-half-year-old you will unlock the premium level of not minding too much, because she knows she’s capable of much more abundance than anyone can dictate.

And now here’s the good news. I’m going to try not to give too much in the way of spoilers so that you recognize them for the gifts they are when they show up.

First, I know it seems like a stretch right now, but you will dance to African music one day on College Green, surrounded by some of your favorite people from SAIP. I can’t stress this enough, but it’ll be even more epic than you think it will. And for a while, every time you walk past that place (apart from when those ‘pastors’ are around) you will smile so hard you’ll think it’ll crack your face.

You’ll get to travel quite a bit over these four years, which is so much earlier than you thought you would. It’ll change your life, not because it’ll show you new things you have never seen before, even though that’ll be great, but because it’ll give you permission to return to yourself. It’ll remind you that you are a tiny, tiny part of a big, big universe. It’ll teach you introspection, mindfulness, and most importantly, how to spend time with yourself. It’ll also do wonders for your earring collection, but then again, you already know that.

You’ll find your people. And you’ll hug them, and love on them, and laugh with them, and dance with them. And when you’re looking back at your favorite times on this campus, it’ll be those in which you felt seen and those in which you truly saw others.

You’re going to get better at using your words. You’ll tell people that you love them more, and that you appreciate their presence in your life, even though that seems like an incredibly unlike-you thing to do now. You’ll also learn how to stand up for yourself when you need to. You’ll learn to call out people and institutions that celebrate your strength and resilience on one hand, and impose the very circumstances that make that strength and resilience necessary with the other, and it’ll be exhilarating and freeing in the best way.

And finally, no, Lemonade will not be Beyoncé’s last album. She will release a Netflix special and an accompanying live album, and you will get your whole LIFE. Protip: use your mom’s unlimited internet bundles instead of your own so that you don’t just casually give Safaricom that much money ever again.

Dear Dama, your experience at Penn won’t be anything like the brochures. Even from here in 2020, I can’t tell you whether it’ll be the best four years of your life. I can’t tell you that you’ll ‘find yourself’ here. So right now, I want you to go where the joy is, and always stay there. Never leave the shadow of where the love shines. And when you’re looking back in three-and-a-half years’ time, you’ll recognize that some of the most formative experiences of your life took place here, on this campus, in this city. You’ll realize that because some of your highest joys and your lowest despair have happened here, what this place holds for you will be a part of you for the rest of time. The life and the space you’ve made for yourself here knows you. It sees you. And what a gift and a license from the universe it is to be seen, known and loved just as you are.

Also? I’m proud of you. You’ve come so far, and there’s only farther to go, so live your very best life, baby girl.

All my love,

Senior Dama.

Dear Freshman Romit,

You are probably getting ready to move into Penn and I know the way you are feeling – like everything you have worked for is paying off. You are on your way to your dream school and you are full of excitement and drive; not a drop of confusion or fear clouds you. Well, I can tell you that you are going to be so confused and so scared so many times over the next four years. But I also want to tell you that that’s okay, because each time you will find your way somehow and you will find a better version of yourself each time.

You’re really going to struggle in Rajiv’s 160 – like you will get to a point where you will be proud of just attempting all the problems on a homework. You will go home for fall break and you will be falling apart, not used to the work load, the stress and the grades. It will take you a while to realize this but a part of the point of being at Penn is to challenge yourself. With that challenge comes accepting the fact that you won’t always be the best but as long as you get the most out of everything you do, you will be just fine.

You will join a dance team even though you have no idea how to dance and you will get to the point where traveling and competing and practicing will almost become like a full time job. You will be confused how to handle all the school work and your social life and dance. But again, it is okay, because you will struggle at first and get through it. You will learn how to manage your time and this will probably be one of the most useful skills you learn at Penn.

You will do some stupid things during Fling and might just get into a little trouble for it. You probably will question your luck and spend many days regretting what happened. You will blame yourself for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But time will pass and you will learn to hold yourself accountable for what you do and also learn that making a bad decision sometimes is a part of life.

You will spend many days where you look back at things and spend time wondering “what if”. This will happen more often than you think, and it won’t be until your spring semester of senior year is cancelled that you realize the importance of living in the moment. There will be a time to look back at the past but the four years will fly by so quickly and before you know it there won’t be another walk down Locust with your friends, a late night meal at Dim Sum or a postgame at 4042. Make the most of every moment and be confident that you are your best self in the present because you learned from your past.

Most of all enjoy the ride – you’ll reach your destination but miss the journey.

Peace out homie :)

Hello freshie Cheryl,

They say that college is a time of self-growth, and it’s true. You’ve lived in Texas forever, so seeing snow and relearning how to make friends are already putting you outside of your comfort zone. But over these next couple of years, you’ll also learn so much more about yourself – what you’re passionate about, how to be alone, how to take risks. Knowing you/me though, you don’t want to hear about these musings, so let’s get straight to your burning questions:

what should I study?

Studying what you enjoy doesn’t mean you won’t do ‘well’ after Penn. Although you start out with the mindset of ‘finance finance finance,’ after Finance 100, you’ll realize that you just really don’t care about it. You’ll do terribly in your one and only finance interview, but that’s not where your worth comes from. So-- drop your four-year plan and explore what you’re interested, the topics that make you want to do the readings and bring a smile to your face.

Penn is so much bigger than just Wharton and your degree requirements – so explore that musical theater or political science class. Even though not having a plan means that you can’t declare a minor because you’re indecisive about what you want to learn, that’s alright. Explore all the topics you want and can because college isn’t just about academics, but for you to figure out who you are, what you value, and how to think.

how much is enough?

There are never enough hours in a day, but the answer to more productivity isn’t found in your Google Calendar. After four years, nothing is more beautiful than the sight of an empty calendar. Time spent on those spontaneous home-cooked meals, long walks in Center City, midnight choreo sessions, or attempted sourdough baking will bring you more joy and growth than an additional hour of studying math. Prioritize people, both others and yourself, over the possible productivity that a packed Google Calendar can offer.

You’ll spend a lot of days in freshman year in GSRs til 4am studying. But remember to ask yourself — why am I doing this? What is it for? Mostly to do well on exams, but if doing just well enough means you can spend more time building friendships, creating memories, or going outdoors, then let yourself just do well enough. Because if there’s one thing you shouldn’t settle for just enough of, it’s happiness (which may but most likely may not be found in those GSRs).

Enjoy the next four years, everything that Penn (and beyond) has to offer, and remember to try and look on the bright side (even during those chilly Philly winters).

All my love,

Cheryl

Melinderrrrr,

Hi. There’s way too much to say... This letter is a stream of consciousness, so it’s a bit long and unstructured but hey, it’s authentic. Please bear with me. And read the whole thing. It’ll be worth ! ! ! I hope ! ! !

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You came into college with an entirely clean slate, wishing to forget everything about high school. That place and time were canceled! The hurt you felt from friends who turned on you, from memories that, looking back, were most definitely traumatic, simmered underneath your skin, subconsciously coloring how you thought and approached things. Regardless, you were rarin’ to go, optimistic to seize the day like you always did. You were so excited, and thank goodness you keep that energy and enthusiasm throughout in everything that you did. Not that I ever doubted that.

I know you’ll take chances and really challenge yourself. You really, really try to put yourself out there, trying new things, meeting people left and right, taking classes you initially didn’t have the courage to take but pushed yourself to take anyways, which you appreciated. Though not always, you do your best to bet on yourself. You work on trying to stand up for yourself, to speak up for yourself, to not always accommodate to others and shrink yourself. It’s hard… especially given your upbringing, systemic factors, past experiences, etc. You get frustrated often along the way, getting mad that you failed to stick up for yourself enough, but it’s a learning process. Please be kind to yourself.

I know you’ll stay true to your commitment to learning about entrepreneurship, social impact, and technology, and how that intersects with business. Luck and hard work collide at times, and to be honest, you really kill it with pursuing your true passions and finding work you are genuinely interested in and care about, especially in the world of Wharton™. Sometimes you will be a lil sad that you aren’t fit for the mainstream(in multiple settings - academic, social, etc.). But, you can’t deny that you like and embrace “being different.” And that will lead you to the organizations, courses, people, and opportunities that made the most difference in your life, for the better (alt is the way to go haha). Of course there will be failures and mishaps along the way - you’ll even have one right at the very end of college…with something you truly believed in and poured your heart and soul into. Nonetheless, in the 3.75 years, you make so many good memories, work on meaningful projects, go on adventures, make an impact, learn a ton, accomplish some amazing things, build genuine communities and relationships, and invest in yourself and others. Yes, it’s a little uncomfortable at first, but definitely own all that you’ve done! It wasn’t the “conventional” Penn experience, but man will it be GREAT. You really make the most of it. I’m excited for you, ugh. And preemptively proud of you.

As for friends, you find some of your greatest ones right off the bat within the first week of Penn, buds with whom you’d share your last “real” memory of senior spring. People you will meet through chance occurrences Freshmen year end up being some of your closest friends, though the word “close” is still confusing to you for a while. These are people with whom you’ve decided to somewhat lower your guard, which you usually keep so high (and still sort of do as a graduating senior…). Although you’ll make some amazing memories with them in the first year, it isn’t until into junior year you start to know who your true friends are. You are 98% sure who they are by the time you leave campus... Surprise, surprise, you go through a few more falling-outs that cause distress and resurfacing of bad memories. *Pfft I’m used to loss.* But, it’s okay. You gotta keep reminding yourself there are people who care for you, even though it’s really, really hard to believe sometimes. So many things have made you the strong, resilient, independent, tough, scrappy, and resourceful young woman you are. But, you just might wanna consider that you might not be alone in everything. Though it’s sort of easier to think that there’s no one who would understand or even WANT to understand… that you can only count on yourself and no one else. (Surprise, surprise, you still think this sometimes as a graduating senior.) Deep down, you think that you won’t find others you can trust in entirely. You so desperately want to trust, care, and love, but you’re always worried it won’t be reciprocated. You so easily open up, give your time, and initiate the building and strengthening of relationships. You feel so happy that you do this, but it’s not always sustainable, and it’s okay to preserve yourself emotionally sometimes. Please take the time for yourself.

Throughout, you will have some really low moments. Like the time during sophomore winter break, before you go on an amazing and unforgettable semester abroad - you think no one will miss you or even notice you’re gone. Or junior fall, which was arguably the Worst Semester Ever™ at Penn. Sorry to say, but your first bf of 1+ years will toss you aside, you’ll experience quite a serious health problem, and you’ll be balancing 378298 things all at once, including the mind-numbing and scary thing known as Recruiting™. Sad. Yet you make it through like a (really tired and beaten up) BADASS. It was not a healthy semester. But it was a pivotal one. You finally lean on others. You better understand your inner strength and the strength that comes from being vulnerable. After junior fall, you truly Thrive at Penn™. Like wow. Embrace it all. Savor it. Friends, events, projects, classes, internship, etc. - every part of your life seems to be falling in place (well, no boys but who needs boys). You’re doing what you want, and you feel supported. You feel so grateful. You most definitely have dips in your mental wellness of course… the lows are there, especially when you’re alone and can only face yourself… you overwork yourself per usual, you still don’t think you’re enough, you’re way too hard on yourself, you feel alone and so different from everyone else, and you get stressed and anxious when you should be giving yourself more kindness. ‘Tis a lifelong journey… thank goodness for indie rock and good coffee to help you along…

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Most recently, in a mental health breakdown during this crazy whirlwind of a time (a big RIP to senior spring), I had a realization that I would end college the same way that I started - feeling that I couldn’t rely on anyone (what a sadgirl and happygirl at the same time huh). Anyway, well, I’m still the Melinda that entered Penn, 100%. But okay, I don’t think that was super true… to backtrack a little, (1) I can rely on myself (2) and I *deep breath* can rely on others… And in the time since I first entered the Quad… wow, I’ve bloomed. I’m still quite flawed, but I’m more self-aware, I’ve become more conscious of my identity, I pursue things more confidently, and I am unashamedly me. I have humongous dreams and am so strongly and passionately committed to my lifelong mission of elevating women and girls, to being an entrepreneur, to being a better friend, family member, acquaintance, lover, citizen, worker, contributor to society, feminist, stranger, HUMAN BEING. I couldn’t have asked for more from my time at Penn… and I’m still on a long, long journey in this seemingly short life.

To you, a list of random “advice” that probably isn’t necessary because I know you’ll know at some point and to be honest you’re still really working on all of these things - have faith, bet on yourself, be YOU, ask for help, take care of yourself, check in with others, live in the moment, stay mindful, stay curious, don’t hold back, reach out, reflect, etc. - OK there’s no way I could ever have come up with a comprehensive list anyway, I’ll stop. But I know you’ll often be thinking about all of this, all at once…

Wow, I don’t really know how to end this. Yay for unedited streams of consciousness. This is SO ME. There’s so much more to say… I feel like I’m never doing any of these kinds of things justice. OK well I’m always here for you ! ! ! You’re so fantastic don’t you ever forget about that. *hustle emoji*

Much love,

Melinda

hmelinda@wharton.upenn.edu

Dear Freshman Rachel,

Who would have thought you’d end up here? Less than a year before coming to Penn, you weren’t even going to pursue an education in the United States. But life is funny in a way, and you’ve now ended up in Philadelphia after enduring a 20+ hour flight with some friends and two suitcases, wide-eyed and hopeful, set on studying actuarial science. The next few weeks are going to be overwhelming and you’re going to have to rely on Google Maps a lot to get to places. College isn’t going to get any easier or less overwhelming but know that the next four years are going to be the best four of your life so far. To ease some of that stress off of you, here’s some advice.

Don’t feel like you need to do everything

Penn kids are overachievers, no doubt. You’re going to be surrounded by peers who are interviewing to get into student clubs, taking part in (and winning) every case/stock pitch competition out there, founding their own startups, volunteering every week, taking 7 classes per semester, getting internships at Goldman Sachs their Freshman summer, publishing papers in academic journals, and the like. Take a step back and remember that you don’t need to do all of that to be “successful.” It’s ok to move at your own pace, prioritizing a small set of pursuits that genuinely interest you, and only sticking to that. As an underclassman, you’re going to feel like you have to try everything because you don’t know what your interests are yet, and I think that that’s fine to start out with, but as time progresses, don’t be afraid to drop things if you’re spreading yourself too thin. Don’t let the sunk cost fallacy prevent you from stopping an activity.

Don’t beat yourself up over failure

Sophomore year, you literally almost fail a class that you’re taking for a grade; it tanks your GPA by a lot but that’s not the end of the world. Sure, an internship interviewer brings that up during one of your many interviews and at that very moment you feel like a failure, but you get the offer anyway. Over the next few semesters, you’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some, and that’s what makes college so interesting. When things don’t go as planned, spend some time being upset over it, and then get up and continue on with life.

Cherish the friends that you make

When shit hits the fan, it’s your friends who are going to be there for you. People are going to say that you’re “wasting time” hanging out with friends when you could be being productive, but trust me when I say that it’s those 3-hour conversations at 2am on your bedroom floor that you’ll remember the most once you leave college, along with those random 4am tangyuan nights with your housemates, spontaneous trips to Franklin Fountain with friends, and teh tarik chats at Sate Kampar. These discussions about life, relationships, classes, politics, and literally anything else will help you learn more about yourself and the people around you (note: you first learn about Bayesian statistics when you go to Franklin Fountain with a bunch of upperclassmen friends).

Get to know professors

This is something you only realize later on in college, and you’ll wish that you had seized the opportunity to work with professors a lot earlier. You initially feel intimidated by them, but they’re normal people like anyone else! I urge you to attend office hours and utilize Wharton’s Lunch & Learn or Penn’s Take Your Professor to Lunch programs to learn more about research because you might eventually realize that it’s pretty interesting.

Help others

Now that you’ve made it to Penn, help high schoolers who are interested in applying. When you get those internship/job offers, help those who are interested in joining the company. Once you’ve gone through any experience, be willing to guide those who want to follow in the same path. Remember that you got to where you are because other people were willing to help you, and pay that forward; it’s really fulfilling and heartwarming watching the people whom at one point reached out to you for guidance, succeed.

I could go on, but I think that going through college without an overwhelming amount of words of wisdom from me is the best way for you to pave your own journey. So, I’ll return to Zoom University for now and leave you be.

You’ll be fine,

Rachel Leong

Dear Me,

I know as you read this, you'll think that, "Of course you can say all this, you've been through it all. It's easy to say all this when you're at the other end." I know, but I promise, everything does actually work out some way, somehow.

Regardless of what year you are at Penn, you'll find that everyone tries to show you how put together they are. Penn Face is real, unfortunately. Everyone seems to know what they want, found their passions, and have their life together. As the planner you are, you will get sucked into this "norm". The "norm" that gives you the idea that you have to have your whole life planned and together ASAP - being involved in many organizations on campus, knowing what you want to study, being passionate about your major, having some cool non-academic hobbies, getting the big name summer internships, etc.

And let me tell you, by senior year, you don't get your life "together." But it is totally ok, because you are more than happy with who you have become. Sure, it wasn't quite what you had envisioned, nor was it the smoothest path to this result, but you learned so much and met some of the most amazing people in the world along the way. You'll end up not wanting to change one moment of your time at Penn since you don't know if you'd still have the same experiences with the same people.

You've always been a follower and listener, to mom, to dad, to sister, and to friends. Mom and Dad convinced you to apply to Penn, they dictated your extracurriculars growing up, they helped recommend majors to apply to college with, and they eventually convinced you to stay in your major despite how much you realized you hated your major. You were convinced, you listened. Granted, you also just never knew what you liked, you were lost, and you were indifferent. The same applied to socializing - you didn't know what organizations to join, so you just followed. The friends you made freshman year rushed sororities; that wasn't quite your thing, but you followed along. You didn't know what you wanted, and it's ok to not know. You later realize that these experiences of "following" will allow you to truly understand and appreciate the choices YOU eventually make.

You decide to "follow" one last time at Penn, your sophomore year. A close upperclassman recommends that you join an organization they are in, and it was one of your best decisions at Penn. You find and join your family at Penn. They're the ones that you grow with, that support you through all the lows (there will be a lot of lows, sorry), that you have the fondest memories with. And most importantly, they help you find yourself.

They'll listen and be real. They'll tell you it's ok to not know and not be "put together". They'll teach you that you should try things (whether it be new foods, new places, new concerts, or careers), and decide a next step based on your experiences. There will be many trials and errors. You end up never changing your major even though you hate it and you will regret this decision all the time, but you've also learned so much from it that by senior year, you decide that it was an ok decision to stay. You also thought you would be pigeon-holed into a few limited career choices because of your major, not ever get yourself "together", and also hate your life for the rest of life (dramatic, I know). These thoughts will bring you immense anxiety to the point that you will have numerous anxiety attacks throughout Penn and begin to see a therapist. Thankfully, about mid-way into your Penn career, you'll take your favorite class to this day and find what you are actually interested in. It actually is somewhat related to your major; hence, it was ok that you didn’t switch majors. You start taking as many classes as possible that are related to that interest that will fit in your schedule, and begin finding direction in your academic and career pursuits. Is it a clear direction? No, but now you know a broad direction to start trialing in. You'll start to no longer feel anxious by senior year and figure some good next steps out.

Will you still struggle with not knowing and being lost by senior year? Yes. You'll have a full-time job lined up prior to graduation, but you don't know if this is really "the" job either or if that's truly what you like. But now you know that it's ok to not know and just go and try things. Which, not going to lie, is hard to follow at times; you will find yourself constantly repeating this advice to yourself, because let's be real, who loves uncertainty? You don’t, that's for sure. And we'll continue to work on being ok with not knowing and have a growing acceptance towards it.

So…please take a deep breath and know that it's ok to not know. It's ok to try things and realize you don't like them. It's ok to be lost. It WILL work out, just how and when.

Please enjoy the experience and don't forget to take a breather occasionally and do more silly things with your friends (also, maybe take more pictures, you really don't have as many nice pictures with them as you should).

Love,

Rebecca

Dear Penn Freshman,

Before I even applied to college, I was fascinated with getting a glimpse of college life beyond the glossy brochures and polite websites. I wanted to get a view of it all – the good, bad, messy. As horrifically lame as it sounds before applying to colleges I made sure to read a few articles from school newspapers and watched a few vlogs on “A Day In the Life” (Sham alert: they all showed lavish breakfasts, I may have grabbed breakfast like thrice in the past 4 years). While I was busy attempting to look into the heart and soul of the student body, I found Marina Keegan’s essay about the Opposite of Loneliness from The Yale Daily News. If you haven’t read it, pause this and go and read it again. It was beautifully written, but I didn’t get it then.

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Come mid-May Facebook profile pictures are changed from organization promoting to cap and gown toting pictures with captions that basically attempt to convey the sheer hard-work that was put into these 4 years, the memories and camaraderie that were developed and how Penn is the best 4 years of a student’s life. Looking at those pictures and captions I always wondered if there was a blinding clarity at the end of tunnel where all regrets evaporate and all that is left is gratitude for this wonderful experience.

Last month, I had my last undergraduate class. I had my last cup of Wilcaf Caramel Latte (I miss you so much). I went on my last Schuylkill run with my roommate. I had my last Veggie Chili from Magic Carpet. I felt like a weak midget at Pottruck for the last time. I just didn’t know it was the last time I would be doing these things. I, like my fellow classmates, have been forced into a world where we didn’t get closure.

While this premature goodbye may not have given me complete clarity about my Penn journey, it is remarkable how quickly the regrets have paved way for lessons. So dear Penn freshman, if you are someone who has horrible imposter syndrome, is in a weirdly complicated relationship, finds themselves to be a misfit in your friend group and has been rejected by most coveted organizations on campus – read on my friend.

First piece of advice lay off the cake at Commons my dude. Yes, it’s a delicious dessert and the chocolate frosting is the stuff of dreams, but the cake is obviously a metaphor for unhealthy lifestyle choices we all make in college for short term gratification. Try to incorporate some semblance of balance in life. That doesn’t mean lay off the cake completely – mildly bad choices make great stories. Also remember your guardians/ birth givers/ parents and call them every once in a while.

Secondly, now listen to me really carefully okay. I’m not going to repeat the whole you were at the top of your school, now everyone from the top of their school is here so someone got to be average spiel that I’m sure you’ve heard. The key to being able to deal with rejections that has worked for me is to just make sure I had a solid support system. Once the system was in place no matter what you threw at me, I could take it. Job rejections when I’m international and will be chucked out of college? My friends and I made a spreadsheet and helped each other until we all were in the clear. My mom’s cancer diagnosis my senior year? I always had a shoulder to cry on everywhere. Bad grades? Shitty relationship problems? College never gets easier but having the right set of people at least provides a sense of support to handle tough problems.

Lastly, don’t wait for anything. I find myself wondering about the what ifs a lot more than the memories. It’s never too late to become the person you want to be (I don’t think I could be a pre-med right now, but you get my point). This past year every single alum I spoke to, I always ended the conversation with “So what do you wish you did your senior year?” and the answers vary from partying more to hanging out with people more to drinking more. There was a general degeneracy theme to it so if that floats your boat don’t wait until senior year do it today. You never know when the next pandemic might hit (hopefully not for another 100 years). Explore Philly today with your 1495986 midterms next week. Go and finally explore the rooftop of DRL. Don’t wait until your senior year to make a bucket list. And please don’t shy away from photos and videos during your time here. No one really cares about how those jeans look on you, but you’ll want to remember that amazing barbeque you threw with your friends.

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I reread the Opposite of Loneliness a few days ago and the tears wouldn’t stop. Each word resonated with me more deeply now. I looked back to my freshman self and I ended up being exactly where I was supposed to be with the best friends, best organizations, and so many memories of debauchery and laughter. I miss my friends and professors yes, but I miss the feeling of just being around so many brilliant people. While I have been alone at many times, I haven’t truly experienced loneliness at Penn. If I were you, I’d seize onto that feeling. I’d hold on tight to those all-nighters that end in shared sunrises, I’d hang tight to those moments when you can just walk over to your friend’s dorm to borrow garlic and leave after 3 hours having gossiped about the world and those times when your friends from other majors teach you cool positive psychology and you just listen enthralled by the sheer brilliance of all kinds around you. If you’re still with me by the end of this, I’m going to say something I wish someone told me my freshman year: don’t take yourself so seriously and wash your hands for 20 seconds all the time (I didn’t my freshman year and was permanently in a state of flu).

Dear Freshman Self,

I know how excited and nervous you are at the same time. Let me tell you, it’s definitely justified. Now that I’m at the end of this journey, I can confirm what you thought before coming to Penn: these are going to be the best four years of your life so far. Just because they’re the best doesn’t mean they will be easy. There will be emotional and academic ups and downs, but I know you’re a very mature person and will know how to handle each difficult moment and learn from it.

Luckily, the good moments will outweigh the bad ones. You are about to meet some of the most brilliant, talented, interesting people you’ve ever known. Very soon you’ll meet people you’ll be best friends with for all of college; others, you won’t meet until your upperclassman years. I know how worried you are about finding friends that make you feel like you fit in. In college you’ll find all kinds of people that make you want to be your authentic self and no one else. It’s important to know who these people are, but I know you will. And once you do, you’ll notice yourself thinking and acting differently than you did in high school, because you’ll know more about yourself. I don’t want to scare you, but you won’t be the same person in 2020. Your view on a lot of things is going to change. You’ll work on your lack of assertiveness that you were so worried about before high school. I promise, you’ll be happier with yourself from all the growth and learning during these four years.

Although you said you might not do theatre because it’s time-consuming, I have to say it: you will end up getting involved, and, yes, it will be very time-consuming. Sometimes your academics will suffer, but it’s okay because you’ll know you’re living your best life. Most of your best memories from college will be from theatre, and sometimes you’ll even wish you had started earlier. Don’t. Start whenever it feels right, and this goes for everything else in college. You’ll even be joining clubs as a senior, so believe me when I say there is no rush to find your place on campus.

You’ll meet people who are worried about finding an internship as sophomores. You’ll start thinking you should have started the job search earlier. Please don’t stress over that. You are going to be just fine. An internship during your sophomore year is not necessary to end up with an amazing job after graduation ;)

During college, every now and then when I passed College Green, I made myself appreciate how amazing it is that I go to one of the best universities in the world. I always tried my best not to take it for granted, but I still have to say, always appreciate every moment with your friends, every rehearsal, every fun moment in your freshman dorm. Every hug, every person you run into on Locust, every meal with a friend. This is such a unique time in your life, and all of this will go away sooner than you think during your senior year.

Remember, everyone struggles. You will not be alone. There will be times when it gets really rough. Just know that every year, it’ll get better and better as you start finding your place, and as you get those requirements out of the way and start taking classes you actually love. It’s probably the one time in your life you’ll be surrounded by thousands of people your age 24/7. Enjoy that.

One last, very important thing: please please please know when to say no. It’s okay to not do everything.

Love,

Eduardo Ortuño, 2020

Dear Freshman Self (bb sonze),

You know that meme of the cartoon dog sitting alone with a cup of coffee as flames envelop the room, that says “This is fine.” — even though this is clearly not fine? As much as you will grow to feel a sense of belonging at Penn, this is also what Penn can be: lonely, caffeine-fueled, and suffocating.

I’m proud of how excited you are to make the most of college, because why wouldn’t you be? There’s an assembly line of options to BYO (build your own) quintessential Penn experience: debate society! business clubs! greek life! Why not throw in an (attempted) computer science minor while you’re at it?

But on the last day of junior fall, you’re going to realize how thin you’ve spread yourself. The Google Calendar that you rely on to organize your life from 9am-midnight every day glows brightly from all the color-coded events: orange for class, yellow and green for clubs, blue for life admin, and purple for recruiting. You just finished ten (10!) projects/exams/club deliverables in the past two days but don’t feel a sense of accomplishment. You’re starting to suspect that there might be something disordered about your eating habits. The house is burning, and you’re burned out.

I don’t blame you for this, because this is all you know. It’s not until you’re 3,500 miles away from Penn while studying abroad senior fall that you’ll find the time and breathing room to process all of this. It’s really confusing to accept that the same traits that are socially rewarded in an individualistic place like Penn (think: overachieving, powering through) can also be a double-edged sword on your mental and physical health. Processing isn’t linear, and re-training yourself to stop chasing external validation (consciously and not) is something you’ll be working on for a while.

I know that this may not really resonate right now, but piece by piece, you’ll put it together. Until then, know that you are not alone. Not only will Penn bring you hilarious, thoughtful, caring (there really aren’t enough superlatives) best friends, but your past and future selves will always be there to cheer you on.

Some final thoughts: Take an ASAM seminar sooner. Try to sleep for seven hours each night (it really does make a difference). Definitely go on that trip to Patagonia. Definitely don’t underestimate the strength of Distrito margs. Maybe get a tattoo (jury’s still out on this one).

All my love,

Sonya

Dear Penn Freshmen,

Looking back at the past three and three quarter years, I can’t help but feel immense gratitude for my time at Penn.

Gratitude for brilliant classmates who inspire me with what they’re working on whether it be a new life saving drug, a revolutionary company, or incredible passion project. Gratitude for friends who stay up with me in Huntsman Hall banging out assignments on the desktop computers until we get kicked out by the security guards. Gratitude for the hardworking dining hall staff who have to stand for hours at a time serving students food and for the security guards that have warmly welcomed me home for years.

It’s easy to get lost in the whirlwind experience of Penn. I still recall the flurry of activity during NSO: the incessant blasting of “Closer” in grimy frat house basements, the close-quarter dancing with no room for Jesus, the regrettable mashed potato with chicken strips purchased at 3 am. Soon after the craziness, I tried to get acclimated to Penn life. And while I found some footing, I still have yet to gain mastery over my college career. And if anything, I’m scared if not even more scared than before that I’ll never gain my footing and realize my true personal and professional potential.

It’s funny. I entered Penn thinking I would become an entrepreneur and change the world of education through technology. And now, I’m going full corporate, advising multinational retail clients on digital transformation. Once again, I am grateful to even have a job especially during these times with rampant layoffs and internship cancellations. Freshmen Nathan wouldn’t have expected to be where I am today and that’s okay.

After years of musing and reflection, I have come to the conclusion that Penn is what you make of it and I think that viewing all of Penn through the lens of gratitude is the best way of making the most of it. Yeah, you can complain all you want about the insurmountable waves of club and job rejections or you can take a step back and see how much you’ve grown. Perhaps it’s the way you’re organizing the day that makes you subconsciously more productive. Perhaps the humanities class you randomly decided to take because it was an “easy A” has made you more empathetic as an individual. All of these come to light when you take a break (which I am currently practicing in quarantine).

Dear Penn Freshmen, I am so incredibly excited for the next three years for you, and words cannot express the pain that I share as we go through an unprecedented crisis. Penn offers so much in yet so little time. And once again, it’s easy to feel FOMO for not doing everything and for not conforming to traditional career paths or getting the ideal clubs, classes, and internships. Just remember — we have so much to be grateful for.

Cheers,

Nathan

Dear Freshman Meg (and other Penn Freshmen!),

It’s probably past midnight by the time you are reading this. I’ll start by saying this: go.to.bed. Tomorrow will happen, and it’ll be another day for you to conquer this West Philly grid that we call ‘Penn.’ But, if you’re going to stay up, you might as well stay up to hear this mind-blowing advice that you, a naïve and excited freshman, have probably been trolling the internet looking for, anyways.

Welcome to the best four years of your life. Seriously, the best. You are going to experience things, people, and places that you never imagined. You might try a new sport and love it. You might become obsessed with musicals and performing arts (although if you’re Meg, I’m pretty sure you’ll still be a spectator, sorry!). You might even get yourself a best friend from a far-away land known as Iowa. Whatever it is, it’s going to great and it’s going to be super unknown. The best part of college is that, aside from choosing your institution, things are rarely ever fully intentional. With that, here are a few things that might be good to try intentionally:

1) Don’t waste time. Or do.

There are quite literally a million things to do at Penn. This might encourage you, as it did to me, to be busy. All of the time. Google Calendar filled weeks in advance, that sort of vibe. That’s cool – if that’s your thing. It is absolutely a great time to try any and everything out there. But what I’ll mention is that it’s not always bad to schedule in things that don’t seem like they need to be scheduled. I’m talking about the face masks, and the midnight chats with friends, and the late night Wawa runs (you’ll thank me later, or not). While there’s a whole world of new and “schedulable” possibilities, take time for the things that don’t come with meeting invites too. The idea of wasting time is lost upon me. If you’re watching Netflix, it doesn’t mean that hour is a waste. Sometimes you just need that (I know I do!)– listen to yourself and remember that just because it’s not productive in the traditional sense, does not mean it isn’t productive in the grand scheme of things. Disclosure: my mum disagrees with this point. She suggests that you all read a challenging book for pleasure. To each his/her own!

2) You are lucky. And special!

Attending Penn is a blessing. Getting four years (TL:DR; four-ish years for the class of 2020) to enjoy yourself in the best campus and environment on Earth is a blessing. Remember that – especially during the times that you are cursing your core classes or wondering why you can’t remember an ounce of AP Calculus. We’re all lucky to be here, and being here is a testament to how unique and special we are. Recall your parents’ expressions when you got into Penn. The proudness they felt…it’s all still there, mate. Remember that when it’s 2am in the QSR and you still don’t understand what a discount rate is. You’ll get there – with the help of your peers, professors, the internet!

3) Speaking of being lucky…get ready for rejection (yikes). Or don’t.

If you’re like me and were accepted to Penn ED, you might not have experienced rejection. Not in the gut-wrenching way that colleges sometimes make you feel when you submit what seems like your life’s work only to receive a three paragraph letter back. Lucky for me, and lots of you, I didn’t get these letters. But, let me tell you, the one-line emails from your peers and their clubs hurt too. And from companies. And from awards. And from senior societies. And from prospective significant others. And from…well everything. College is a place of acceptance, but often times, it can be a place of rejection, in these many ways, too. I don’t know if there’s a way to prepare for rejection. I certainly didn’t prepare. But what I will say is, don’t ever stop putting yourself out there for fear of rejection. For all of the things that I’ve been rejected from, there have really been some unexpected surprises. Like the time I got rejected from a society, only to apply again the next semester, and meet some of my best friends at Penn. And the time I joined my “second choice” club at the time, which later became my “thing” on campus, that I can’t imagine my college experience without. Or the time that I randomly emailed a PhD student that I thought gave a cool lecture, only to have her guide my entire research career at and after Penn. Let these examples remind you that, as scary as rejection is, regret is even scarier. (or so I hear?)

4) Always be a freshman, in whatever you do. Even after graduation!

Freshman year will inevitably end, but what doesn’t have to is the mentality of being new and interested. Never stop introducing yourself to new people. Take the time to expand your circles every semester – make new friends! There are tons of amazing people at Penn. And you don’t meet all, or even nearly all of them in your first semester. I should know, I met a ton of my closest friends during my senior fall and spring, and not for a lack of trying or amazing friends I had met before! The truth is, you’ll never fully do Penn. But, if you keep trying to make the most of it, semester after semester, you’ll get pretty close.

In conclusion, Penn is great and so are you. I can’t wait to see what the next four years bring for you. Cherish every moment, or you will find yourself, like the entire Class of 2020, dreaming of the walks on Locust, sprints down Walnut, and crawls up Spruce. Soon, it’ll be your turn to write a letter like this and reminisce about the amazing years that you spent in West Philadelphia. I hope you’ll be as happy and nostalgic as I am.

Cheers and stay yourself (unless you feel like changing – that’s cool too),

Meg

Dear Andrew (or really, anyone),

I know you’re checking the decision for the seventh time in disbelief, but trust me. First, you actually got in, and second, four years later (cue class of ‘23: “ok boomer”), I’m somehow ready to cross the e-stage into “adulthood.”

I’m jealous of your forthcoming years in Philly, between friendships, experiences, and exciting changes (spoilers: legal name change...maybe should’ve spent more than 6 hours picking “Andrew”). But it won’t be easy: every moment I look upon fondly has been enabled by learning from struggles. Writing from Rockville, MD (yeah, we left Rochester for good), I’m leaving you a couple stories to hopefully help navigate your experience.

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The first story is about responsibility. College gives freedom that allowed me to take impromptu trips to NYC, explore Philly by camera, and stream 150 Yankees games per year. However, sophomore year, I saw it as a carte blanche: sleep at 4/5 AM, wake up at 10:20, click in for class, space out for the next 80 minutes in lecture, and spend weekends partying or BYO-ing, banking on grinding out work just-in-time.

That life is unsustainable and draining. You’re right, none of my best moments came during CIS 121 lecture (if I went), but you’re 18 and legally an adult now. Nobody else is going to keep you honest, so as much as you hate it, go to class (usually), plan proactively, and visit Pottruck so you don’t barely bench the bar senior year (clearly NOT speaking from experience ??). Getting life together is f*cking tedious, but future you (or is it me?) will thank you for it.

The second story is about courage. Penn is a world of opportunity, yet I barely skimmed the surface freshman year, only trying things I was familiar with. I mean, new things are scary and I hated failing, but that left me unfulfilled and lonely, wondering when I was going to “discover myself.” Thanks to peer pressure, I changed, taking a humanities class, acting in a cultural show, and spending weekends exploring new parts of the city. You probably don’t think these are momentous, but after a year of stagnation, trying something new for just intrinsic interest was wonderfully uplifting.

Confidence in those baby steps gave me the courage to lead APAHW 2018 (even with massive imposter syndrome), study abroad (risking graduating on time), and rediscover photography, and these latter experiences -- not what I did as a freshman -- defined my identity at Penn! You can’t wait for life to come to you, unless you want to graduate being the same person you were in high school (and if so, why even come to college?). You need the courage to try new things, to drop sh*t (toxic friends included) that doesn’t spark joy, and to be challenged from academics, to politics, to why the Star Wars sequel trilogy is f*cking fantastic. Putting myself out there has made my time here all the more meaningful.

The final story is about honesty. The growth I cite only came after personal challenges. Penn was my dream, and when things didn’t pan out just 11 months from where you are now, I experienced depression for the first time. I was struggling in class, feeling stupid homesick, and lacked the motivation to want to heal. I didn’t feel like I belonged at Penn; maybe admissions screwed up after all (they’d deferred me at first anyway). Lost, I reopened my Common App. The main reason that didn’t finish (and kinda scary to think), is because I couldn’t name a single professor to ask for a recommendation.

This will surprise friends, because it’s the first time I’m publicly talking about it, and it hurts to remember the feelings that made me want to walk away. This was the problem: I never revealed what I was going through, because I was scared people would see me as a failure or misfit. Even knowing about mental illness, when it came to me, I threw out the cries for help, and it only induced a painful, slow, and mostly solitary recovery. In fact, the 10 people who I’ve told have all expressed compassion or related to my experience, showing how I’d been wrong to think I didn’t matter and wasn’t cared for. If and when you feel this way, as hard as it is to admit challenges, please know that the people around you will support you -- and that you can talk honestly about these perfectly normal struggles.

---

Even four years later, I struggle with crippling anxiety about writing my thesis or even just about reading and running routinely while quarantining. But overcoming challenges allows you to grow and thrive; there is so much to love at Penn, as tough a journey as it will be to get there. I am proud of the growth I’ve made, because knowing how far I’ve come helps me appreciate the photo shoots in Old City, happy hours at Distrito, spring breaks in Cancun, and weekly trips to Mexicali (pork fajita california style with pico).

I am excited for you to embark on this journey, because I know you are strong and can do so well here. I hope that sharing my stories will help you discover your best self, so you can leave four years later cherishing so many memories about your time at Penn.

Welcome, and best of luck,

Andrew

andrew.yiqun.cui@gmail.com

Dear Penn Freshman,

Congratulations! I don’t know you, but I know Penn is so so blessed to have you. My name is Hannah (C’ 20), bio major, NJ native, low-key high-key (pre)med, soccer fanatic, & Jesus lover. Before you embark on the next chapter of your life, there are a few points I want to tell you. You don’t have to agree or remember all of them — they’re for you, however you want to take them.

1. Belonging: I never felt like I belonged at Penn. It was a combination of Imposter syndrome, transient friendships, loneliness, and dread of not surviving the rigor of an Ivy League education. Well, let me tell you, I requested my Common App from Penn Admissions this year, and they didn’t think I’d fit Penn either. But guess what? I’ve thought about the crazy accomplished people I’ve met who inspired me to be better, the deep and insightful conversations with NSO/freshman friends who I never saw again, the lonely nights that forced me to reflect on who I am and who I wanted to become, and the weed-out lectures that forced me to stop resting my identity on my GPA. I didn’t feel like I “belonged”, but if I did -- if I felt comfortable and complacent -- then I wouldn’t have been challenged. I wouldn't have changed. I wouldn’t have grown.

2. Individuality: Don’t conform. Whether it’s recruiters, graduate school admissions, friends, or professors, people want to see the real you. They want to hear the real you talk about what you’re passionate about and how you’ve directed your passions for breakthroughs, helping others, improving yourself. Although I’ve spent hours on research and hospital volunteering, all my med school interviews focused on how much I love playing soccer and how I’ve used it to mentor disadvantaged kids, bridge communities overseas, and develop my own confidence. My best friends who got amazing offers and acceptances have pursued powerlifting, Greek life, wedding officiating, a cappella, and more. Don’t make up something you’re not good at or don’t like, but seriously consider what makes you stand out and chase that with all your heart.

3. Full advantage: Penn has so much to offer. Email your professors and take them out to lunch at the Penn Inn (for free!). Consider that class about East European gardens, or samba, or becoming a monk. Go to Pottruck, swim in the pool, climb the wall, and take fitness classes during free weeks. Go to GBMs just for food and new friends. There will never be another time when you have so much at your fingertips. Make the most of it.

4. FYI: Levin has great GSRs, Sweetgreen is better than Just Salad, but Trader Joe’s is NOT too far. It’s okay to step on the compass, chill. Huntsman has the cleanest water filling stations. The roof of the Chem building has great views. If you want a study space with some people and white noise, Arch basement. If you want a study space where no one will find you, McNeil library. Hill>Commons>KCECH>NCH>>>>McClelland. You got this!

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or know anyone who does.

email: kiddoclee@gmail.com or IG (like you kool kids): @h.lee16

Go crush it,

Hannah

Dear Freshman Swetha,

Congrats on Penn buddy. I’m sorry to tell you this, but through these four years of college, you’re going to become the thing you’ve always hated the most: a quitter.

I know it sounds bad. But trust me, you’ll learn that saying “no thanks” to the attitudes, things, and people that don’t bring you joy will be the reason you’ll look back on your time at Penn with a smile.

I know how proud and excited you were about your dual degree program. But the truth is, you’re going to hate both of your majors. You’ve always sucked at Physics, and when your CIS friends start bagging big tech internships, you’re going to realize that poking an Arduino in Electrical Engineering lab isn’t your passion either. Summers of slow moving “research” will teach you that you’re just not cut out for academia. After two relentless years and several breakdowns, you’ll finally quit the program, and then feel completely directionless.

But it’ll also feel like a burden was lifted off your shoulders. With your newfound freedom, you’ll start taking classes in Systems Engineering, CIS, and Data Science, and you’ll actually pay attention in lecture and enjoy doing homework. Soon, everything will fall into place; the all-nighters and recruiting stress will pay off, and you’ll get a software internship junior summer and your dream fulltime job in data engineering.

And then there’s your social life. You’ve always been overly forgiving to avoid conflict and maintain friendships as best you can, even if that means you get hurt in the process. But as each year passes, you’ll become more aware of what you want and what you deserve. You’ll learn that it’s okay to quit on people, regardless of a long history together. That it’s fine to leave a relationship in which you feel like you can’t be yourself. And that it’s alright to cut off a friendship when the highs don’t justify the lows anymore.

More importantly, you’ll learn to drop your inhibitions and live for your present self. You’ll befriend people who help you see things in a different way and become closer to those who amplify your personality and uplift you unconditionally. You’ll find that love comes in many forms, whether it’s meme tags and group chats, Sabrina’s dates and guitar lessons, or catching mice and flying cockroaches together. These friendships will make Penn your home. Savor every comp lab “study” session, Koreana kimchi fried rice, midnight birthday surprise, Raas practice, and happy hour, because you never know when a diseased bat might come and end your senior spring prematurely.

So, Swetha, don’t be too hard on yourself when nothing seems to be going right. It’ll take about 3 years of imposter syndrome and a fake smile for you to finally feel like you belong. But don’t you worry, being a quitter will turn out just fine.

Love,

Senior Swetha

PS) Don’t chug that water bottle in San Diego

Dear Penn Freshmen,

As a senior stuck at home with only three classes, I am still procrastinating, attempting to write this letter two hours before the deadline for this optional submission to Dear Penn Freshmen. With this comes the first unfortunate reality: Procrastination never stops, so don’t feel guilty if you find yourself procrastinating.

One of the biggest takeaways I’ve had upon reflecting on Penn is: College doesn’t get easier, but you become more capable at finding ways to deal with the challenges that college life throws at you. In freshman year, I struggled with learning to do well in classes while being a part of 5-6 clubs. In sophomore year, I ended up quitting all 5-6 of those clubs and joining two new ones that I felt like I could make the most impact in. But as a sophomore, I struggled with my switch into an uncoordinated dual degree. Fortunately, I was able to figure out why I wanted to pursue the dual degree through a summer internship in GRIP. In junior year, I struggled with trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do as I failed first-round after first-round of consulting OCR interviews. Thus, I decided to write a Truman application to clarify what I really valued for my next internship. By senior year, I was struggling with searching for a purpose in life and what impact I wanted to make post-grad.

Find your people. In these four years, I have dealt with disappointment, failure, confusion, doubt, etc. Having friends helped me overcome them. Having friends who have your back is rare at a campus that is oriented around pursuing prestige and high-level productivity. However, those friends will also be crucial to bringing you to your ups and adding light to your downs. At the end of the day, the most meaningful takeaway from Penn is not my GPA or the number of degrees I leave with. It is who I was fortunate enough to befriend and get to know.

Regardless of what you do now, you owe it to yourself to figure out why you want to do what you do. At face value, my undergrad summers show an extremely indecisive kid. I spent freshman summer at a wet lab, because all my friends were working in wet labs then. For sophomore summer, I worked at a start-up in Asia, because I wanted to travel abroad. Then, I took a marketing internship in big tech my junior summer, because I wanted to learn about business in a big corporate setting. Meanwhile, I know many others who commited to banking/consulting/pre-med/etc. from day one of their Penn journey. There is no right way, but there is an irresponsible approach that could make you regret not exploring enough. So ask yourself, regardless of what opportunity you are evaluating: Is this something I want to do because other people say I should do it, or because I am interested in trying it out? At the end of the day, whatever path you choose will be hard. So choose the one that you like for now, because at least then, you’ll be in a good mood for the ride.

The journey that happens in the undergraduate years at Penn is like going for a drive. Some people get in the car but have no idea where they’re going. These people may get stuck on the road, take several detours, and could still be searching for their destination. Then there are others who figure out their destination and know where they want to go. It won’t take long for them to arrive at their destination. With only 4 years, so much happens such that there is no right or wrong approach. It will work out.

Enjoy the journey,

Kevin

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis

Dear Candra Jr.,

As you embark on your college journey at Penn and head out for your flight to Philadelphia, I want to offer a few words of encouragement and share some key learnings that may help keep you grounded during this new season of life. In typical Renewal Presbyterian Church fashion, I will focus on three points:

1. Continue prioritizing your walk with God

2. Take care of yourself and those around you

3. Explore Penn and the world

I'll start off with the most important point of encouraging you to continue prioritizing your walk with God. In high school, you learned about how many Christians fall away from the faith during college and I know you currently fear this for yourself. You will unfortunately see this happen all around you, but at the same time when you pursue God and a Christ-centered community, you will find Him working in your own life and those around you so powerfully and mightily. Press on, sister. Continue seeking to center your life on Christ and He will grow you beyond your own imagination. He's so so good. You're going to make some of your best friends at Penn through Renewal College Fellowship and these friends are kinda awesome, kinda cool, and extremely weird like you, haha. You'll see what I mean.

Moving on to my second point, I encourage you to prioritize taking care of yourself and those around you. During your time in college, you'll personally experience mental health struggles and you will see others struggle around you. Your time at Penn will not be a stroll in the park, and God will take you through the hills and valleys. But fear not, God will never abandon you and you will grow so much stronger. I promise. Your parents will walk alongside you faithfully and you'll truly be humbled by what a privilege it is to call them your parents. And your friends will be there for you each step of the way. It won't be easy, but please be encouraged by the fact that your experience will be able to offer light to those around you and point others to Christ.

Lastly, I hope you will seek to explore Penn and the world. Your time at Penn is going to be awesome and you will have the opportunity to study abroad and travel the world. Explore what Penn has to offer and please leave campus every so often – Philly truly is a cool city with so much to offer. Talula's Garden is a must-go.

Love you lots, dear friend.

With grit and gratitude,

Candra Sr.

Dear Freshman Alina,

Stop questioning why you’re here and whether you made the right decision to be here. Just stop. I know you’re gushing relentlessly about how badly you want to get out of your wretched Penn routine right now, but slow down. Breathe. Your time will come. And when it does, it will hit you so hard, you will be numb to the feeling. A little piece of you will be ripped out, never to be filled in quite the same way again. So until that day, please savor these years while you can. Don’t squander it before the universe squanders it for you.

The next four years will be chock full of challenges to confront and tribulations that will break you to your core. Penn is far from an oasis, and you’ll realize that a few days in. It is full of newfound freedoms and way more responsibilities than you’d anticipated. It’s funny, huh? How clueless you were. When you’d dreamt up how this “college life” would be like when you were younger, you weren’t ever able to foresee the tearful rejections, existential crises, and long nights of feeling so crushingly alone. And as much as you like to micro-analyze a choice you’ve made and replay regretful moments of “why did you do that” in your head, please know that even those darkest, most disheartening moments are just blips in road, and as painful as they are, they need to happen. They too, will pass.

But even if Penn falls short of your romanticized expectations, I need you to see how good you have it, and just how much Penn can offer you. You will be mentored by some of the most brilliant minds in the world, generously sinking your teeth in niche pockets of academia and finding yourself championing novel ideas. You’ll obtain a diverse education that gives you the license to flex all corners of your brain. You’ll have the coolest, most liberating study abroad experience, that makes you imagine your life in different “what if” scenarios in the infinite possibilities of “other worlds” out there and dream up how to seize them. And above all, you will meet some of the greatest, most caring friends and embark on countless adventures, big and small. These bonds are powerful and precious – cherish them. And when it all vanishes – the early morning coffee and late night food runs, the moments where you laugh so hard until you cry, the “we’re all in this together”-type cram sessions in random study spots on campus – you’ll yearn for them. I know it might seem like sometimes you’re on this journey solo, but you’d be surprised by how many people care about you if you just let them in.

It’s weird how time passes consistently. Because somehow, it always manages to feel too long in the moments you wish would end, and so short in the moments you want desperately to cling onto. How college seemed so limitlessly long in the beginning, then sunrise after sunrise mixed together with mortality, until your youth quickly evaporated before your eyes. The ephemeral nature of time is something you’ll never quite figure out. And that’s the biggest thing you’ll find yourself grappling with at Penn too, is how there isn’t enough time to do everything. You’ll become so breathless chasing after what everyone else wants, before you realize that all of that energy should have been focused on defining a life that you so passionately crave. Sometimes, you’re going to get caught in the kaleidoscope of light and heat from another wave of try-hards who seem like they have their lives figured out. They will send you into a spiral of awkward experimentation and philosophical exploration. But at the end of it all, you are your own salvation, you hungry, greedy kid. Possibility will envelop you and Penn will shine – it will shine for you if you choose to embrace your light.

I know you ache to feel every aspect of life, but don’t lose sight of who you are. I want you to not only taste the things you love but to swallow them whole. I want you to carve a path at Penn that is uniquely yours – by taking classes and indulging in extracurriculars and hobbies without worrying about how they might make you “employable.” You have your entire life ahead of you to be inundated with mundane tasks and responsibilities. The story you weave together will be non-linear, but beautiful nonetheless. You will find that boxing yourself up will only make you claustrophobic.

Everyone outside of here thinks this place is just about having the #1 business school in the world and being the home of Benjamin Franklin memorabilia. But you know, Penn is not going to be how they tell you it’s going to be, not now and not ever. It’s greasy McDonald’s at two o’clock in the morning. It’s taking leaps that make you fall flat on your face. It’s lying with your friends on a couch and forming lame jokes, and tracing the stains on your wall with your fingers, like constellations. It’s realizing that life is rotten and beautiful all at once.

I want you to congratulate you, for being able to come so, so far. For meeting and surrounding yourself with a raffle-drum of people who make you think differently, and for dealing with the assholes as well. For giving it all up and not knowing whether you’d face rejection or success, just for a taste of the experience. For laying your heart out in your work. For starting each day anew, and choosing yourself over and over again. And even if you continue to beat yourself up over your mistakes (because I know you tend to), in the end, they only add more humor and depth to who you are.

Coming out, you will still be far from the person you’re trying to be. But you should be so proud of the stronger rhetorician, empath, writer, and above all, person, you’ve become. Rooting you on.

Love,

Senior Alina

Dear Penn Freshmen,

If I didn’t decide to turn my college experience around after a massive slump of a sophomore fall, I would have finished my four years here an empty shell of a person, with nothing to hold onto.

Looking back, I realized I tried to live up to too many people’s expectations and I tried to walk the known path – join every pre professional club and do everything the “right way or the Penn way” – the mindless actions that I took as if there was only one stairway to success and that if I misstepped, I would all into the abyss of the unknown. Little of that climb gave me any ounce of happiness, that by sophomore year I was already out of breath and desperate for air. So after sophomore fall, I said screw it. I'm going to make some concrete changes. I stopped wearing makeup or dressing up in class unless it was for me and only me. I quit about 75% of the clubs that I didn’t even know why I was in to begin with. And I vowed to give less of a fuck of what people thought about me.

Then one March afternoon, the craziest thought popped up in my head, the most random one of all. I decided that day that I wanted to learn how to figure skate. So I left my apartment, walked myself to 32nd and Walnut to the Penn Rink and got a pair of rental skates and tried to teach myself how to not trip and die on the ice. That was the first time, I hopped off this one-way stairway to success in my brain. People told me I should do finance or consulting or join a Wharton pre-professional club but no one told me I should start figure skating. It was so out of left view especially since I never skated before. But if I could go back in time, I would have taken that leap as soon as I got onto campus.

That feeling of the wind in my face when I skated was liberating – it felt like creating art, everything in fluid motion like liquid gold. The more I learned, the more I fell in love deeper and deeper and for the first time in my life I did something solely for the sake of my own happiness. Most importantly, it removed me physically outside the bubble of campus where life at times seems monotonous with everyone seemingly having the same goals, same life, and same ambitions even if that may not be true. Even though 32nd and Walnut is still technically near campus, I felt like I have found a safe haven for me to escape from the bubble every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 12-2pm within the cold yet refreshingly isolated walls of the Class of 1923 arena.

The more immersed I got, the more I drifted away from the Penn bubble and into a world that I could not have imagined if I just had stayed on campus. I sought out ways to improve my non-existent figure skating skills, but the nearest coaching I had access to was one hour away one-way. Ubering was out of the question and far too expensive so for 2 years, I took the SEPTA for 2 hours every Tuesday, Thursday and sometimes Saturday to get myself to the rink. And that fundamentally changed me and why I think it is so important to get off campus.

Getting off campus put everything into perspective. The first few weeks felt strange, almost as if I didn’t belong. Everyone around me looked different than me, had different untold life stories and different passions and aspirations that I would never be able to find out. There were people young and old, from different ethnicities and from different socioeconomic backgrounds: something I didn’t get enough of a world view of on campus. It helped me put everything better into perspective and to realize and practice greater gratitude for all the things and people I had in my life.

If I stayed just on campus I would never have gotten that. Taking the Market Frankford line to 69th Street transportation station in West Philly and then catching the 103, 105 or 106 to the rink began to become more than just a long and boring commute to doing what I love. Through skating, my world was opened up to people who lived much harder lives than I did, I was able to feel new feelings of great gratitude when I see the one bus driver who always waives everyone's bus fares on Tuesdays that reminds me that some parts of humanity are still kind, I made friends with friendly ladies in their 40s, 50s and 60s at the rink who skate better than I do and I found an incredibly supportive community through the Penn Figure Skating team, all of which was so absurd and unplanned for. Suddenly my definition of the world is more than just finding a job and getting As in my classes.

So if I were to give a single piece of advice, I would say try something in college so crazy and scary that you never thought you would be able to do and to get off campus because the world is so much more of a less pristine but a much more beautifully imperfect place beyond the boundaries of 34th to 40th and Market to Spruce. And I promise, you will leave your four years here at Penn with a deeper layer of perspective and gratitude and feeling a lot more whole and human. At least it did for me.

With love,

Cathy Ding

Dear Penn Freshmen,

A few things I wish someone had said to me as a freshman.

I want you to go outside your comfort zone, outside of what you know. Try new things, join new clubs, be open to new ideas. There is so much at Penn, so be open and be curious, take it all in.

I want you to know that you don’t know everything right now. And I still don’t either as a senior. But be humble and know that your peers are truly incredible people that you can and should learn from, not compete with.

I want you to prioritize your sleep. I know your grades and academics may seem more important, and you will have clubs and a social life to balance with everything too. But please trust me, sleep is so important. You really do need more of it. You are not being weak or lazy for getting a full night’s sleep. Also, eat well and exercise, too. In other words, take care of yourself because no one else is going to. Look out for yourself and prioritize your wellbeing. You can’t do your best work if you don’t take care of yourself first. It has taken me a long time to learn this, so I urge you to appreciate this sooner than later.

Don’t spend the entirety of your four years inside the library. And this is coming from me as a pre-med. Yes, you do need to work very hard and be focused and diligent. But that does not mean you should let life pass you by and live in the library. As much learning and growth happens outside the classroom as inside of it.

Lastly, know that you belong at Penn. Every one of you.

All the best,

Amanda Samuel

Dear first-year Catherine,

Welcome to Philadelphia!

By the time you leave Penn, so many people will have been there for you. When you finish your honors thesis (which is so cool!) you will have to struggle to keep your acknowledgements section to two pages. And even more important, you will have taken care of so many people. You will have sat with people through advance registration struggles, and deaths, and the uncertain beginnings of semesters, and sexual violence, and the ends of eras of all kinds.

With the help of all those people, you will have become such a more full version of yourself. You will be part of spiritual communities, where you are welcomed and cherished, and you will feel secure enough there that you can start questioning your belief and practice all over again. You will have been an RA to two classes of first-years, right in the house where you’re moving in now. By the second year, you’ll be out to your whole floor, or at least to the ones who need to hear it, and the thing that makes you feel isolated and strange right now, will have become a source of comfort for others.

You will have poured your heart into creative work, dancing in eight semesters of ballets and directing all except the first and the last. In your fourteenth Nutcracker, you will play Clara, and it will be even more superb fun than the recurring dream we had at age six. You will have begun learning to sing, and earned a spot in a choir. You’ll be in a relationship, and it will be a source of gladness, growth, and comfort. You will not, unfortunately, have read everything there is to read, but you’ll have tried. In your second year you’ll get an email saying that you have placed more BorrowDirect+ requests than any other undergraduate student, and would you please speak on a panel about your experiences with the system? You will accept, because you will do everything, and sometimes too much, but there will be people around to catch you when you trip over your too many things.

The more full version of you is still strange, but that will keep on being okay. You won’t change your major even once, and by senior year, as you’re the only one left in History of Medicine, the department will scrap the whole concentration. Oh, well! Your NSO acquaintances are already asking about your career plans, and you’re feeling a bit lukewarm about them. Take comfort, for by the time you are graduating, you’ll have a plan that is much truer to your heart and your gifts, and you won’t feel you’ve strayed very far at all.

So, dear Catherine, enjoy every moment your new, gorgeous independence affords you. Wander around; for heaven’s sake, it’s too hot to stay in your room—Kings Court English won’t have air conditioning until you’re a senior. Find the Friends meetinghouses, go to the ballet studio half an hour early, take a walk at an odd hour, find sacred joy in something ordinary. Go diligently to the library on a Friday afternoon, but leave your paper sitting on the desktop to pursue some sudden thought through the stacks. You’ll leave with a new pile of books, and no further intentions towards schoolwork, and it will be fine. Then keep doing all those things, and sprinkling in new ones, for the next four years. I have so much faith in you.

In Light, Love, and Friendship,

Catherine

Title- Notes 4/14/2020, Advice Gold

Dear Freshman Fazle,

It seems pretty daunting walking in doesn’t it? The waves of unfamiliar faces and places. It’s almost prophetic that the first place you visited on campus (besides your dorm) was the Wawa on 36th and Chestnut. You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to become very well-acquainted with it. Understandably so, your go-to order is truly magical (custom breaded chicken hoagie, a feast fit for a king). And you have a friend to thank for teaching you the order. Hold up, before we get to the rest of the advice; break up with your girlfriend (and no it’s not because you’re bored). You’ll get that joke in a couple of years.

Moving on: You never stop loving lists (don’t worry, you end up finally organizing the chaos that is your Notes app), so I’ve got one of Advice Gold for you today:

1. Now I’m going to need you to sit down for this one. It may seem shocking to you, given that you spent more time playing street cricket than studying in high school, but you actually develop a work ethic over the next four years! Even more of a shock is the fact that you enjoy what you’re studying. Mind boggling, isn’t it? But as you will inevitably pile on more and more ‘exciting’ classes and your schedule will get busier and busier with countless meetings, there will be (many) days when you will feel like you’re just going through the motions. When you feel like that, I dare you to drop everything and go do something you truly enjoy (don’t want to spoil the surprise, but you learn what those things are over the next four years). After all, during the best four years of your life (trust me they really will be), what’s more important than cherishing every moment like it’s your last. Live fast, (ideally don’t) die young.

   Sidenote: Put down the coffee (and the other pick-me-up), there’s no need to operate at lightspeed. You know it makes you jittery anyway.

2. While daydreaming can cause some people to feel unhappy, trust me you’ll love it. Give yourself the privilege to dream. And dream BIG, don’t sell yourself short. In fact, share those dreams with all the friends you make. Hearing theirs will change the way you view the world. Never forget, you’re surrounded by quite possibly the most intellectually curious and caring people you will ever meet. You’re going to learn more from them in a single conversation than you will in a semester of MATH 240 (that’s probably your fault though).

3. But most of all, please, please, please never change. Never grow up. The world gets a little bit duller when you become ‘mature’. Keep cracking the same lame jokes. Don’t forget, you do it because you like making people smile. Never stop trying new things. If you fail, maintain your self-assurance, even if it may not be easy to. Continue giving to the people in your life with an open heart. Those moments are the ones you’ll remember most fondly. Keep treating everyone you meet like your best friend. They may become the people you’re most grateful for having met. Also, you don’t know the significance of this yet, but remember, you’d rather be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right.

Finally, as Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

See ya cutie!

F∗ck it we ball,

Fazle

P.S. Call home, you really don’t do that enough.

Dear Young Nags,

Buckle up. The next four years are going to be one hell of an adventure. You never believed people when they said that college would be the best four years of your life and that you’ll never want it to end. Well, you’re wrong. As I sit here writing this in quarantine, there is nothing I wouldn’t give up to go back to Penn: to finish up senior year with my closest friends at the place I’ve finally gotten used to calling home.

To take you through my thoughts I will rely on one of the countless phrases and frameworks you and your best friend will coin over the years at Penn. Essentially, when it seemed like everyone else was preparing for the FNCE 100 final later that day, you and your best friend sit at Cosi and question why you’re really here. Is it to stress about assignments and finals? Is it to get into “that” club? Is it for certain people to like you? NO… you ultimately decide it was to “Learn Baby, Learn” and make your best friends in the process!

At the end of the day, college is all about learning. You will learn from professors atop their fields, from peers and friends, and from your shortcomings. You will learn much about yourself, only to find out you honestly don’t know anything and no one around you does either. With this in mind, let’s jump in:

Learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable

In college, it’s going to go from 0 to 60 real quick. That shy, self-conscious high school freshman isn’t going to cut it here. As hard as it is for you, you are going to have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You are going to have to be comfortable talking to your hallmate’s family as they help her move-in – wearing nothing but a towel – just to learn how to meet new people. You are going to have to be comfortable feeling like you’re the only one who doesn’t have their life figured out at the club fair, just to learn that clubs are another community for you to find your people. You are going to have to be comfortable making a fool of yourself in the middle of a dance circle just to break down barriers and take relationships to the next level.

What you will soon realize is that most people at Penn are uncomfortable but don’t want to show it. Most people just want to hang out, meet new people by grabbing a meal, and welcome that new experience with open arms. But, no one wants to ask out of fear of rejection. Don’t be afraid! Learn to be comfortable asking. What’s the worst that can happen?

Learn to be patient and listen to your heart

Everyone around you may seem happy in clubs, dance teams, and a cappella groups, making new friends and forming strong friend groups. You’re going to be tempted to join organizations for the sake of joining or to hang out with people you don’t even like. Don’t. Learn to be patient and choose quality over quantity.

You’ll see that life works in the best, most unexpected ways. You’ll never guess that a guy you briefly met on your Penn visit will change the course of your college career just by making you come out to a rush event. You’ll never figure that your freshman year TA will be your role model throughout college and introduce you to some of the greatest people on campus. You’ll never expect that your cohort leader will ask you to coach a team that opens doors to a lifetime experience and lifelong friends. And, in your wildest dreams, you’ll never imagine that one random night ice skating in Rittenhouse leads to some of your best friends.

Your heart has a great sense of direction. It will give you hints about who you may or may not enjoy being around. Listen to your heart and it will show you where to dig a little deeper. When you really vibe with a certain person, find out what they are involved in. Let them drag you to events and join those groups. If you stay patient and listen to your heart, it may take you 3 or 4 semesters to find your people, but you will be better for it because they will be BEST people for you. In high school, you met people who became lifelong friends. In college, get ready to meet people who become your family.

Learn to let go and see where life takes you

You probably think you know who you are, what types of people you like, and where you want to go from here. You once again could not be more wrong. Learn to find and keep your values close but don’t be afraid to color outside the lines you drew for yourself in high school. Don’t be afraid of getting less than your 8 hours of sleep when it’s 3am and you’re in the trunk of a car headed to a diner in Jersey listening to your favorite song. Yes, it’s still More Than You Know. Don’t be afraid of opening up and being vulnerable with your best friends, even when you thought you were someone who didn’t need to share. Don’t be afraid of 26 new faces looking to you for direction when you’re used to being that quiet, self-conscious kid.

You’ll soon realize that there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in college for you to hold onto your former self. When you let go and embrace the environment around you, you’ll learn more about yourself than you thought possible and find happiness beyond belief. Don’t resist the change, just be happy that you will be better for it.

Learn to never stop learning

There’ll come a stage in your college adventure when you’ve learned to be comfortable and enjoy routine. When you reach this point, challenge yourself to remember what it was like to be a freshman. While it may be tough right now, you look back at how much you’ll grow this year by living outside your comfort zone and cherishing each and every moment. As a wise friend once said, “live every day of college like you’re a freshman.” Continue saying yes to new opportunities. Continue putting yourself in uncomfortable situations by trying new things and meeting new people. And, continue to Learn Baby, Learn!

Trust me when I tell you, you will have the greatest 4, or at least 3.7, years of your life, filled with too many memories to keep track of. If you strive for excellence, surround yourself with the right people and follow your heart, you will learn how to enjoy the highs and grow from the lows. In essence, that’s what Penn is all about. I will leave you with your favorite movie quote of all time: “Chase excellence and success will follow, pants down” (3 Idiots, also coincidently the name of your future friend group)

Cheers,

- Nagu

Dear 2016 Maura,

Can I just say, you’re in for a ride.

You’re nervous for college. Like really, really nervous.

Your anxiety-inducing high school years prepared you for the work. You’ll study like you always have, and you’ll do well in school (really well). You know how to take tests and write papers. The coursework will be hard, but a lot of it won’t be anything you haven’t seen or done before. And studying won’t be your biggest challenge. Because prep school taught you how to do all that. What it didn’t teach you is lessons in getting hurt.

After going to the same school for fourteen years, you’ll come to Penn knowing you have to break out of your shell. You’ll tell yourself it’s do or die. And you’ll forever be grateful to your freshman roommate for inviting you to come out with her that first night, when you thought you’d just lie in bed and be scared.

And you’ll do it. You’ll start meeting people and being comfortable with yourself. You’ll get louder – MUCH louder. You’ll feel yourself change from what felt like dull hues to vibrant neons that color your laugh, your weird facial expressions, and your terribl(y amazing) sense of humor. You’ll start to like yourself, a lot actually. People who know you in college won’t believe it when you tell them how shy you used to be. For what will feel like the first time, you’ll be really putting yourself out there. And you’ll fall in love with the feeling.

And this is where things will get tricky. Because when you put yourself out there – when you start engaging with the world – the world will respond. The risks you take at Penn will be important and valuable and will lead you places you could never have imagined, but risks can also lead to pain. When you let people in and take down all your walls, you’re completely vulnerable. Being shy and quiet has often protected you from the consequences of being bold. And this is the part that you won’t be prepared for.

You’ll try new things and inevitably face the gut-twisting feeling of failure. You’ll learn from that. Some of the new friends you make will hurt you in ways you could never have predicted. You’ll learn from that. You’ll idolize people who don’t deserve it, because you see the best in people every damn time. You’ll learn from that.

You’ll get your heart broken for the first time and cry your eyes out in your twin XL bed in the quad, asking yourself why you can’t just let it go. You’ll learn from that. And then you’ll meet a guy who makes you feel like rainbows are exploding in your chest, and you’ll mistake that for something real. You’ll learn from that. And then you’ll find something real and watch it slip away. You’ll learn from that, too.

You’ll be hurt time and time again, but you’ll never stop trying or caring. You won’t be bitter (ok, you might be a little bitter). But you’ll never stop being kind, even to people who might not really deserve it.

One of your biggest challenges is going to be figuring out how to be the sweet, nice girl you’ve always been while also being someone else, someone you want to be. You’re going to learn that it’s not always the time to be sweet, not always the time to say “oh my god, no, don’t worry about it, it’s totally ok!” Because, you’ll realize, part of growing up is knowing when to get toxic things out of your life, no matter how much you wish you could keep them and fix them or somehow will them into being something that’s healthy for you.

The good news is, for every less-than-stellar person you encounter at Penn, you’ll meet about 20 phenomenal ones. You’ll meet the people that will pick you up off the ground and slap the stupid out of you. The people that laugh at your jokes and boost your ego more than you really need. The ones that are shamelessly themselves, and push you to be like that too. The ones that give you hand-written birthday cards and come to football games just to watch you shake pom-poms on the sidelines. The ones that cook dinner for you and show up at Smokes, only because you asked. The ones that do everything they can to hear you and understand you. The ones that tell you that you’re one of their favorite people in the entire world—and really mean it. The ones that stick around. And the hard times will remind you how grateful you are for the ones that stick around.

People here often suppress their emotions, and honestly, you’ll never really be able to do that (and it’s a good thing). In the moments when you vocalize how you feel—whether it be wildly happy or devastatingly sad or unimaginably anxious—you’ll look around and sometimes it’ll feel like you’re the only one. You’ll try to make excuses. You’ll tell yourself (and everyone else) that you’re being dramatic, or ridiculous, or silly. You’ll think other people are so much better at controlling how they feel. Try not to listen to those voices in your head. Don’t be ashamed of having feelings, and never apologize for showing people you care.

High school will seem so much simpler in hindsight, a place where wrong and right were so clear, where good and bad were obvious to you. At Penn, you won’t always have the best judgement. You’ll hear the phrase “make good decisions!” a lot, almost as if it’s a joke. And you’ll start saying it to freshmen as you get older. But, in your senior year, you’ll stop and think about that phrase a lot, because what the fuck does that really mean? You’ll think about the choices you’ve made over the past four years and how they weren’t always the best.

You’ll care for people who don’t treat you right, and place some of them on pedestals so high that you can’t even reach them anymore. You’ll do things knowing that you’ll end up hurt, and sometimes you’ll stick around too long. You’ll befriend some people despite all the red flags. But those are the things that will teach you to know your worth, have a thicker skin, and stand up for yourself.

Your times of weakness will show you who really deserves a spot in your life and will lead you closer to being your happiest self. In those bounce-backs, you’ll feel yourself growing, and becoming someone you really want to be. And you’ll be blessed enough to have a support system to help you navigate the tangled messes you find yourself in. Through it all, you’ll always know that you’d rather be the one who embraces the world and gets hurt sometimes because of it, than be the one who’s too afraid to try.

So, instead, you’ll start saying to freshmen: “Make good decisions, or don’t. You’ll learn from it.”

Love (and good luck),

2020 Maura

Dear Freshman Sam,

Little do you know, an infamous class is about to plant three of your future favorite people right in front of you. Four years later, they’ll be the first people you ask to stream shows with you when you’re all stuck in quarantine, so keep them close. Now, making your first friends is going to come easily, but the rest of Penn? - not so much. Penn will break you down too many times to count, and by the end, you’ll be both exceptionally exhausted by and extremely proud of the number of times you got back up. Here’s a preview of just some of the lessons you’re about to learn along the way.

1. Stay mindful.

I hate to break this to you, but you’re about to be rejected from every club you apply to. You’re probably thinking, “Wait, clubs have apps???” followed by, “Wow, that much rejection has to hurt like hell.” The answers to your questions are: yes (sadly) and yes (even more sadly).

Now, here’s some news I’m happy to break. Your sophomore year, you’ll apply to a conference committee on a whim, and be accepted. Over the next two years, you’ll take on greater leadership roles within the organization, make some incredible friends you likely would’ve never met otherwise, and slowly forget about all the past rejections.

As much it seems like I’m telling you this to convince you that everything works out in the end, that’s not my intention. Instead, I want you to always keep in mind where you started. Being in any leadership position at Penn means being in a position where you get to make some big decisions, but much more importantly, you’re in a position to help.

Remember how much you wanted just one person to show you that you weren’t alone? Someday, be that person for someone else. You only got here because someone was finally willing to take a chance on you, so take a chance on another overly-stressed, self-doubting person too. You won’t regret it.

2. But, some things actually don’t get better with time. It’s ok to drop them.

When your gut is telling you it’s time to leave, listen. You’ll want to stay anyways to stand up to the people who label you as less-than, but sometimes it’s just not worth it. You hate to fail, but this isn’t failing. This is protecting your happiness and prioritizing your mental health, and making more room in your life for the people who do love you. Although it’s hard to see them sometimes, there are so many of those people.

3. And when you’re facing your tough times, know that If you seek support, you’ll find it.

Your professors have been in this game for a while. They have an incredibly keen eye for when you’re struggling more than you’re letting on, or being taken advantage of. When they reach out to help, please let them. Then stay in touch - one day, getting a hug from your favorite Boss Lady will literally make your entire day.

4. Now, you won’t always be able to control your trajectory. Still, give the trajectory that life’s chosen for you a chance.

Your sophomore year, after yet another round of countless rejections, you’ll take a job in a very, very small town in PA, located minimum 2 hours away from any of your friends, and think that life has really done you in this time.

But, it’ll just so happen that one of your best, most caring friends is from this town. You’ll spend a relaxing summer doing yoga with her family and taking a break from Penn Face, and you’ll realize life actually gave you what you needed.

5. Finally, when it comes to the choices you can control, do what makes you happy.

You’ll learn quickly that, 9.5 times out of 10, you’d way rather stay in and watch a movie than go out. So stay in, and don’t let people’s judgmental tones when they ask you what you did that weekend get under your skin. Once that freshman energy starts to run low, you’re going to find plenty of people who need their weekends to be a breather just as much as you do. Assign greater value to the Friday night you spent trekking across town with a friend to see Downton Abbey, and the break you spent exploring your roommate’s hometown.

Nevertheless, in four years, as your senior year comes to a crashing halt, you’ll still be thinking about all of the things at Penn that you’ve missed out on, and count these all as failures. But you will not have failed. Unlike so many people who come to Penn, you don’t have anyone to give you a cheat sheet on how to navigate this crazy place. You’re going to do the best you can with what you have, and that’s all you can ever ask of yourself. Penn isn’t going to be your fairytale, but it will give you all of the resources and teach you all of the lessons you need to make the next chapter of your life the best one yet. The value of that cannot be understated.

Keep on keeping on. You’ll get there, I promise. And if, in some ways, you don’t, you still have your whole life ahead of you.

Love,

Samantha F.

Dear Freshman Self,

Even now, just thinking about you, is bittersweet. Before coming to college, you read every single one of the 2016 Dear Penn Freshmen posts, thinking you would be able to make better decisions by adhering to advice. The truth is, there is no universal right way to move through life – and you will be right about many things, and wrong about so many more.

Three things you were right about:

1. You are going to fall in love with Philadelphia. Moving to the east coast means you’re going to freeze during the winters and get sick a good number of times. You don’t get homesick a single time during college because there is just so much to see in Philadelphia. You’re going to go off campus to Upper Darby, Center City, or Fishtown almost every weekend (which a little more than you probably should). You will end up passionate about public transit, art museums, and want to spend the rest of your life in the east coast. Oh, and you will be a college graduate who still does not have her drivers’ license.

2. Your high school friends really are forever. This may not be surprising (or maybe it will be) but you will not only keep in touch with your closest high school friends, but they will come visit you in Philly. You will realize that while some people seem to lose touch with their childhood friends, you will continue to message them every week and see them every break. You will meet some wonderful people in college too who come from different backgrounds, have different perspectives, and remind you how privileged you are to have met so many driven, caring people in a short amount of time. You will be glad that you didn’t hesitate to reach out earlier when a pandemic demolishes the chance of senior year social activities (yeah, it’s a long story).

3. You still care a lot (if not more) about helping people. You grow disillusioned with what philanthropy or corporate social responsibility aims to accomplish, but you still care a lot about finding a way to give back to the communities you belong to. You will never tell anyone you are too busy to help when they are in need (even if they don’t help you back). You aren’t exactly working in non-profit after graduation, but you know that you will continue volunteering in some form.

Three things you were wrong about:

1. Don’t worry so much. You’re going to be stressing about how you’re going to financially pay for Penn, debating whether you are too selfish / selfless of a person, and dealing with more rejection than you’ve ever experienced. You will gain 25 pounds during college, end up in the hospital several times, have the police search for you in New Jersey, and stay in a very toxic relationship. You will also get scammed in Argentina, walk from Penn to Camden in the snow, and pull more all-nighters than you care to count. But you will make it to the other side knowing that nothing, literally nothing, can truly hurt you. At 17, you are afraid of losing control and obsessed with redoing the past. You will learn that it’s not worth raising your blood pressure for anything but a good k-drama.

2. Please stop lying to yourself that you love quantitative work! In fact, you’re going to be one class away from a math minor before you realize that you despise vector spaces, and no—that doesn’t mean you’re incompetent. You will become interested in policy (surprising, I know) and your favorite courses at Penn are going to be in the management, sociology, and legal studies departments. You are going to also be one class away from an English minor and a law and society minor—but you are going to complete none of these because you realize in the end you’d rather just take courses you like than finish things for titles.

3. You’re not going to write like any poetry. Remember how you thought you were going to get involved with Kelly Writers’ House? You go to that place maybe twice a year. Outside of the two poetry classes you take, you write maybe 2 poems? By the end of college you don’t read any poetry and have unsubscribed to basically every journal you used to follow. This may sound sad, but you gain so many new intellectual interests that you know it’s okay to have once loved something – and let it go.

P.S. Some of the best friends you are going to make are going to come from unexpected ways—free food events, hackathons, case competitions—you’ll be surprised how many great conversations you will have in a GSR. If anything, live in the now; in April of 2020, everything will be closed, all the Penn buildings, your favorite bubble tea place—many of your friends will have left. It is a bittersweet ending, but there’s so much that’s just begun.

With love,

Lisa Z.

Dear Penn Freshman,

March 31st, 2016.

I still remember that day so vividly. I knew the results were coming out at 4pm EST for a few schools, but I had a dress rehearsal for my spring drama show 4:30-7:00 pm, and I knew I did not want to open up all the acceptance letters before my rehearsal… because I was either going to be extremely happy or very sad. So I waited.

After I had dinner at the dining hall, I sprinted back to my room, and opened the tabs for all the Ivy Schools. And one by one, I opened them.

When the Red and the Blue song started playing, I gasped.

To be frank, I was more in disbelief and surprise than happiness at first, because I barely knew Penn – I’d never visited before. But what I did know was that the four years at Penn will change my life.

When I got to Penn, I didn’t really know what to expect. Everything was exciting and NSO was something I’d never seen before – imagine, a girl who’d never really drunk before going to frat parties for the first time. And as ambitious of a freshman as I was, I applied to countless number of clubs and signed up to audition for all the acapella groups I knew of. I did musical theatre in high school, and I was pumped with excitement, imagining myself on stage again.

But the first two weeks of my college career were not so nice to me. All the emails I got was rejections after rejections… and despite having made it to the final rounds of interviews for a few acapella groups and getting a callback for a musical, I got into none. Quite frankly, my ambitious soul was crushed. I started to wonder if I deserve to be a leader and how I even ended up at Penn.

In the meantime, I started seeing some flyers about information sessions for student government. I did student government all throughout high school, so I was no doubt interested, but I once again doubted if I could lead the entire class when I was rejected by all the clubs – so many, I couldn’t even name them all.

But after all, I decided to gather up the last bit of courage I had in me and run for Class Board 2020. As you will soon learn, Class Board is the branch of student government that represents the entire class – so think President, Vice President, and so on. And this decision wasn’t easy in itself, but it was even harder to execute because I’d never campaigned before. Living in a high-rise (Harrison College House) when almost all the freshmen were in the Quad made the campaigning even more brutal. I still remember the late nights by the Quad gate handing out flyers to freshmen, so many of whom ignored me and walked away. And even worse… my opponent was another Asian Michelle. How the heck was I gonna stand out?

The day when the results came out, I wasn’t even in the Huntsman room where the results were shown... I completely forgot haha. I was on my way back from Pottruck Gym and ran into other candidates who ran, and I learned... I made it!

This is a story from more than 3 years ago, but this day still stands to be one of my happiest days. This story is not just about the election, but it is also about my pride and identity because not only did this day restore some confidence in myself, it also gave me the friends I call family now. And I cannot put into words how happy I am I decided to put all the insecurities and sadness of rejections behind and ran for Class Board. And really, who knows if I’d ever have decided to run for Class Board if I hadn’t been rejected by all the clubs?

If there’s something that Penn taught me, it’s that you may not be the biggest fish in the pond, but that you can still be the brightest and the most colorful. Penn isn’t easy. There are all of these talented students from around the world – all the valedictorians, world-class musicians, athletes, and so on. (As you probably already know,) Yes, Penn is competitive. So long story short, this will not be like high school. And clearly, as my story demonstrates, I learned that lesson pretty darn quickly. But you DON’T have to be the best of the best – something you’re not used to thinking, I am sure. But trust me. I do not have the most glorious GPA, nor am I one of the top students in my class by any means, but I can assure you that I am one of the happiest.

But I need to admit that I did not come to this happy and confident state so easily. I have my own regrets and I’ve had my share of bad decisions throughout my college career. Some days I drank a little too much, and some days, I failed that quiz. And most days, I fell asleep in class... I often wasn’t sure if I was doing college “right.” I was insecure about my friendships, wondering who my best friends were and if I were devoting enough time for friends. It took me a while to truly understand what true friendships look like and to confidently be myself without apologizing. Now, I am not afraid to be that one tiny Asian girl who is crazy about working out and eating healthy, the one person in the room who chooses not to drink, and that girl who has the loudest laugh you can hear from miles away. Because guess what? When you be yourself and learn how to love yourself, you will be your best version and your real friends will love you for who you are.

And yes, the reason why I am so happy looking back at the four years is because I have so many fond memories to look back on. Especially as I am reflecting now in my room during this COVID-19 quarantine season, I miss running into familiar faces on the bustling Locust Walk, grabbing lunch and dinner with friends daily, and even complaining about class together in Huntsman late at night. This list can go on forever.

It is crazy that I will be an alumnus in about a month. And it tears me up how my last semester at Penn has been cut so short due to this pandemic… So my last words to you, dear Penn Freshman, is to please cherish your memories. These four years will change your life and they will fly by before you know it. And only after the time has ended, will you truly understand how much they mean to you.

I am excited for your four years and I hope you are, too.

Sending lots of love from miles away.

Love,

Michelle Kim

Class of 2020

Dear Freshman Paulina,

You’re about to have one of the, if not the, best year of your life. Meeting new people every day, the parties, the clubs, the classes, the entire ecosystem that you came here for. Throw your expectations out the window and embrace every minute of it. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer… you’ll get to know this place and in 4 years marvel at how much it has changed you. Let go of the idea that you can somehow always be in control. You’re going to build sand castles and watch powerlessly as the wind blows them away. Through your frustration, find the meaning and the lessons because you’re growing and you have the right to stumble. Stop chasing what everyone else is doing. It gets tiring. This is a time for you to explore. Get uncomfortable. Show that voice inside your head that you’re capable of more. Breathe… it’s a lot to take in. Be cautious with your obsession of perfect plans- daydreaming won’t get you there. I don’t know how many times I heard: “This is not the way it’s done.” You’re gonna find a way, you always do, and if you don’t, that wasn’t the right door for you. Wake up early- like sunrise early. Go try the Matcha lattes at UBB (they’re incredible!). Savor your independence and treasure the moments you spend in the company of yourself. If you didn’t like that person before you better sit down and get to know her because she’s pretty amazing. You’ll be surprised at how easily people come into your life and disappear from one day to the next. Pulling them in is like a game of tight rope: when the other team leaves, you get dropped to the floor. There’s no use in continuing to pull. Not when there are friends that text you just to ask “How was your day?,” make you lemonade when you’re feeling under the weather, or wish you good luck before a test. Find joy in the ordinary. Go on runs along the Schuylkill (I’m probably still spelling that wrong) and give Philly a chance. It’s not New York but in many ways you’ll be thankful it isn’t. Don’t let your doubts eat you up- take them for a walk, hear them out, but know you’re made of much more. Find a primary care doctor and figure out how health insurance works. There’s nothing more sobering than being young and suddenly frail. The sooner you stop acting like a victim and believe you're strong, the sooner you’ll see that the list of excuses is long but the list of your abilities is even longer. Hang in there. I know you won’t believe this but the 1am study nights at VP with food delivery and makeshift fireplaces can be just as fun as any late night (parties after the party that start at ~2am). When you find someone that can sing and dance their heart out to Bacilos or J Balvin, keep them close. Home is far away and you’ll appreciate a community that shares your roots. Every once in a while, pause and reflect. You’ll love to have your calendar busy and do a million things at once but looking at yourself in the mirror whether it be through writing, thinking, talking, etc. is going to make everything clearer. You are blessed. The world doesn’t owe you anything. You better get out there and make the most of this!

Yours truly,

Paulina

Dear Penn Freshman,

Welcome to Penn! I am so excited for the journey ahead – you have no idea what your future at Penn has in store for you, but I really hope that you’re going to love it. These four years will be a rollercoaster ride – and just like a true rollercoaster ride, it will be over before you know it. So buckle up and get ready to embrace challenges and change, because they are the only ones that will help you move forward and grow as a person. Whether you are in the College, Wharton, Nursing, or Annenberg, your journey will be special, and you only have 4 years to really make the most of it.

First and foremost, I hope that over these next 4 years, you embrace change. It is inevitable that any incoming freshman will grow and transform until they are a senior – and so will you. Penn gives you the tools to explore your identity, so use them wisely to do just that. Sign up for a club that pushes you out of your comfort zone and makes you vulnerable. Go on a service trip. Go to that first event with your freshman year floor because that is the night you might meet some of your best friends for life. Go to that professor’s office hours, even if you are the only person there. And always – always do the right thing.

I came to Penn halfway through my college career as a junior transfer student. My freshman year roommate (from my previous college) had transferred to Penn after our freshman year, so as a sophomore I thought, “I should also apply to Penn to transfer, and they probably won’t take me but it’s ok”. You probably had those thoughts as a senior in high school, because Penn is so very competitive. But here we are, both you and I, students at this very university. I still cannot believe that Penn took a chance on me two years ago, and you may be wondering the same about yourself. It’s inevitable to not suffer from impostor syndrome during your first months here. Everyone has their “Penn face” on. Everyone seems perfect: intelligent, put together, well-spoken, and charismatic. I am not here to tell you that they are not those things. Instead, I want to make sure you know that you are all those things, too.

You are intelligent, too. You are charismatic, too. You are deserving, too. And you are so much more. It’s only a matter of time until you build upon what you are right now, and when you realize what you are, always remember it. It only gets better from here.

As a transfer student, I have experienced another school for two years of my college journey. I can confidently say that I know what other universities can offer, and I want you to be aware that Penn offers so much more. Academically, Penn is the best you can have. Take advantage of the professors and programs that Penn puts together, because these people are leaders in their fields and right now you have easy access to them. There will be times when your friends will criticize Penn – “Penn does this”, “Penn doesn’t do this”, “Penn should do this”. While these may sometimes be true, please know that Penn is so much better than anything other students like you have at other schools, so be grateful for it. That is not to say accept Penn like it is and avoid challenging it to make the right decisions. You and your peers should challenge leadership when you are disappointed. You should organize petitions and push for change. Penn will listen to you and make the right choices. But always be grateful for what Penn offers in the first place.

Along the way, your path won’t be linear. It’s cliché, but there always are twists and turns. Freshman year is a pilot for everything that follows. Nobody gets it right. Remember that: Nobody gets freshman year right. You may think that your high school friends are having more fun than you are based on their Snapchat and Instagram posts, but that is just the veil of social media. During my sophomore year, I deleted Instagram off of my phone because I was fed up with the facade. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made, but I realize that it’s not for everyone. When I have something to post, I log on, post it, and then delete the app again. As you navigate your first few months, evaluate what role social media has in your life, and don’t be afraid to take breaks from it. Mental health is crucial, and sometimes social media creeps up on us without us even realizing it.

That being said, you will have your heartbreaks. You will have your moments of loneliness, and you’d be surprised to know how many other people do but don’t let it show. It’s part of freshman year and college to feel lonely until you find your people, but don’t lower your standards just to find friends faster. When you do find your group of friends, you will encounter both people whom you thought were trustworthy and people who actually support you without ever judging any of your decisions. Have the courage to say “No”, and have the confidence to build friendships only with people you really trust. You will hear the term “snake” a lot, and I hope you’ll get the message soon enough. Caring friends are better than many friends – but that is something you might have to discover on your own.

Regardless of where you are from, take time to call your parents. Whether it’s once a day or once a week, they deserve to hear from you. Whether you’re an only child or have multiple siblings, they can’t wait to hear from you. And whether you can easily visit them or not, they are dying to be able to visit you. You already make them proud, and you can make them much prouder from now on. Of course, there are things in college that parents are probably better off never knowing about, and that’s ok. Make those decisions how you wish, but always reach out to your parents for conversation.

If I could give you one piece of advice, it is to really not care what other people think. Cliché, I know, but oh how true it is. The sooner you realize that on your own, the better off you’ll be, and the faster you’ll be able to feel free and enjoy college. This is a once-in-a-lifetime four-year experience – with no bills to pay, no kids to take care of, and almost no adults to tell you what you can and cannot do. You must make the most of it.

I hope that you have the most fantastic, fulfilling, and fun four years. If you are interested in science, being a doctor, or any kind of conversation or advice, please reach out to me at sradu@sas.upenn.edu. Your life is about to take off, so as much as you may have your eyes set on your next destination, please, please try to also enjoy the ride.

Warmly,

Sonia

Dear Little Freshman Jeffrey,

First of all, CONGRATU-FREAKING-LATIONS on getting into Penn. It is an amazing accomplishment that will lead to so many amazing friendships, great memories, fun nights out, and an overall incredible four years. A little about Old Senior Jeffrey: I really enjoyed my time in college and cannot believe that it is over. Like, each week seemed to drag along, but at the end of each month, I was left thinking, “Damn, that was quick” and before I could even finish that sentence, the semester was done and finals were over with. This vicious cycle just kept repeating until now - I am like “Damn, how am I already about to ~virtually~ graduate” (Due to coronavirus, which hopefully will not be a thing anymore soon). So, the first thing I want to say is: Enjoy this time. Make the most out of it!

Ok, time to get down to business. You probably have a bunch of questions, about academics, about social life/things around Philly, and about recruiting. So, we will tackle these one at a time.

Academics:

TALK TO YOUR ADVISORS! Go meet them and have them help you plan out your four years. This will inevitably change so you should meet with them frequently. Maybe like two times a semester.

TALK TO YOUR UPPERCLASSMEN! They are probably your most VALUABLE asset. Not only in terms of learning about which classes to take and when to take them and with which professor, but also for any help you may need for the rest of your time at Penn or in the future. DO NOT JUST NETWORK WITH THEM. Hang out with them, get to know them, be friends with them.

TALK TO YOUR PROFESSORS! Go get to know your professors. They may not be able to guide your academic direction as well as the above, but they are amazing resources for advice outside of your classes. If you are interested in research or graduate school, they are crucial. They are also brilliant and really personable if you go to their office hours.

DO NOT STRESS TOO MUCH! Academics of course are going to be your priority, given how driven you probably are, having gotten into such a prestigious university. But you will realize later, no matter how much you believe it now, that it is much more valuable to spend a few quality hours on a Friday night, hanging out with friends and having a memorable time than working on a problem set.

Social Life/Philly Activities:

Going off this last point, SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH YOUR FRESHMAN YEAR FRIENDS! This group of friends will most likely stick with you throughout the four years and become your closest friends. It is ok if you all form other friend circles and grow apart, but you will always have a special bond with them. Appreciate them since you all are figuring this whole college thing out together.

JOIN CLUBS THAT HAVE A STRONG SOCIAL BOND! I know a lot of things are happening right now with you getting used to college and starting off in a new place, but the best way to get through all of this is with strong friendships. One of the best ways to establish this is by joining clubs that have strong social bonds between its members. You can figure out which club you vibe with the most, and see if they are super social, and then apply to that one. The subject matter of the club should also be considered, because usually it should be something you’re interested in. That way you get to hang out with people of similar interests, and forming friendships will be easier.

EXPLORE PHILADELPHIA! There is so much to do in Philadelphia and you may think you have a lot of time to go and see everything, but you won’t. Take every opportunity to go into the city and walk around, get food, hang out, and explore a neighborhood you haven’t yet. Use RESTAURANT WEEK to enjoy incredible foods at a reasonable price. Fogo, Harp & Crown, Osteria, are all amazing deals for restaurant week. PMA, the Rocky Steps, Boathouse Row, are all amazing photoshoot places, even if they are touristy.

Recruiting:

DO NOT STRESS ABOUT THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE OTHER THINGS IN PLACE! Literally, as a freshman, this should not cross your mind as you already have a million other things on your plate. Once you have settled in, then you can start thinking about this. There are a lot of freshmen specific internships so you will have plenty of opportunities.

EVERYTHING WILL WORK OUT! You will hear over and over from upperclassmen, that you should not worry about finding an internship for freshmen year. You will not believe them since you will hear other freshmen finding opportunities. Groupthink will push you to stress about it. It is hard to avoid, but you do not need to have a formal internship freshman summer. Do something that will be memorable and give you stories to tell. These stories are what future interviewers want to hear, not how you sat at a desk all summer writing code or working on PowerPoints. The future will be fine - you got this.

PRACTICE INTERVIEWS! If you are dead set on getting an internship, practice interviewing with your friends, with upperclassmen, with whoever can provide advice (aka with more experience than you). Do not feel anxious about these as they literally have no consequence and you’ll only get better from them. It may seem a little crude, but your mock interviewer does not care if you mess up; in fact, it is better to mess up in front of them so they can tell you how to improve. Shed your pride and learn from them.

Hopefully all of this provided a little more guidance on how to tackle the start of your next chapter in life. Honestly, college is an amazing time to make mistakes, learn better, build relationships, and live like you have never lived before. Keep your mind open to new experiences, new people, and new places. You will all do amazing things in life.

Enjoy yourself and have fun,

Jeffrey Zhou

Dear Penn Freshman,

My name is Serena and I am a graduating senior. I was a Cinema and Media Studies major in the college and I’m from New York City. I had an amazing time at Penn and will miss it a ton. I was a peer advisor for 2 years and gave advice to Freshmen often when they were going through a tough time or even when they had questions about classes, social life, love life, etc. Below is a list of some of my advice:

Relationships:

The right people will come into your life at the right time. Timing is everything. Sometimes Freshman and Sophomore years are not the best times for a serious relationship, since people are still figuring out who they are. In both friendships and relationships, you never have to stay with someone if that person isn’t adding to your life in a positive way. If they aren’t making you feel good about yourself, find someone else. If you find yourself stressed by the person, it could be a sign that the person isn’t the best for you.

Classes:

It might take time to figure out which classes you truly enjoy taking at Penn. I came to Penn as “Undecided” and I thought I would major in Communications. I soon learned about the Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) major and I met a lot of people who were CIMS majors who I loved. I ended up choosing CIMS and loved the courses I was taking since a lot of them were geared towards the creative side of film and filmmaking, such as screenwriting and production classes.

A piece of advice that I have is to not be afraid to speak up in class when you have a question because if you are confused by something, chances are someone else is confused too. Also, be sure to manage your time well - Penn can become extremely busy between assignments, classes, extracurriculars, and other obligations. Try to use your Sundays wisely because I have always found Sunday to be a great day to get a lot of work done- usually there are less events or activities going on and most people spend the day doing their work. Freshman year, I sometimes waited until the last minute to submit assignments, which led to a lot of unnecessary stress.

Try to balance your academic and social life the best you can- it’s extremely hard at times and everyone has struggled with this. Also, try not to sacrifice an event or special occasion because of an assignment and try to do your schoolwork during your free times instead. It was always helpful for me to organize my schedule around assignment deadlines- for example, if I knew I had my friend’s birthday party on Thursday, I would be sure to get my work done earlier so that I could see her on that Thursday rather than cancelling because of schoolwork.

Friends:

I made most of my closest friends later in college, starting in Sophomore year. I still have many of the friends I had from Freshman year, but I’m actually not as close with my friends from the very first days of school. This is very normal- often, it takes time to get to know people and to discover who “your people” really are. Sometimes you also make new friends later on during your Penn journey, through classes, clubs, mutual friends, or even a party.

Everyone is in the same boat as you. When you first get to Penn, everyone is looking to make new friends, and most people do not know many people at all. Sometimes it may look like people are “super close” in the first few days or weeks, but truthfully they usually don’t know each other well. Sometimes people come to Penn from the same city or high school, but often people like to branch out and meet new people as well.

My advice in general is to just be nice to people and say hi when meeting someone new. Sometimes you can make a new friend just with a simple gesture or act of kindness. Some of the people I had been friendly to in my early days in Freshman year ended up being close friends later on at Penn.

Another huge tip that I wish I knew- you don’t need everyone to like you. Truthfully, you should assess whether you like them as opposed to whether they like you. During my Freshman year, I met a girl who wasn’t friendly, and I had thought that by being nicer to her, she would come around. She actually became meaner and in hindsight, I should have just moved on and found other people right then and there. Oddly, she became nicer once I stopped caring and once she saw I had all these other friends. Don’t waste time on the people who aren’t nice to you. If you didn’t do anything to them and they’re unkind, it is usually a reflection of them. Not everyone clicks well. If you’re being yourself, you will find the people that belong in your life.

Extracurriculars:

I would definitely say you should try to check out a lot of different clubs and extracurriculars to meet new people and to see which kinds of clubs you like best. I made a lot of friends initially from joining a lot of different groups and then I narrowed down what I truly enjoyed doing. Also, it is never too late to join a new activity or group. I was part of a film production company for a few years and made some of my closest friends through it since they were also passionate about the film industry. I also joined The Daily Pennsylvanian and 34th Street as an editor, and prior to that, I had tried out many different clubs including the International Affairs Association and WITG (a finance group- one of my close friends was President).

Overall:

One of the biggest pieces of advice that I would give is something that I fully realized in the start of my Sophomore year: prioritize your well-being. I have always thought to myself - my well-being comes first (getting enough sleep, eating enough, working out when I can), academics come second (doing well in school), and extracurriculars/social life come last. It takes time to adjust to life at Penn and there is often a lot going on. Everyone is very busy. It is very important to make sure that you stay healthy and happy because I always found that on days where I didn’t get enough sleep, I would be miserable and everything would seem worse. Sleep is so important, not only for being healthy and for not getting sick, but also for staying happy and present in the moment.

Always take care of yourself and prioritize how you feel, as well as those around you. Check in on your friends and see how they’re doing. Sometimes words of encouragement or a compliment can make a person’s day so much better.

I know you will have a great time at Penn. You will meet amazing people and it may take time to find the people you enjoy spending time with best. Sometimes the most learning I had was even outside of the classroom- how to be a functional adult, how to organize my time, how to stay confident. I wish you the best and am excited for your new journey.

Penn will be great!

Best,

Serena

Dear Penn Freshman,

I’m sure you’re sick of all the covid talk. Like everyone else in the world right now, I wish this crisis weren’t happening right now. I wish you were experiencing your best life, living it up in your final semester of high school, excited for graduation, prom (if you wanted to go), making memories with your friends before you disperse. This was supposed to be your time. It freaking sucks.

And life sucks a lot! It sucks when you work really hard for a class you’re passionate about and get a bad grade. It sucks when you want to achieve more but feel like you can’t measure up to the amazing people around you. It sucks when you lose a beloved family member and have to continue on in life as if nothing has happened. It sucks when your senior year is cut short and you don’t get to have a graduation ceremony to celebrate all the suckiness that you’ve dealt with the past four years.

Here’s what I do when life sucks:

Acknowledge that it does. It feels better than pretending that everything’s fine. Maybe cry a little, or if I’m lazy, just binge watch Bob’s Burgers. Feel bad about not doing anything productive, then feel bad about thinking that every second has to be productive because it doesn’t.

Eat something, preferably with protein. Take a shower.

Wear clothes that make me happy. There’s no feeling like putting on a full face of makeup and a huge pair of earrings on a shitty day.

If it’s sunny, sit outside for a few minutes (exercise caution if doing this during the pandemic). Bring a mug of coffee and listen to the birds sing. Remind myself that life still exists and that it’s beautiful.

Call the friend who always knows what to say to let me know that I’m loved and supported (love you Cami). Rant for a bit or just stare dully at the camera and tell her that both my brain and my soul feels like an egg. When on campus, plan to get our favorite plantains for dinner that night and look forward to it.

Have a late-night three-hour discussion with my roommate about life while huddled in blankets. Reminisce on the past four years and reflect on how much we’ve grown or stayed the same. Can also do this while at home due to the virus.

Go to bed maybe still feeling shitty, but take comfort in knowing that the sun will rise again, just as the good days will come again. Sometimes, the sucky days will outnumber the good ones. Sometimes, it’s as if no matter how much I’ve grown, those bad days erase all the progress and pull me backwards. Even so, those constants will continue to ground me.

Feel free to reach out. PLEASE, if you can, stay home and support those around you in doing the same. Much love,

Frances Liu

Franliu20@gmail.com

(Thanks for sending me the letter I wrote last year Dan, otherwise I’d never write this one.)

Dear Penn Freshman,

I just want you to know, from the perspective of a soon-to-be graduate, that everything will be okay. Hold that truth deep down and no matter how tough things get, never stop believing that everything will turn out okay. Take it from someone who’s gone through it: getting a bunch of club rejection emails, failing several high-stakes exams, not securing internship positions, losing a friend. And now, I realize that it was because of these things that really forced me to grow the most. They forced me to really examine myself and figure out what is actually important to me, and what I can do without.

Because trust me, your time at Penn will not be a cakewalk. You will face bigger challenges than you’ve ever had before. You’ll be tested not just academically, but socially and professionally. Mentally, too. It took me until the spring semester of my junior year to actually start getting good grades again because I finally learned how to manage my time and how to study, two things that I thought I knew how to do in high school.

At the end of the day, college really isn’t about the classes. There’s a huge chance you will never use the Ergun equation again in your life or have to recite Plato’s Symposium dialogue on the spot. It’s about learning how to learn and training yourself to tackle problems head-on without being afraid. It’s about constantly being put under pressure and realizing that you’ll make it out okay.

Most importantly, college is an experience. Every aspect of college is unique to you. Stop chasing after the “ideal” version of college life- you don’t need to be a frat star or class president to say that you’ve had a good time in college. It’s all about the little, day-to-day things. Live in the moment, and you won’t have any regrets. I don’t. Everything that has happened to me, the good, the bad, and the ugly, has made me who I am today, and for that I am grateful.

You will meet some of the best people you will ever encounter in your life at Penn. Hold onto them and let them know how much they mean to you. A funny thing about friends: after enough late-night talks, shots taken together, and crazy, crazy experiences, your friends become your family. They become your rock, your home at Penn. They become your brothers, your sisters. Always cherish the time you get with them and treat each moment like it’s your last time together. Make time for people who make time for you.

I still don’t have my life figured out yet. Far from it, in fact. But I find solace in the fact that after these four years, I can handle just about anything that will come up later in my life, because for the first time, I know exactly who I am, and what I am capable of. I feel like I’ve grown so much since entering Penn and walking down Locust Walk for the first time. And I trust that you will, too. You’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.

One last word of advice: hold onto these good times, because let me tell you, the good times are really all that good.

Dear Penn Freshman,

*Before I begin, I just wanted to caveat how hard it is to give good advice. What worked for me may not work for you, and what will work for you may not have worked for me. So, take everything I say with a grain of salt. In fact, if there is one bit of advice that I do think you should take, it’s to not take advice too seriously. Throughout the rest of your life, you’re going to be given a lot of conflicting advice. Some people will tell you to zig when others tell you to zag. For every viewpoint, there is a counterpoint. Don’t worry about living your life through someone else’s values. Do what feels right to you. Find mentors, learn from them, and ask them for advice; however, don’t take their advice as gospel. If I’ve learned anything over the past few years, it’s that everyone is just as lost as you.

Penn kids, myself included, are guilty of overthinking. No matter what our background is, chances are, we worked really hard throughout high school. We were thoughtful about where we dedicated our efforts, we cared about our academics, and we planned for the future. These are all great traits, and our dedication was what led us to Penn. But this level of planning and preparation comes at a cost.

I come from a city with far fewer opportunities than Penn. Planning my life back then was easy. I knew what clubs I needed to join, I knew what classes I had to take, and I knew that if I worked hard, things would work out. Life made sense, and the decisions I was forced to make were easy. The problem with a school like Penn is that there are just way too many good opportunities out there. You’re going to feel the pressure to get involved in everything, from arts groups to sports to community service organizations. And when it comes to decide where to dedicate your time, you’re going to have to make some decisions and plan ahead.

When it comes time to make hard decisions, my advice is to not overthink things. It’s impossible to plan too far down the road, and in the future, you have no idea how your goals will change. College is a time for exploration. You should try new things and meet new people. Play a sport that you’ve never played before. Join an a cappella group even if you can’t sing. And when people ask you why you chose to make a particular decision, don’t feel pressured to have an answer. It’s perfectly fine to say, “I don’t know.” When someone tells you that, at the ripe old age of 21, they have their life all figured out, they’re not just lying to you. They’re lying to themselves.

Listen, I am 100% guilty of overthinking myself. I like to think and plan ahead as much as anyone else. But some of the best decisions I’ve ever made were when I stopped thinking too much and just moved forward. Life is way too unpredictable to plan ahead, so do your best to just live in the moment.

And if this all wasn’t cheesy enough for you already, I wanted to end with my favorite quote from John Lennon: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

I wish you guys all the best in the coming years. You will all crush it.

Richard Li | Class of 2020

Dear Freshman Jess,

I’ve stared at this blank page for the last three hours. I’ve stared at the page, watched some Jenna Marbles dog videos, came back to the page, took a nap, and now I’m back here. My brain is on loading mode right now, but I’ll try my best to be the reflective seer you need right now.

To defend myself and explain why my brain isn’t working, future you just turned in her creative writing thesis this morning after a long, long evening (I don’t have to tell you the story, because living through it once will already be terrible). So yes, don’t let what I’m about to tell you freak you out, because you’ll still come so, so far. Even if it’s hard to see sometimes in the fog of everything at Penn.

In the next four years, you will push yourself to your limit: physically, mentally, emotionally. You’ll have weeks when your regular bedtime pushes 4 a.m. You’ll go out multiple times in a week, even when you get bronchitis multiple times in a semester (you’ll claim champagne makes your throat feel better). You’ll have days when your fridge is empty and you’re living on free pizza from club events, and even when FroGro is a walk away, you can’t bring yourself to go. You’ll find yourself balancing so many clubs and responsibilities that everyday feels like a waking nightmare of meetings. You’ll cry so many times alone in your room that it won’t even be sad anymore: it’ll feel cathartic, a regular release of pent-up stress that’s been building up for days and days. I would tell you to take better care of yourself, but I know in the moment, it’s so hard to: it’s hard to love yourself enough to take yourself. In college, it’s tempting to make your body and your mind your last priorities. Try to push them up a little higher on the list.

But you do try to get better. It’s a learning process with a steep learning curve. But slowly and surely, you do.

You will go to therapy for the first time ever the spring of your freshman year. One last club rejection that you really wanted pushed you to do it — you started to question whether you were worthy to be here, worthy of anything at all. Looking back, it seems like a stupid reason to seek therapy, but stupid or not, it led me here. This one small moment of pain and weakness that made you pick up the phone and make an appointment opened the world up to trying. Trying to understand yourself better, trying to be gentler to yourself and forgive. You’ll stop therapy, then go back, then stop it, then go back. Even when you say you’re better, that you don’t need it, something will happen that compels you to return, and that’s okay — healing isn’t linear and it doesn’t have a deadline. No reason is too small to seek help.

You’ll start to scale back on your commitments, try to figure out what truly matters to you. This isn’t always successful, and your roommate has to constantly tell you that you’re doing way too much, but you’re trying to find a balance. You realize that college isn’t about a leadership position or going to meetings — it’s the smallest victories that fill up a day and that you might forget later, but it doesn’t matter. Learning how to make a tea latte at the cafe you work at. Writing a really good paragraph of your story. Eating Lyn’s in your dorm room. Making your friend go eyebrow threading with you. These moments rack up, and they make you happy in the present: focus on those.

Even when things don’t get better and you feel at your darkest, lowest, remember: you’re not alone.

You will hate this place sometimes (maybe a lot of times), but the support system that you find here makes it worth it. You’ll find the best friends you could have ever hoped for and you’re eternally grateful for this, because you know even one good friend is so goddamn hard to find (you’ve learned this the hard way now, as you wrap up high school). Friends whose apartment you can walk into like it’s yours, friends who will listen to you ramble about the same stupid boy for hours and hours, friends who will cook for you and give you extra Asian snacks their mom brought over, friends who will waste time with you in Saxby’s pretending to do work. Friends who will stand outside a high-rise with you for two hours and vent about how everything is shitty and hard and complicated. This time that you have, these four years, would not be the same without them, and you need to hold onto them tight. They will ground you when things get tough and stressful, when it feels like everything is falling on top of you.

On one of the first days of senior year, one of your good friends since freshman year will ask you what your goal for senior year is over dinner at SweetGreen. You’ll say, “I want to be happy.” My advice to you is, make that your goal for all four years here. Everything else is secondary.

Love,

Jess

Dear Freshman Sitara,

You’re about to do a lot of growing over the next four years.

No, not taller. Sorry.

Up until now, you have quickly found answers to your questions. Growing older meant figuring things out. The path in front of you was clear and straight. Each step you took was taken with the knowledge of the steps that were coming next. No surprises, no risks. High school, extracurriculars, AP classes, ACTs, and college applications. You ticked all the boxes and patted yourself on the back with each step.

Coming to Penn will be the last of those easy, straightforward steps. As a freshman, it seems that just as you pick up your foot to take the next step, the path beneath you disappears. You’re in freefall. The growth that occurs from here on out is not going to be easy or linear like before. Now, you’re going to ask questions and spend days and weeks searching for answers, only to find they don’t exist.

When you read these letters the summer before freshman year, you had envisioned your senior self writing this letter very differently. You had imagined it chock full of advice, filled-in blanks, and answers. Unfortunately, life is a slow and steady process of realizing just how little you know.

You may think this sounds like all doom and gloom. It’s not. Life truly starts when the path before you disappears. Sure, you’ll experience lower lows than ever before, but you’ll also experience higher highs than you thought possible. Instead of looking down, carefully following the narrow path laid out in front of you, you’ll find yourself looking up, imagining new possibilities for yourself.

With that being said, here is some important advice that will save your ass in the coming years:

1. Embrace the uncertainty. I know it’s uncomfortable. I know how much you don’t like unanswered questions, but the quicker you adjust to this new normal, the more fun you’ll have with this newfound freedom. You’ll stop hating it and start realizing how much better life is when decisions aren’t easy anymore.

2. Honesty without tact is cruelty. I know how much you value open communication and that will never change; however, it’s not always the best idea to be so blunt. Honesty is still the best policy, just make sure you’re delivering it the way you would like to receive it.

3. Stop procrastinating. Seriously.

4. Lean on your friends and family. You are so lucky to have them. Feyi will love you even when you don’t have the strength to love yourself. Shoshi will show you how to be a boss ass bitch and pursue your dreams. Zach will guide you as you navigate uncomfortable spaces. Hallie will remind you that things don’t need to be complicated. Anika will teach you patience. Stephen will lead by example, showing you exactly what hard work and determination looks like. Grace will impart a love for self-care. Finally, remember to call Mom. She thinks about you every day.

5. Learn how to cook. Senior Sitara is struggling in quarantine and really wishes you had invested in these skills earlier.

6. Put yourself first. You’re going to fall in love not just once, but twice. Remember to not lose yourself in the process.

7. Trust yourself. You’re sometimes smarter than you would like to think. After you were deferred from Penn during Early Decision, you wrote a letter to the admissions committee. The last sentence reads, “Thus, I leave you on this note: If you make the decision to accept me to Penn’s Class of 2020, I promise to be grateful every time I walk past Benjamin Franklin and his benevolent smile. I promise to work hard towards my degree. I promise to follow my passions and dreams so that one day, when I make a difference in the world (however it may be), the University of Pennsylvania will be proud to call me an alumna.” You have lived up to your promises. You have worked hard every day, followed your dreams and though I cannot speak for the University of Pennsylvania, I know that I am extremely proud of who you have become.

Cheers my dude,

Senior Sitara

To Whom It May Concern,

I’d love to begin with a kitschy anecdote about my first day at Penn – maybe even establish a cute motif of some kind, which I’d then circle back to at the end for sweet, clean-cut emotional resolution. But the truth is that I don’t really remember my first day.

I remember specific moments, sure. I remember one of my roommates answering the door of my soon-to-be room, sans pants, and asking if I was Jewish (which I’m not) or gay (which I am). I remember my mom crying as she said goodbye, and me not crying, not even a little bit - ask anybody.

What I don’t remember is the feeling of being a wide-eyed ingénue, beginning a journey that would transform me, many peaks and valleys later, into the obviously wise and mature person I am today. Maybe I was never that person.

The point, if there is one, is that I don’t have a good story for you. I can’t tell you my hero’s journey – partly because I’m not a hero, but mostly because that’s not really how college has played out for me. I have stories, but I don’t have A Story. To try to force the past four years into a canned narrative structure would be to lose out on the best parts of my Penn experience.

It is those parts that I want to tell you about, dear reader. Those weeks, days, hours, and moments which, in retelling, I risk draining of the life and color that have solidified them in my memory. It’s a risk I’m willing to take in service of the ever-worthy cause of Talking About Myself. The thoughts I share below are not meant to impart any moral wisdom; I don’t have any of that, and even if I did I would never share it with you. They are meant to reveal something about me, and to say, “This is how I see the world. Do you see it that way too?”

1. I should explain the thing about the roommate. He said stuff like that a lot, but he never meant it maliciously. I think he just liked to keep people guessing. He told me that he and his parents practiced a religion which, according to Wikipedia, hasn’t existed for centuries. He once intended to call a short girl “vertically challenged,” but instead called her “horizontally challenged.” I don’t think she took it well but I can’t be sure, because I was busy laughing until I couldn’t breathe. His birthday was, nominally, April 1st, but he said that this was not his birthday and was in fact a practical joke played by his parents. He claimed not to know his real birthday, or even birth year. He was a real wild card.

2. I decided to major in philosophy after taking my second philosophy class. I never had an epiphany, or any kind of realization that philosophy was my passion. Some people certainly have this moment - and more power to them – but that wasn’t my relationship with philosophy. I just liked it, and wanted to do more of it. That can be enough. I decided to add a second major in business after my parents suggested it.

3. My sophomore year I only knew how to cook breakfast foods (pancakes, bacon, etc.) so whenever I wanted to cook for someone I would make them “Breakfast for Dinner,” or “Late Breakfast,” or “Breakfast.” This usually lasted until they got suspicious, at which point I would either attempt to make something else and inevitably mangle it, or just abort the situation entirely. I have no regrets.

4. I have lots of regrets. Most of them involve the way I handled specific situations or talked to specific people and won’t play well in this format, but a few of them are general enough to work. The biggest one is this: I wish I had been more open with my friends. There were times when I really could have used someone to lean on, but I didn’t talk with my close friends because I felt like they wouldn’t understand, or because I felt like I should handle things on my own. These are dumb reasons to not talk to your friends. If you give people a chance to understand you, they’ll take it. If you let people help you, you’ll both be better off for it.

5. I have a great story involving Tupperware containers and piss, but it’s not mine to tell, so I’ll just say this: if you dare your friend to do something, be prepared for the consequences of them doing it.

6. I said I wouldn’t moralize, but I’m a liar. Moral lesson #1: don’t lie, unless you have to, or want to. Moral lesson #2, the seriousness of which should not be undercut by the fact that the previous moral lesson was a joke: be as empathetic as you possibly can. This is capital-h Hard. I’m overusing the capitals-as-emphasis thing in this essay, but I truly enjoy it as a stylistic choice. We all think of ourselves as empathetic people. Some of us even brag about our “emotional intelligence,” which is often a clear indicator that we are emotionally unintelligent and probably assholes. But empathy isn’t about noticing that your friend is struggling with something, or forgiving a classmate when they tell you they had a rough night and couldn’t get their part of the project done. Empathy is about being unreasonably charitable to the unseen lives and motivations of the people around you. When you’re tired, hungry, and trying to get Wawa after a long day of class and someone cuts you in line, empathy is considering that that person could be rushing to make an evening midterm, or buying Gatorade and Advil for a sick roommate. When someone on your hall brags about their achievements and you find them to be an arrogant f*ckwad, empathy is thinking about insecurities and the strategies that different people use to overcome them. I say this is Hard because it’s not a default state of being. Empathizing with our friends, or those who explain their struggles to us, is easy. Empathizing with strangers who we may or may not dislike is not. Being empathetic requires constant effort. It requires us to do something that, for many of us, is nearly impossible: thinking the best of others. It’s a skill that, as far as I can tell, a lot of people never learn. I’m no good at it myself, but I’m trying. All I ask of you – and I obviously have no right to ask anything of you – is that you try too. I think it’ll be worth it. If you need extra incentive, it’s also a great route to the moral high road.

7. My friends and I decided to paint up for the first Penn football game we attended. I was the first ‘N’ in “PENN.” The second ‘N’ had ‘IS’ on his back, so that if he turned around we could spell something different. Adaptability is a virtue.

This has gone on for far too long already so I’ll just say this: you shouldn’t listen to me because I don’t know anything. Not in the Socratic way where I actually know a lot and will lay the foundation for 2000 years of Western philosophical tradition, but in a more literal way where I really don’t know anything. Before I came to Penn, though, I knew less than nothing. That’s what I call progress.

I wrote this primarily as an exercise in narcissism, because clearly that’s what Dear Penn Freshmen is. A small part of me, though – a part that I would never admit to the existence of – really wants someone to benefit from reading this. I don’t know how that would happen, because it’s almost exclusively nonsense, but I want that nonetheless. If you found value in this and want to tell me, you can email me at seymourbutz@aol.com. This is the part where I would circle back to that motif. Boy, that would have been good.

Patrick Rich

Dear Penn Freshmen,

As I was figuring out how I would write this letter, I realized it would be most helpful to provide something you might actually use. In times of doubt or uncertainty, I hope these affirmation cards will remind you that resilience is innate — you just have to keep holding onto it.

Penn is your community and home for the next 4 years, not your identity. You are more than your “major, hometown, and fun fact.” You are more than just a number. Good luck and have fun!

With love and care,

A sentimental senior

Ton can be contacted by email or text.

Affirmation cards made with the help of Weizhen Sheng

To my freshman self:

I hesitate to write this letter, because I know the task of trying to give advice, and express what the Penn experience REALLY means to me, is a daunting task. But here goes.

I spent my first two years at Penn not really doing much. I had coasted through high school. I didn't really try that hard, at anything, really, and I was content with being by myself, not really reaching out: in my own little world. When I came to Penn, I had some fun during NSO. The vibes of the week led me to participate in some events that I normally would not. Once class started however, and the outside excitement died down, I fell back into the pattern I had left high school with. I coasted through my first year, not really doing much. And then during the end of my first year I got into an accident, and got a concussion. I spent my second year with daily headaches that I had to struggle through while taking classes.

I think those days of staring up at the ceiling between classes, feeling like the whole world was crashing around me, that there was no hope for easing the pain in my head, or improving my situation in general, ignited something within me. That summer, I started to push myself to do things that I normally wouldn't do.

So the one piece of advice that I would give Penn freshman is, try to get involved in things you normally wouldn't. Penn becomes totally different once you get involved. It's actually really fun, lol, and the people you meet will give you more fire to push even harder. I'm an introvert, and I know I still am, but meeting people at Penn is one of the funnest things you can do.

I know for some of you, this is something you already know how to do. Good luck (and I'm jealous lol, wish I had done it sooner)! For those of you who really need this letter, I hope you will see this letter. Yet I also know that for those of you who really need this letter, you don't really need it. You've seen this type of thing over and over already, and the chance of my words reaching you out of the majority of others who have also reached you is not that big. You are the only one who can change your situation. But I know, if you have made it to UPenn, that you have something inside of you. You have that spark, and maybe you haven't truly ignited it yet. My advice to you is still the same. Try something you're interested in. It could be becoming a TA for a class you did well in (would suggest), becoming part of a club, or just going to one of the many events around Penn's campus that involve meeting new people. What's so scary about it? What are you going to lose, time you could have spent on homework or playing the next video game? If you do feel social pain, is it really that bad? Are these small pains really not worth the risk to try to improve your situation? No matter what, keep on pushing. Some rest is ok, but after that, you should keep going. Within time, if the effort is placed in the right direction, I can almost surely guarantee that you will begin to see what I'm talking about.

Penn is fun, it really is :) I'm continuing to work on myself, and it's fun to be part of a community where you can feel others doing the same as well.

And bleh that letter was cheesy, please distract yourself from this letter and return back to what you were doing haha.

~ John Zhang

Dear Freshman Sergio,

You’re about to start a period in your life that will change you completely. Flying into Philly, you have all these ideas for how college should be; throw them out the window. The sooner you stop trying to live your life according to a script, the better. Classes aren’t there only for passing, they’re there to make you connect with like-minded people. Studying isn’t a means to an end, it’s a time to meet some of your closest friends. Although you’re excited to be on the golf team, know that it shouldn’t take over your life. Hey, you might end up leaving after only one year (wink wink). I know that you’re coming all the way to Philly to explore new cultures and meet people from all over the world, but don’t forget you need a solid group of friends who can dance to Juan Luis Guerra and Bacilos. Philly is an incredible city, don’t forget to explore! Don’t wait till the end of sophomore year to do so, Penn bubble is a thing and you don’t want to be trapped in it.

I don’t want to tell you only to learn from your mistakes. There are some damn good decisions you make. For example, you start doing yoga and get a bike! No regrets there. You also meet some of the coolest people in the world, who become some of your closest friends. You’ll spend so much time with some of them that you see them now as family, your little Penn family you get to take with you after leaving.

So, go out there, live in the present, have fun, learn tons, and do more of what makes you happy. If I could leave you with one piece of advice, it’d be to never ever skip Abba Night at the Dolphin. Never.

Sergio

Hi Freshman Jia!

Your future classmates at Penn don’t know yet, but we both know you’re a bumbling airhead. You applied to Penn mostly out of process-of-elimination, and it’s a miracle you’re here. But you are. Cherish this opportunity - it’s one of a lifetime, and heed this warning - it will pass by in a flash and end abruptly. Make the most out of it! (Long letter ahead - proceed with patience.)

It’s okay to go with the flow - but don’t forget to reflect

• Many of your decisions will be made spontaneously. You will introduce yourself as “Jia Wei” to some people and “Jia” to others, with no systematic process behind it. Penn is an overflowing pot of new things you’ve never seen before, and you will be awed, making decisions left and right. You will try out for a lion dance troupe on a whim, and join on another whim (this turned out to be one of the best decisions you made, but not all your unplanned decisions panned out well). Most of the things you do, the main reason is “why not”. This is okay - for the first year. But college life isn’t infinite. You don’t realize it early enough, but college isn’t a never ending adventure of knocking on one door, entering and exploring, then leaving and knocking on the next. Reflect more - think about what keeps you going and makes you happy, and craft a purposeful route. Don’t meander too much - you will soon be out of time.

Don’t do things just to do them - every moment is to be cherished

• You will spend a lot of time in Huntsman Hall - there will be days where you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner in different areas of Huntsman as you grind. One day you will stop to ask yourself why - and start prioritizing people and experiences. Make that day happen earlier.

• You will find yourself “catching up” with everyone you can over a meal, only to spend half of the time thinking of what you should be studying next. Don’t. Respect other people’s time, and respect yourself. Remember that you are spending time together because you care!

Don’t be afraid of failure - be afraid of mediocrity

• You will start with ambitious goals, taking harder classes as early as you can. You will crash - taking STAT102, STAT430, and STAT451 together/back-to-back will tank your grade an entire letter, and that will discourage you. In future semesters, you will often opt for the “easier” route - and you will regret the “what if”s. What if you challenged yourself more? Took on side projects?

• You will fail. A lot. You will fail the screening round for multiple pre-professional clubs, the resume round for countless internships and full-time jobs, and the “statement of interest” round for multiple research assistantships. You will question if you will ever be good enough for anything - breathe. Skills, experience, and networks take time to build. Learn from failure - it will build you. Give yourself more credit - better opportunities will come, and you will be well matched even if you think you fall short. Try, try, try.

Prioritize learning

• One of the best decisions you will make is quit the $30/hour job of grading and filing MBA papers - in which you learned absolutely nothing - to take on the $16/hour job as a TA for CIS 105, where you deepen your knowledge, connect with a wonderful professor, and have the opportunity to teach a recitation session of 25 bright students. It looks like a simple decision, but with the high cost of living in Philadelphia (rent destroys most of your scholarship allowance, and you still want to save up for trips and go out occasionally with friends) you will struggle.

• Doing is the easiest way to learn! It is easy to let others carry you when assignments and projects get hard - don’t get tempted too much. You will be pleasantly surprised to find out that you are actually capable, and will start carrying some assignments yourself (or at least contribute and pull your own weight) as time goes on.

Travel

• You’ve only left your country once before coming to Penn, but in these short 3.67 years, you will travel to 5 countries and 17 U.S. states, either with friends or solo. Travelling will deepen your connections with your friends, your roots, and yourself. Make time to travel, it’s always worth it (that midterm you want to study for? You’re not going to care).

Sometimes you get sad. It’s okay.

• This is hard for me to tell you - but please listen. Sometimes you are down in the dumps. The last months of sophomore fall and first months of Sophomore spring, it gets so bad you often don’t have the urge to get out of bed, to clean yourself and your room, much less go to class. You submit assignments late. You contemplate skipping exams. You stare at the window as the weather seems to perpetually gloom, hating winter. Your wonderful, kind apartment mate checks in on you, but you duck under the covers and pretend to be asleep. You either don’t eat or gorge. You are unhealthy and depressed, and nothing seems to make it better. You question life. You wonder why no one seems to care, but when you do get the occasional message of concern you respond with “I’m okay”. It drags on. It drags it drags it drags it drags you’re suffocating -

• Then magic happens. Somehow you are persuaded to go to Iceland for Spring break, and as you stand in front of geysers and glaciers, step foot on black sand beaches and snowy white mountains, suddenly you can breathe again. The wind howls and almost topples you, but you stay out as the rest of your friends go indoors. You breathe shakily, laugh, and realize you are crying. You still don’t quite know what was the trigger, but things got better (slowly) after that. You start going to class again. You sit down with a friend over dinner, and tell her everything as she listens patiently. You start going to the gym more often. Your grades weren’t really saved, and it’s too late to apply for internships, but you are content because you know things can get better.

Appreciate your friends - hug them every chance you get!

• It is the people and the experiences that matter. Everyone tells you this, but you don’t really realize it until suddenly Spring break becomes your graduate trip and a lot of people you care about start to leave - You will smile a lot, cry a lot. You will miss a lot of people. Make an effort to keep in touch with the people you love!

• You will remember late night Bonchon and Wawa runs, long drives for Lions performances and competitions, boba and games at Winterfell (before it fell out of favor), a ratchet night sleeping in a car in Arizona trying not to freeze, skipping a mandatory meeting to see Clinton and Obama (except not actually seeing them because you were too far), skiing for the first time and crashing into the woods, falling into the Schuylkill river and losing your glasses, going whitewater rafting, making your way up a mountain in Peru on horseback, making marshmallows over stovetop in a highrise, taking your first sip of alcohol and learning your first drinking game, skipping the concert to play pool in Kings Court during fling, sitting down for two to three hour conversations with your apartment mates/ housemates, watching the sunrise from a rooftop lounge, playing UNO and Cards Against Humanity instead of studying for a midterm... yes your senior spring will be cut short, but you will be grateful for the memories you have made.

• Feb Club fortunately happens before COVID - you will be grateful you get to spend a happy month with your senior friends (most of which stuck with you since freshman year), being happy and silly together. You hug them (and all of your friends) a lot, not knowing which hug was the last.

Finally, embrace the unknown, and yourself! You won’t know everything senior year. But you will have grown, have loved, have worked diligently, and have more confidence. Cheers, baby Jia! Enjoy the ride.

P.S. no spoilers, but you might meet someone special ;)

Much love,

1-month-from-graduation Jia, with way too much time on her hands.

Dear Freshman Jay,

Welcome to the four most formative years of your life. In your time at Penn, you’ll travel to several different countries, meet incredible people, and deepen your insight of the world. You’ll also face overwhelming challenges, both in number and in magnitude.

You came into college with this misguided notion that Penn is a utopia, an escape from the rest of the world where you can tune out all of life’s problems and study about the world’s greatest challenges. It’s almost laughable how wrong you’ll be on that assumption. Yes, college will do so much to teach you in the classroom, and you’ll meet some really cool professors along the way. But quickly you will find that the true learning occurs outside the classroom, when life throws its challenges at you.

What You’ll Actually Learn

If you read nothing else, take away one thing from this letter: the most important thing to optimize for in these 4 years is building really strong friendships here. Your friends, your squad, are the most important part of being at Penn. There are some really incredible people at this school. Become close with them. They will make you laugh, they will teach you things about yourself that you never knew, and above all, they will pick you up in your darkest moments.

You’re also going to fail, a lot. You are going to face moments here that challenge you deeply, that make you question everything. You are going to lose elections, blank conferences (lol), bomb exams, and face job rejections. You’ll realize that your self-worth cannot depend on fleeting moments like good grades, what people say about you, or Model UN gavels. Your emotions will be a rollercoaster if you let these things define your sense of self. It sounds corny, but embracing values such as being a good friend, taking care of your health, fighting for justice, and being a good mentor to others will anchor you in self-confidence when some days just feel like everything is going wrong.

Happiness is not some destination that you achieve after battling through all the obstacles in life. Happiness is something you achieve through engaging those battles themselves. Struggle should feel like a journey of bettering yourself. Some struggles, you’ll find, just aren’t worth it.

On that note, you’ll also learn to not be afraid to walk away. Yes, you have always prided yourself on never giving up, but you are also not obligated to keep yourself in toxic situations, organizations, friendships, etc. Your mental health matters, and if you're not enjoying the struggle or the path to perceived success, it's time to move on. Anything else would be a waste of your time.

Some Things I’ll Roast about Penn

Dating at Penn is really, really tough. You're going to face many awkward, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking moments these next few years. You're also going to have some moments of pure, unfiltered happiness, making amazing memories with some really, really amazing people. Everyone's already under a lot of stress from school/jobs/life, and everyone barely has the time to learn more about themselves and figure stuff out, much less make time and emotional capacity for another person. A lot of people still don't know how to communicate properly. Others are too scared to express how they feel (or don't feel). Don't take any of it personally. Because you're going to struggle to do all of these things too.

College is not some magical tale where you walk out with the love of your life as the end credits roll. Disappointment is real, and you need to base your self-worth in something slightly more stable to avoid a spiral of despair when you don't get a text back or face that unrequited interest.

You’re going to find that there is also a lot of fake activism at this school. Your expectations of an Ivy League business school fighting to end poverty will be shattered by the realization that Penn is not a social justice organization, it’s an elite institution of predominantly wealthy people trying to make sure that they too can be wealthy themselves. This leads to certain choices. People will prioritize the appearance of being an activist over actually doing the work. People will prefer selfies with the candidate over knocking doors in West Philly. People will turn their back on the principles they once advocated, they’ll support the wrong candidate, and they’ll disagree with the right thing to do when it’s against their interests. Honestly, you’ll probably do the same sometimes. Administrators will frustrate you, even baffle you with their priorities. Outrageous things will happen on this campus, and no one will care. Don’t use any of this as an excuse to become cynical. Use this as further motivation that the fight for justice has only begun. (BTW, Hillary’s gonna lose. Get ready for one hell of a 4 years)

My Advice to You

Be a good mentor. Underclassmen-upperclassmen friendships are really something special, and it’s really incredible to look up to someone who has figured out some of the questions you’re asking yourself. It’s also equally rewarding to be that person for someone younger. It’s really difficult to ask for help; be the person who makes it easier. You’ll make the community around you stronger, gain a lot of strong relationships, and learn more about yourself in the process.

Don’t be transactional. Life is a lot easier when you’re nice to people without worrying about anything in return. People will doubt your sincerity, question your motives, even call you naive, a simp, a cuck, a snake, you name it. Some might take advantage of your generosity. You’ll develop the skills to avoid such people, and most importantly, prove them wrong. In the 11th hour of crises, both academic and emotional, the friends you once helped in tough times will be there for you no matter what, and that level of devotion, loyalty, and kindness is the atmosphere everyone deserves to be in at Penn.

Take care of yourself. Seriously. Go exercise. Don’t skip meals to get extra homework done. Keep drinking water. Thinking back to my saddest moments in these 4 years, the shittiest weeks, were all after not having gone to the gym for a while, or not having eaten for several hours. And when the gym and nutrition don’t cure what’s on your mind, go to CAPS. It actually works. Venting to a good therapist puts some of your problems into perspective, and makes you realize some solutions that were in front of you the whole time.

Parting Words

Think about the moment right before opening that admissions portal senior year. When it was 2:59:58pm on the US Atomic Clock, December 11, 2015. Think about how badly you wanted to be here. The endless sacrifices you and your immigrant parents made, the late nights, the tough No’s, relentless pursuit of your passions, keeping your eye on the prize. You fucking made it. You’re here. You are one of the luckiest human beings to ever walk the Earth. I promise you, in your time here, your hard work will pay off, just like it did on December 11. You are uniquely positioned to change the world and achieve a life of happiness and success, for you and those you love. These 4 years are just the beginning. Enjoy the ride.

Yours truly (and literally),

Jay Vaingankar

P.S. Get a haircut - all your friends/family are secretly hoping you do.

Dear Penn Freshmen,

Congratulations on making it! It is not every day that you get the opportunity to attend a wonderful institution and enjoy the beautiful city of Philadelphia! There is that saying where college is the four years you find yourself - walking into Penn as a freshman, I brushed off the cliche saying, expecting that I would stick to the path of finance and international relations.

And spoiler alert: I was all wrong.

I managed to do a complete 180 by the end of my sophomore year.

If you graduated from a public high school, you just might be the only one fortunate enough to attend Penn. Basically, that was me. That in itself is both a blessing and a curse. It is a curse because there is no pre-existing group of people to fall back on which means you need to put yourself out there and make the connections. It is a blessing because no one from high school can project their assumptions onto you and call it true.

People like to complain that Penn can be very self-focused, but for me, it was a welcome change in pace. In high school, I was part of a small program where the people seemed to relish in cutting each other down both openly and discreetly. It is very hard to build and have a sense of identity in such an environment. That is not to say there aren’t judgmental people at Penn; there are always judgmental people everywhere you go. Trust me when I say this, you will be pleasantly surprised by how few and far between they really are. Everyone at this school in their own way is focused on carving their own path and lending a hand whenever they can.

Take notes of what your peers do. I was amazed by the entrepreneurial and social endeavors my classmates & friends initiated and organized. There are so much creativity and cross-pollination of passions at this school. If you have an idea for a project, you can bet that there are at least five other people who will back you. Your professors will be excited to hear your business ideas and connect with you with the right people, the same as your peers.

It is at Penn that I realized the box people from high school had put me into just wasn’t right. The people at my high school classed me as the stereotypical Asian - someone incredibly stellar at math (I honestly wasn’t) whose only passion was studying 24/7 and a robot who had no capacity to feel.

I chose to break out of that box, and do something completely unexpected. It is not hyperbole to say that Penn encouraged me to give social media influencing a try because why not. I started to tap into latent passions of mine that came from years of reading other people’s blogs and watching my favorite Youtubers. You get that kind of courage when you go to Penn; suddenly, things you could never see yourself doing become a reality.

You don’t need to have a clear path before freshman year or after freshman year really. Use the time to explore and think about how you can awaken hidden passions that you never thought you had. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, and definitely don’t put yourself in a box. After all, you got into Penn because you broke expectations not because you followed what other people wanted.

I am not saying Penn is easy by any means. Your classes will be hard. You will be frustrated when your friends can’t spend time with you because they have to meet a thousand deadlines. At some point in time, you will also have to meet your deadlines. Yes, you will stress about recruiting. You will constantly second-guess yourself. I know I did.

But I promise you, Penn will be better than high school. When you get to Penn, as you compare your experiences with those of your peers, you will come to realize that all boxes do, is restrict you from fulfilling your true potential. You will learn that all those judgmental people were really just insecure.

Just remember to do you. :)

Wishing you all the best,

Jen

Dear freshman Steph,

I know you're scared right now. College confidential posts, your only #1 source of intel right now, has told you that Penn is cutthroat, hypercompetitive, and that you should already fear OCR. You're worried about finding good friends, the challenging coursework and missing home. But the image in your mind that scares you the most is the one where you are simply average.

When you start college, everything you do will be driven by a desire to avoid the average. You will obsess over your GPA, try to join clubs with obnoxiously low acceptance rates and endure 8 hour long bus rides and sleep on dorm room floors to succeed as a debater. Ironically, at the same time you will mould yourself to fit the average. Adopt a hyper-excited American tone of voice, feign white-male-confidence in group meetings even though the imposter syndrome is screaming inside, and start wearing sneakers and leggings to class (this one might not be so bad).

But there are always two sides to a coin. The same fear of mediocrity will also be a powerful motivator to discover the myriad of experiences at Penn and you will be awestruck and grateful for the opportunities that you will be entrusted with. Your internship at a garment factory will teach you hard lessons about generosity and privilege and make you realize your passion for gender issues. You will achieve a pipe dream and eventually attend that debate tournament you've been watching videos from since you were 13. You will take classes from amazing professors who challenge your ideas and make you realize that everything you thought you knew was a vast oversimplification. Even though you will get jaded by Penn, I hope you never lose that wide-eyed appreciation for these privileges.

You will find your niche eventually and a solid group of friends - including your ones back home. The ones who you can go on a 2am Macca's run with and will also be there when you call them hyperventilating at 3am. Together you'll share stories about your upbringing, trade goals and aspirations, complain about classes, and distract each other in late-night "study sessions". You will sometimes take them for granted - but you'll also learn that relationships do need to be worked on.

So savor the little things - a cup of coffee from Elixr, a run down the Schukylkill river, walking down Locust Bridge and admiring how the trees arching over change from season to season. At the end of the day, we are all ordinary. "Success" is a manmade construct and what may be considered the pinnacle of success in one group is probably stereotyped and denigrated by the next. And a few miscellaneous things: think twice before going down that ski slope, get excited for that internship you're dreading - it will turn out to be the best journey of your life, explore Philly more often - you won't have as much time as you think, and always wear a helmet (!!). So even though you're scared, take a deep breath and run right into the forest. It will exceed even your wildest expectations.

Dear Penn Freshmen,

In an interview I was asked, “What’s your biggest accomplishment?”

I responded, “Finishing freshman year.”

And it’s true – I never thought I’d make it to move-out day. I hated Penn. The culture, the people, the clubs, the organizations. I felt lonelier than ever before yet I was only 30 minutes from home. I had friends who would brush their fingers through my hair while I cried myself to sleep yet I felt like I didn’t deserve them. I had a dance team of women cheering for me on and off stage yet I felt like I didn’t belong.

What was certain was the rejection I felt. What was certain was my parents would let me transfer schools. What was certain was my countdown of days of school left.

I remember tears of joy streaming down my face when my sister came to pick me up. I was so happy to leave this place, if only for 3 months.

I didn’t know it then, but Penn wasn’t the problem. I would have had these issues anywhere I went. And I wasn’t the problem. But I didn’t give myself a chance. The problem was that I didn’t understand Penn. I didn’t understand myself. And I didn’t understand how Penn and I could work together.

Penn isn’t easy. No – any college isn’t easy. But you can learn to let go, learn to coexist with others, learn to be a part of something larger than yourself.

Say yes to talking with your roommate till 4am when you have an exam the next day. Say yes to getting your heart broken. Say yes to flunking your first exam. Say yes to trying something new. Say yes to falling in love. Say yes to finding your community.

I wish I could go back to my first day of freshman year and tell myself it will be okay and you will love this place. But there’s something that’s even better than that. It’s telling you that it will be okay – that you will find your home here, that you will miss this place when you graduate, that Penn will always be a part of you.

And you probably won’t believe me; I wouldn’t believe me. But I know you’ll be okay.

As I write this letter, it’s been 1,079 days since I moved out freshman year. My biggest accomplishment isn’t surviving freshman year or even in graduating college. My biggest accomplishment is finding people who loved me for me, who make me feel like I matter. My biggest accomplishment is learning how to love myself in the process.

Love,

Katie Lee

P.S. Order the buffalo chicken pizza at Allegro’s. It tastes best with friends at 2am.