Dear Reese,

I hope you are reading this with all the Lancer pride after finishing the 120 credits you needed to make your dreams come true. The dream of becoming a teacher is no longer far away in the future. It is happening now for you. During the last four to five years I hope you challenged yourself more than you thought you could and never failed to reach out to professors, you asked for help when you needed it most, and did not let failure conquer the success you worked so hard for. 

I hope you fully embraced the traditions at Longwood that make being a Lancer such a blessing. Hopefully, you never missed the highlights like battling in Color Wars, getting muddy during Oozeball or fountain jumping before the first day of classes. I hope you spent time crown hopping around campus for good luck and visiting Joanie on a Stony, Joanie on a Ponie, and Joanie all Alonie as much as possible. I hope you never missed a sports game and of course never lacked the true Lancer spirit.

I hope you were able to join the club swim team at some point during your time in college. Never passed up a late night Walmart or cookout trip with friends, laughing uncontrollably with friends. At this point I hope you are not just leaving college with a degree but friendships that will last you a lifetime. 

I also hope that you took on some leadership roles like being a peer mentor for incoming freshmen. Or taking a step farther and being a tour guide for high schoolers that are trying to figure out where they want to go to college.

Most importantly, as you are closing out your college era of your life and step into the one you have dreamed of since you were little. I hope you step into your classroom with pride. While you let the young you leap with joy because it finally happened. We made it.

Much love,

Reese

Academic writing blog #7 Blog 3 Blog 9 Blog 10 Blog Post blog post #3 Blog Post #5 Blog Post #6 blog post #9 Blog Post 10 Blog Response CMS College experience First Blog Post FreshmanExperience Freshman Year Future goals Group 2 and 4 Groups 1 & 3 Humanities language MLA reference reflection research Sarah SLR structure structure language and reference week5 Who Will You Be Zine

 Dear Arleth,

This is the next chapter of your life and you must take every opportunity you can to succeed as a student. Meaning, you must prioritize school over anything that could pull you away from becoming the best version of yourself. Use all your time wisely even when taking breaks because the choices you make affect your future. It is going to be very challenging, that is why it is also very important that you make sure to take care of yourself as well. Rest, learn a new hobby, eat, and socialize. All of this will help you maintain good habits and good academic learning.

 I hope you can accomplish your goals, figuring out what you actually want to be in life, that you get to do a lot of hands-on experience and earn the knowledge and skills that you need to pursue that field. That you can do what you love and contribute to the community in some way. Make sure to get involved in organizations or even better, maybe challenge yourself and start your own club where people can also be part of and benefit from it. Get out of your comfort zone and become more open to try new challenging programs, complete internships, apply to a job related to your program and continue earning knowledge and skills from the experiences you can get.

I hope that you can get a job where you can interact with animals, especially farm animals. That way you can experience the type of life you would have once you reach my goal, working in a vet clinic has been one of your many goals before entering to vet school which is a great way to make good connections after you graduate from college. Pursuing  biology will provide you a lot of career choices to choose if the first option happens to not interest you anymore. so work on figuring out what you want to do for a living. Learn and grow, and don’t forget that it was worth the wait and the hard work.

Sincerely, Arleth Gomez.

Dear Future Me,

I’m writing from the first chapter of your Longwood story. This week’s readings reminded me that reflection isn’t just about looking back, it’s about writing forward, like leaving breadcrumbs for the person you’ll become.

Here’s what I hope you’ve built by the time you graduate: a strong foundation in psychology, not just through classes but through real experiences. I hope you’ve worked closely with professors on research that made you curious about how the mind copes with trauma, stress, and resilience. Maybe you even presented at a conference or published in a student journal. I want you to be proud of the questions you asked and the ways you tried to answer them.

I hope you got involved on campus beyond academics. Join Psychology Club or Psi Chi and surround yourself with people who are just as fascinated by human behavior as you are. Volunteer, too,whether that means helping at campus wellness events, supporting first responders through mental health initiatives, or finding internships that connect theory to practice. These experiences will help you grow into the therapist you’ve always imagined becoming.

I also hope you didn’t just push yourself academically but cared for yourself personally. Use your accommodations without hesitation, go to counseling if you need to, and build a support system that reminds you you’re not alone. College can be overwhelming, but you’ll get through it by leaning on others as much as they lean on you.

And please, make memories outside the classroom. Late-night study sessions that turn into laughter, walks across campus when your brain needed a reset, friendships that became family, and moments when you realized you belong here.

If you haven’t done all this, that’s okay, life is a draft, not a final copy. Revise as you go. What matters most is that you leave Longwood with confidence in who you are and excitement for who you’re still becoming.

— Me, Week One

  In four years, I plan on being a speech pathologist assistant which requires a bachelor’s degree. And later on, go back to school for the graduate program to then become a speech pathologist. And I personally want to work with children or young adults either in the school setting or in an actual office because I feel like I could find my job more enjoyable with that age group than I would as an adult and the elderly and children are always more exciting and funnier to work with. And I would probably later on after getting my master’s in communication sciences and disorder I would later on get a minor or major in social work because that was my second option and have gotten to know a lot of people in that major and learned a lot about it and would enjoy that as a second future career. I hope I have an exciting experience at Longwood through all four years like I have had already. And I found myself a group of people along with joining a lot of clubs including sign language, a few Christian ones and maybe later on being a manager for a team at longwood because I was managing in high school for the baseball team but also doing some volunteer work for the Farmville community. And also minor in American sign language and also possibly get a degree to later become an interpreter.  And I hope I get to be able to have a lot of hands-on experience with my major along with getting to assist children. Because for my major to me my main focus would be being able to help children but also getting to work with them.  And I’m more excited about what I could do with having a degree in American sign language and where that could lead me.

Dear future Autumn,

I’m not really sure how to start this, writing to my future self feels kind of awkward. There’s so many “what ifs”. I’ll start off with the fact that I hope you’re living a life that feels right, not one that just looks right. And I hope you’re reading this shaking your head, wishing you could go back in time to tell me that it was all worth it. I hope that you’ve continued to be courageous and steadfast even in the darkest of days. But most of all, I hope you haven’t changed. I hope you still find joy in the little things like the sitting in silence in the common area with your roommates with the occasional giggles from something we saw on our phones or going to the gym to make awful attempts at shooting a free throw with Lincoln, Quinn, and Anthony or going out on late night walks and trying to find the planets among the stars. Speaking of Quinn, we had some awesome roommates our freshman year! They sure did make college more bearable, along with Lincoln and Anthony. I plan on trying out for the softball club team, I’m confident I can make the team, if not I’ll be a little disappointed but it’s better to say I tried and failed then I didn’t try at all, am I right! I hope you continue to try out for the team, and I hope you made the most out of everything. I hope you go out whenever you get the chance to and explore new connections with people instead of staying within your roommates. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure where or who I’ll be in four years, so I hope you’ve at least accomplished graduating and going into grad school. That’s all I ask. You don’t have to have everything figured out, life can be so unpredictable. All I ask is that we become successful enough to live a stable life and help dad out whenever we can!  You should be entering grad school right about now, now that I’m thinking about it. Are you still planning to major in pre-med? Are you still hoping to become a psychiatrist? Or have you gone down a different route? Maybe into a different field of being able to help people with mental disorders? Either way, I know any choice we make will be the right one for us.

With lots of love, your freshman self

Dear future self,

It is my second week at college and there are so many emotions going through my mind. I am so excited to start my first year at Longwood. I hope you are reading this letter with pride knowing that you accomplished everything you dreamed and more.

For starters, I am hoping you took advantage of all the amazing opportunities that Longwood has to offer. Please tell me you still have the strong desire to be a labor and deliver nurse like we did in freshman year. Did you get outside of your comfort zone and take hard classes? I want to know if you have continued to stay as proactive as we were the first week of college. I hope you have made an influence with your education in your nursing career. One big thing I hope you take with you is to remember to have fun because college is more than just an education, it’s a new chapter.

Aside from academics, I want to know if you got involved at Longwood. I know the first couple of weeks of college we were timid about clubs and Greek life, but I hope you did join some sort of organization. I hope you have explored Farmville because it truly is a beautiful town. Did you go to all the basketball games like we hoped to? I hope you made lots of new friends and decided to move on from the boy from high school. New friends come with time so as long as you chose to be patient, I am sure by the time you are reading this you are filled with so many amazing friendships. I can trust that you chose to embrace all the challenges that were thrown your way. All the experiences you have faced along the way has built you into the incredible nurse we had planned to be. Remember that college is such a beautiful thing, it is supposed to help us grow and find our own independence.

Overall, I hope you stayed true to yourself. I hope you took advantage of the clubs, social events, and even academic activities. This journey should’ve helped you gain a better outlook on life, and it is my wish that you take everything you gained from Longwood University and carry it with you forever. I have no doubt that by the time you read this you will be working twelve-hour shifts helping mothers deliver their sweet babies.

With love,

Present Kristen