Dear Me,

It is twenty eight years in your future now, and I am writing back to try to warn you about somethings. I hope I can reach you, and I hope you can make the changes. First, the only interesting things that will happen to you will be outside of a classroom. And they won't happen at frat parties, that's for damn sure. Or at the library. Get out in the woods sometimes. Or the mountains. By this point in your life, I hardly even remember college. Sure, I know where it was, and when, and what I studied, and I have almost paid off the loans. But other than that, it doesn't matter. The things I do remember are waking up in a sleeping bag with frost on the inside of the tent over my face, and new snow out on the ground. And eating chewy oatmeal from the pot because we didn't cook it on the stove long enough. And looking out of the tent thinking, "Man, it sure looks cold out there, I wonder how long I can lay here before I have to get up and put my boots on so I can take a whiz."
You won't remember the parties, you won't remember most of what you study, you'll hardly remember any girlfriends or stuff like that.
Don't misunderstand me -- you should go to college, because it beats working. But the people you will run into there are no better than the ones you hate now. Like that guy in your dorm, Will Cooper, who always asks you what you got on the Chemistry test. If you knew what happens to him after college, you would pity him as much as you hate him. Or the guy who wishes he was a hippy but was born thirty or forty years too late. I mean really, tye-died t-shirts and John Lennon glasses, in this day and age? He might as well where spats and a monocle. Or those sorority girls that share a room at the end of the hall? Sure, they're hot now, but wait five years. First their cheeks and chin start to sag. Then they put on ten pounds, then twenty. Then the hair gets put up in some short, sensible thing. Before you know it, they'll look like your mom. And the whole time they'll just talk about hair and shoes. So don't get too hung up on them. In fact, none of them are any good.
In fact, looking back now, I would go so far as to say, if you meet someone who doesn't seem crazy, it's only because you don't know him well enough yet.
My advice to you is this: Buy a gun and hide.

Sincerely,
You