FutureMe, established in 2002, is a website where users can write letters to their future selves and receive them again on the desired date of the writer. Used as a tool to set goals, make predictions and more, it is today’s virtual time capsule. In hopes of using this site to document the stories of seniors at Loudoun Valley, I asked a few to write themselves a letter about who they are now and where they would like to be at the end of their senior year. Below, different perspectives of the Class of ‘23 can be found.

If interested, feel free to write your future self a letter as well by following the link above. With a valid and accessible email address, it is an easy task and one you won’t regret. 

Anonymous #1:

 Dear Future Me,

I hope you are doing well. Right now, I am so content with senior year. I’m so excited for the rest of my senior volleyball season and school year. Everything right now feels just like it should, I’m so content with my schedule, friends, family, and schoolwork. I’ve been spending most of my time either at volleyball practice and games or being around my friends.

Something I’d like to accomplish within the next couple of months is to make new connections with people. I think reaching out, especially during senior year, is such an important thing to do because I have nothing to lose. I believe that creating new relationships and valuing more than just the same close friends that I’ve had will help me be ready for college. 

Throughout high school, there’s been a couple tough periods of time. There has been a lot of loss between a few of the high schools in the county and one was very personal to me. Unexpected losses have shown me that life is too short to be negative. I always make sure to keep good relationships with my friends and family. I don’t like to waste time arguing or being mad because I would hate for that to be the last memory that I have of someone or that they have of me. I think a lot of people this year have learned that same thing and realized that love wins. So that’s why I value my relationships so much.

Being a senior means being a leader and having fun. This year is possibly my last year with some of my best friends and I just want to enjoy that time with them. Keeping that in mind, I would tell my freshman self to really take in every moment because before you know it, it will all be gone. I wish I hadn’t deleted so many pictures during my early high school years because I know now that those are memories, not just for show. I wish I had captured more moments because I want to look back on them and remember the fun times and who my friends were. I would tell my future self that no matter where I am or what I am doing, I am proud. Because school is hard and making decisions is hard and many things are hard. Behind the almost-graduate is a little girl in 1st grade thinking I was going to be an artist/dancer/singer/teacher/vet and now I am going to college to find out the path that is meant for me.

I hope you are pleased with your senior experiences and excited for what comes next. Speaking of next…are you still playing volleyball? Where have you decided to go to college? What color prom dress did you pick out? Have you considered a more specific pathway in business? What kind of person are you? What are you the most grateful for this year so far? How are all of your friends making you a better person? What have you done today to make someone else’s day better? Do you have any regrets this year?

I hope not, because my motto is no regrets. There’s no time to look back and think about what I should’ve done instead, only to focus on what I will do next time. There are no regrets in my life, just learning experiences, and I hope to always live by that because I want to be proud of the person I become. My hope for this year is to act on this motto, within reason, and push myself out of my comfort zone. I think college is going to be exciting and terrifying and the more I can get myself used to new experiences, the less terrified I will be. I’m thankful for my friends and family and I can’t wait to see what senior year brings for me to learn.

Lots of love,

9/8/2022

Anonymous #2: 

Dear Future Me,

I’m a senior at Loudoun Valley. I spend a lot of my time in school, seeing as I love to learn. I’m even pondering putting “Love of learning is the guide of life” as my senior quote. One of my favorite things to do is spend time with my friends and family. Hopefully they enjoy it as much as I do, I’d like to think I’m a pretty funny guy 😉 I get way too many questions about where I’m applying and if I’m going to be a dentist, so no college topics. 

I really want to branch out and learn how to have more fun, as vague as that may sound. This summer, I sacrificed my phone for 3 weeks at a Spanish immersion program. Oddly enough, I learned just as much about making new friends as I did Spanish. While I plan on retaining both, I’m really hoping I can build on these skills as I learn to value them-but that was just what I learned at Gov. School. High school taught me to love my friends, laugh more, and sometimes remember everything will be fine. I think being a senior means getting to live these values, getting ready to go out into adulthood, whether you’re 18 or not. In less than a year, I’ll be off living on my own and making my own decisions. I hope you’ve been living this by April 3, 2023.

Now, let’s get rid of the elephant in the room: are you still single? I somewhat hope you aren’t by the time you get this letter. You never know, and did you paint a parking spot? Enjoy your senior year: hang out with friends, don’t focus too much on school. Whatever you do, remember that it’ll all work out eventually.

Anonymous #3:

 Dear Future Me,

Hello! I’m a senior at Loudoun Valley High School. I’m a bit of an ambivert, where I am generally an introvert around most people but very much an extrovert with my friends. I absolutely love being part of the marching band, and I take great pride in being a sousaphone as well as drum major for the marching band. This season, we are about to head into our first competition at Woodgrove a week from writing this, and I am very excited, and also nervous. We are about to spend this upcoming week zooming through the sets for the second song in order to get it ready for the competition.

 As well as doing marching band at Valley, I am currently headed to Virginia Tech to participate in their marching band’s, “Marching Virginian for a Day” event. I am super excited to participate in that event alongside my friends. When I’m not doing marching band, I’m playing video games to relax. Currently, I am really into Into the Radius and Red Dead Redemption 2. 

Coming into my senior year, I am super excited for Veterinary Science at the Academies of Loudoun. It is already interesting just three weeks into the school year. I hope that by April 3, 2023 the marching band will have gotten a superior at assessments and had multiple successful competitions. Beyond marching band, I hope to have sat in on at least three or four surgeries at my vet clinic, and beat Into the Radius and Red Dead Redemption 2. 

Over the course of my high school career, I’ve come to value my friends quite a bit, along with the teachers that go the extra mile to be super supportive. They provide support that I can lean on if I need help. I’ve also come to really appreciate the getaway from stress and school that marching band provides. I’ll use the band room as a way to get away from school while still in school if I ever need it.

Being a senior, to me, means that I am responsible for making all the other grades feel welcomed and supported, especially in the marching band. Being the drum major means making sure everyone feels cared for and no one is unhappy with their experience in marching band. So if I hear about someone being unhappy, I immediately check in on them and ask if there’s anything I can do to help rectify the situation. However, I also have to be sure that I’m not trying to make people happy so much that I don’t punish them for stepping out of line. I will never try to make it feel unfair that I’m giving them units, though. If I give someone units for being disrespectful to someone else, I will do the units I assigned with them so I’m not just standing there watching them. To quote a famous uncle, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I have a lot of power granted to me from the mutual respect I have built up over the past three years between myself and the marching band veterans and the mutual respect I’m building between myself and the new members, and the inherent power that the position of drum major has granted to me. I intend to use that power in order to help the band grow in their abilities and to help the band stay excited throughout the season.

If I could tell my freshman self something, it would probably be, “the next two years are gonna be rough, not for the reason you’d think, but you’ll be okay.” It was hard for me not to be able to see my friends during quarantine, but I made it through. I would tell my future self “I hope everything went well being a drum major and with vet sci,” because that is what I am most stressed about right now going into senior year. 

The next time I see this letter, I hope to see myself passing vet science and having gotten a superior in the marching season. However, if we don’t, I’ll still be super proud of both myself and the band. 

A couple questions I have for myself is:

• How is senior year going?
• Did you get accepted into VT?
  • Did you get accepted into the MVs?
• Did you get any new stickers for your car?
• How was the marching season?
• Did you get to see a surgery on an animal?
• Did you get to see a necropsy of an animal?

Right now life is going pretty well. I’m super happy because the marching band is in full swing and marching band is my happy place during this time of year. The only part I’m sad about is not being able to play sousa more, but hey, that’s what MV for a day is for. For the most part, though, I’m pretty content with life. 

Right now the motto I’m trying to live by is the Uncle Ben quote from earlier of “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is because it’s a good reminder that being a drum major isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and waving your hands until the music stops. There’s so much more to it than that. It’s making sure that people are content with where they are in the band, making sure that band is a happy place for them and not a burden that they have to do every day, and making sure they always feel welcome. 

Before the year is over, I hope to have learned how to do taxes, pay rent, budget, live with a roommate, and other important adulting stuff that I was never taught in school. 

That about covers it. I am aware of the abnormally large amount of times marching band was mentioned, but right now that is the major thing at the forefront of my mind, so I’m having a hard time switching off of that right now. While writing this I am in the car on the way to a marching band event, listening to marching band shows, with a sousaphone shirt on, and a sousaphone in the back of the car. So just an apology for talking about marching band so much.

Anonymous #4: 

Dear Future Me,

Hi. This is you at the beginning of your senior year, absolutely thriving. Or at least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t totally combust at the thought of everything happening in my life right now. Currently, my personality is interesting. I like to think I’m nice and a good listener, but a lot of the time when people talk to me about their problems, I zone out and forget what they said… so maybe I’m not that good. I’ve also noticed in recent years that I am terrible about hiding my emotions. At times I feel emotions too deeply to hide them effectively, so they are openly displayed on my face for everyone around me to see, which can be embarrassing when you look back on it later. I love watching (and re-watching) movies and especially TV shows. I’m planning on rewatching Anne with an E and Gilmore Girls for the millionth time as soon as fall comes. I also love reading really good books. However, I do have to mention that It takes me a thousand years to get through a book if it doesn’t completely blow my mind, I mean, socks have to be knocked off. The things I like about my life at the moment are that I clean at a Bed and Breakfast on the weekends, and that I have time to spend with my family and friends. As a senior this year, I like having an early release. A LOT! I also like being able to go to school and focus on my work knowing that I’m almost done. Sadly, the irony is not lost on me, I do realize that the only two things I could think of about liking school highlight how much I dislike school. 

A goal I have for this school year is to try my best with school stuff, and focus more on my life outside of school. Grades are way too much of a burden when you treat school like it’s the only important facet of a very complex life. Well, very might be a bit of an exaggeration. On April 3, 2023, when I see this, I want to be relaxed and in a place where I can say that I spent the past school year having a really good time with myself and with the people around me. 

During my time at Valley, I’ve learned to value asking questions when I’m confused. It sounds like a simple enough thing, but it is extra difficult for people who struggle with social anxiety. It has taken my time at high school to realize that it’s impossible to succeed if your questions are never answered. I have also learned to value time management skills, so that I can get everything done. I’m still pretty bad at it, but I can only get better… hopefully.

I don’t know how to process being a senior. I look back on so many years of school and am proud of what I accomplished, but I also think of how exhausting and stressful it has been at times. I truly don’t know how I managed to get here. It has felt like millions of  years have passed and simultaneously like it was yesterday that I was in Mrs. Malfair’s fifth grade class making pizza for a math lesson, playing at bingo night, reading my stories to the class, selling dog treats for our school field trip to the Baltimore Aquarium, and aggressively playing four square at recess everyday.

I would tell my Freshman self to take a second to breathe, and take things less seriously. I had so much social anxiety about coming to school, I put so much pressure on myself that I would dread coming in almost every day because all the thoughts constantly rushing through my head were exhausting. I think I have gotten better at acknowledging that what people think of me is insignificant, but I think I would give the same advice to future senior me. There is always more room for growth.  The next time I see this letter I hope everything is going well. I want to be confident in my grades, and truly able to reflect on, and be proud of everything that I have done during high school. 

My attitude towards life right now is a combination of stress and/or fear for all of the things that I have to focus on in the next few months, combined with not really caring. I used to take everything about school so seriously, and I still do, but I’m able to laugh about how ridiculously stressed I feel, and weirdly, that relieves a lot of stress. My hopes and dreams for this year are to graduate with good grades and do fun things in town with my friends before my sister moves out, and we all leave for college. The fun things including but not limited to The Bluemont Fair, and the WATERFORD FAIR. I swear, the waterford fair is the only thing that brings me joy. I promise that after I die I will come back and possess somebody once a year just so that I will be able to enjoy the Waterford Fair for the rest of eternity.

Motto: Definitely just keep swimming. Lol no, that was a joke…HA. I’d say to live like no one is watching is kind of a good one. Just to be yourself, be kind, and respect other people without worrying about what everyone thinks of you.

Some questions I have for future me are did you find something for Capstone? I hope so, cus I’m STUMPED. Did you do some scary social-exposure therapy? Did you do fun stuff with friends? Did you get another job? How’s Gran looking? She’s turning 90 in the fall, so we better keep an eye out. Elderly people are DROPPING, i.e., Queen Elizabeth.

This year I want to focus on being more independent. There are a lot of things that stress me out, like going places by myself, so I’d like to work on that before I transition into adulthood. I also want to get better at not taking things too seriously, or taking everything to heart. I’m a pretty sensitive person, so I need to recognize that one little comment, or embarrassing event isn’t the end of the world. 

Anonymous #5:

Dear Future Me,

Hi. Minor hobbies include practicing handwriting, complaining, and packing good lunches. Major hobbies include forgetting one key piece of information in a spreadsheet, saying far more than necessary about my mental health, and listening to the same song 327 times in a row. Core hobbies include journaling more than necessary and predicting life events based off of books and then worrying about them. Not much is super good right now, but we’re excited about rehearsal for Almost, Maine. That’ll be very fun. Good actors, thank god.

Generally, I am in my absolutely insane era. I’ve been there since high school began, but the slope of descent is increasing in grade. The speed of the vehicle is increasing. Perhaps it is not entirely internal, but the general ambiance. Today, I skipped out of class on a bathroom pass (read: took the long way there and back) and ran into four other people from my class also skipping, so we seem to be in accord. I won’t be telling you which class, for fear of persecution.

I am absolutely in my literary era once more. I took a break from writing over the summer, but I have returned. I would like to have finished my college essay by now, but fully fuck it. I will certainly be improved at dialogue writing by the time this is read again. April 3, 2023 is mid-musical, which is why I hope the companion piece to this writing isn’t hard. I will be utterly exhausted. Perhaps dead with it. Who can say. In order to make this easier on myself, let us continue our rule of 3’s structure.

Question one: how are we feeling about acting right now? Loosened at all? Becoming comfortable acting is a lifelong goal, one that I will need to put more energy into than I probably have at the current time. Maybe, by April, I will be able to say that I loathe it less. Maybe my voice will stop being an issue by then. Who can say. Certainly not me.

Question two: has the fucking friend group fallen apart yet? That is a goal for the medium long term; I like to call it throwing distance. God knows I love them, but the backstabbing cannot possibly last. It’s awkward giving a present to one twin and not another. Has the “Thing” been resolved? Will it just linger forever? Who can say. Certainly not the people involved.

Question three: is September going to make us drown ourself? Clearly not, if you’re reading this, but I am bound by time and space and fucking feelings. If I can get through this rehearsal I’ll see the besties again, I’ll get some gossip from ****, I’ll drop by *** at Starbucks, it’ll be better. It’s always a balance between the Geoffrey instinct and the actual breakdown. Who can say if I’ll get by? Absolutely not me. Anyhow, I believe I have exhausted the structure of this letter, and I am on my way.