My sister is going to be a freshman this year. Not at Wayne, oh no, she needed a longer runway for the landing jet plane that is her life, but still, a freshman is a freshman. So I decided to write a letter to her.

Sayde, I know you probably feel a little bit down in the shit puddle right now. You miss your friends more than I can imagine, and you’re probably worrying about whether or not people will like you in this strange, new place. Trust me, if you stick around long enough, you’ll find a group of people who you can’t live without. It took me two years to make really, really good friends, but you’ve got the added advantage of not being inherently socially awkward.

Sayde, I know you miss your boyfriend Jared. You remember my friend Max, right? He spent hours and hours and hours on skype calls with his girlfriend back in Omaha while he was here in Wayne, and eventually decided to move back just so he could be closer to her. I’m not telling you to be leery of long-distance relationships. Heck, I’ve seen ’em go a hundred different ways. There’s no way of knowing what the right answer is in this situation, there’s no way to tell if you and Jared are going to last, or if breaking up now would be better for both of you. That’s the real lesson here: Life is messy. I think the best advice I can give is to selfishly follow your own desires with zeal, while at the same time being a thoughtful and forgiving person.

Sayde, I remember taking a lot of stupid classes. I practiced things that felt a lot more like high school than they did “the next step in the grand experience known as life.” Get used to it. You’re always going to get zits, you’ll always be on your period, the school food will always taste like a geriatric anus, etc. There is no “promised land” of happiness where everything goes well and oompa loompas bring you hors d’oeuvres on golden platters. The trick though is finding out what stuff makes the zits and the periods and the lemon party ass-eating all worth it.

Sayde, you’re about to meet a bunch of kids who are better than you at forensics. And speech. And improv comedy. They’ll all have better fashion sense and more money and weird hobbies like bowfishing and glass-blowing. I reacted poorly to meeting these kinds of people. I lied to myself, calling them pretentious, stuck-up air-heads. I kept up this mental facade, when all they wanted was to be my friends. I know you probably already learned this in high school, but when you’re cut-off from your support system (your parents, your friends, your brilliant older brother), it’s easier to forget the basics of friendship. If you make room for people, then they’ll make room for you.

Sayde, don’t be afraid to tell somebody when they’re acting like a scum-fuck bastard, or that you really admire them. Also, always wear a condom and never drive drunk.

Love, your brother Thadd