You. Are. Doing. Just. Fine.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to write an advice column to my 15-year-old high school self. What would I say? What do I wish I knew? How could I be better equipped? Hugely complicated/influenced by the fact that I now teach 15-year-olds as a full-time job, I set out to do what justice I could to the task. And anyway, we could use a reminder every once in a while, right?

This letter is as much a response to the brief as is it a celebration of Headstart - the confidence it gave me to chase my dreams, the safety it gave me to stumble and fall, and the support it has given me ever since ever time I chose my path. From being the 6th grade kid who walked into a bedroom-turned-classroom to an alum beaming at the red brick buildings, this is the story of the last almost-decade.

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Dear 15-year-old me,

I remember high school. I remember there were some good days and other bad days. I remember feeling like those IGCSE exams were the bane of all student existence and the pressure to do well, first batch and all. I remember being the first batch to graduate, and looking at Facebook pictures of makeshift graduation caps for this year’s batch, I remember our small little celebration in a classroom where junior students ripped pages of their notebook to write ‘I will miss you’ notes. I remember the group of us, four kids in total, who made that class, and having class pictures with more teachers than students. I remember Culture Class and science lab and doing the Wizard of Oz as a musical in that last year at school. I remember splashes of colour and the odd sound, weaving a tapestry that makes my memories of high school.

You know what I don’t remember though? I don’t remember what that big fight was about. I don’t remember the words inside the colourful mind map that we discussed in Geography class, my teacher and I, one on one. I don’t remember the days and the months and the years that were meant to go beside the doodled map of Europe we created, an F-shaped France and bits and bobbles all around it making up an entire continent aeons away. I don’t remember what the essay was on; just my teacher reminding me for the gazillionth time that ‘no one’ was two different words no matter what I thought. I don’t remember much of my Economics, only the sheaf of papers that accompanied Anna as he walked in, showing us what real preparation looked like. I don’t for the life of me remember the details of those classes; the dates and definitions, formulae and figures. But the dictum of being prepared? Oh yes, that one I do remember.

You see, I know high school can be tough. It is that uncomfortable mix of feeling settled because you grew up in that building and feeling restless because, well, you are fifteen. It is feeling like the unfairness of the world is summed up in the five alphabets of I-G-C-S-E, topped with the cherry of being the first batch. No pressure, hon. It is the joy of small classrooms – getting to know each other so well, learning to work together, blurring the lines between school-friends-family. It is also the nightmare of small classrooms – what happens if you fight with the one other girl in your class? I get it. I was there too, remember?

So here it is, my (and by that measure, future-your) sage words of wisdom. Put this up on that pin-up board of yours, wedged between Math formulae and Biology diagrams. You are doing fine.

You. Are. Doing. Just. Fine.

I could sit here and write tomes of all the things I wish you knew now, or the lessons I am praying you will learn. Except, when the time is right, I know you will. You will learn to accept yourself, be comfortable in your skin, make the most of every situation placed before you. You will grow into forming opinions and standing up for them, engaging in debate and holding your ground. You will get over the fear of walking into a room of strangers and come to embrace it, get past the terror of a stage and grow to feel comfortable with a mike. You will stop seeing ‘studious’ as an uncomfortable label attached to the back of an already too-long name and accept it as the person you are, even swapping it for ‘muggu’ in later years, laughing it off as just another descriptor of a complex character. You will figure out how to make your choices and live with their consequences. You will discern the path less taken and agonize over whether you want to be the one heading down that way, and then go ahead anyway. And through it all, you will be okay.

But I am getting a rather long way ahead of myself, jumping the gun almost a decade. For now, just know that you are doing okay. High school will come and go. Grade sheets will be celebrated and forgotten. Friends will be made and lost and then settle into the comfortable distance of occasional Facebook pings and the silent knowledge of support. Teachers will last, through one school and the next, through college, your first job and beyond, always the reassuring green dot on your Gmail chat list, a text away from help and hope. And every time someone asks you after a speech or an article or a presentation or just coffee where the seeds for everything after were sown, you will smile and talk about that school you once went to, a once-minimalist building where you painted on the walls and decorated the classrooms, where you shivered through your first speech and stumbled through your first performance. Always a Headstarter, you will say, and you will mean it, long after you are gone. Then as much as now, remember. You are doing okay. And when you feel like you aren’t doing okay, think back to a line of advice that will stay with you for years to come from a teacher in those high school classrooms. You aren’t Atlas. And you are doing okay.

Love,

23-year-old you