Pretend for a few minutes that you are 30 years older. With that in mind write a letter to yourself detailing who you have becoming and all the accomplishments you have made. Include details about your life in high school and how you have changed as you've grown. What is your job? Are you married? Do you have children? Are they different from the way you were when you were in high school. Be detailed, use this to introduce yourself to myself and the class. Minimum half a page.

On Halloween, my best friend’s older brother sold us each one Poland Spring water bottle filled with watered-down vodka. There are now 15 dollars less to my name. We drank this vodka with a great deal of teenage bravado — trying not wince at the clear liquid’s resemblance to rubbing alcohol. My friend’s father made a crudité platter for us. The night ended with me throwing up baby carrots and mini peppers in my dad’s Honda, at the first hard left out of my friend’s driveway. Never have I felt more like a 16-year-old.

Future self, I hope you are more sophisticated now. Not a “blousy” adult who wears long necklaces — but the kind of adult who seems like they drink salads, wear camel coats and know the definition to words like “palaver.”

My dad didn’t say anything. I knew he understood what had happened, and why. Maybe the same thing had happened to him when he was 16. Silence hung between us like fog; I felt embarrassed to be alive.

He turned on NPR. Nina Feldman was reporting on memories. She said that our natural tendency is to misremember our experiences; we don’t understand what makes us happy, so we’re likelier to put ourselves into situations that actually make us unhappy. Her voice rolled on: For example, she said, there was a study in which people on vacation would write down how happy they were, on the hour. When they returned, they were asked to recall the happiest moments of their vacation. Almost no one’s memory of their happiest times lined up with what they actually experienced. It gets worse, she said. When people go to plan their next vacation, they unknowingly dedicate their time to things they thought they enjoyed, but actually hated.

This is not the kind of person I want to be. Future self: I hope you are not lying on a beach right now, surrounded by sand, shielding your lunch from a seagull. Beaches make you famously agitated. You hate them. Don’t forget it.