[2019] Letter to My Younger Self

I released this in February of 2019, it is 5000 words read at your own risk

Dear 17-year-old Filmore,

You’re probably sitting in class at Central High School right now goofing off with your boys or hanging with your girlfriend. It’s your last semester of high school and you still haven’t decided on where you’re going to school. You hope it’s the University of Florida or Florida State University, schools with top tier Division I athletic programs and diehard fans. Scholarships are rolling in, you’re in a relationship, you have a car and your boys! Your mom is probably annoying you right now to apply for scholarships and you’re really not interested. You don’t understand why she is making a big deal because you think you’re set to go wherever you choose. You have great grades and test scores so you believe you’re entitled to go wherever you choose. Lesson number one, as your Dad always says life owes you nothing. In a few weeks, the University of Florida financial aid packet will come in and all the bickering your mom was doing will make sense. You only applied to 4 schools, in reality only three, but you had to apply to Fort Valley because you were virtually guaranteed the CDEP Scholarship. You were in the M-SEA program that prepares you for CDEP but you actually hated going so naturally Fort Valley will be on the bottom of the list. I’m here to tell you that you’re about to learn a very valuable life lesson on how things don’t always go as planned, and sometimes your Plan “A” isn’t the best plan for you anyway. Start thinking ahead and doing less of your usual in the moment thinking.

Bad news your Plan A, which by the way is the only real plan you had, is going to fall through. You will have to pull out $30,000 a year in loans to attend the University of Florida and you’ll realize you cannot afford to attend UF or any other public out of state school. You could’ve attended an in-state school for free but you didn’t apply to any of them besides Fort Valley. You also have a full ride to Tuskegee University, but you only applied because your aunt went so you really don’t consider the university too much. If we’re being honest you don’t want to go to an HBCU because you’ve read how underfunded they are and you think you deserve better. Lesson number two, You won’t always get what you want so stop expecting to, be humble or be humbled. I beg you to take the first option because unfortunately your mindset will cause you to be humbled and that is NO fun. Your parents are going to suggest going to Fort Valley because you aren’t sure exactly what you want to do and you’ll have excess scholarship money. Your parents have your best interest in mind, listen to their advice but in the end, you have the right to make your own decision. Remember this at all costs because your parents, aunt, and grandmothers are going to be the only people. You will begrudgingly go to Fort Valley and vow to only spend 3 years there so you can transfer to Georgia Tech, a more prestigious university than the rural Georgia college your mom works at. In an attempt to make yourself feel better, you’ll validate your decision to choose Fort Valley by saying  “ The full ride scholarship you’re receiving will allow you to get a large scholarship refund.”  I’m not going to spoil the rest of your high school days, but I think you should cherish them because life moves quickly and waits for nobody.

You’ll graduate high school on a Saturday and on a Tuesday morning, three days after graduation, you will arrive on campus. Your mom drove to work before you and will check out your room after you move your belongings in. You will move in with your CDEP peers, most of whom you’ve known for years through M-SEA but never truly connected with, and quickly realize that you will have a bunch of free time with your summer schedule. Your gameplan is simple, you’ll attend school until Thursday and go home directly after your class to see your real friends. This plan will work flawlessly over the course of the summer and you believe that you can easily do this for six more semesters. Just like the pitchers in Little League, life will throw you curveballs and Fall 2016 will be a mean one.

Freshmen have an orientation week where they are allowed to move onto campus a couple of days before everyone else to get acclimated with the campus and their peers. You'll arrive on campus with your girlfriend and your mom will walk from her office to Building 7. Building 7 is an all-male freshman dorm and while your summer semester was very relaxed, the energy of 7 is chaotic. Despite this, with the help of your mom and girlfriend, your first official college move in will be successful. Mom will go back to work and you will head back to Macon with your girlfriend. Following the blueprint, you don’t come back to school until Monday when classes start. You’ll quickly realize that the same chaotic energy you felt inside Building 7 radiates all across campus. Fort Valley will feel like Central High School if you could stay overnight. It’s time for our next lesson and for once you won’t have to learn it the hard way. While your family is not rich, you’re not poor and it will become very clear that you have been afforded opportunities that many of your classmates were not. You were afforded the opportunity to attend private school in Middle School and participate in the International Baccalaureate Program throughout High School, so you aren’t accustomed to taking classes with people outside your cohort. However in college no matter what your GPA or aptitude is, everyone is in the same classes. This will be your first real experience with people with varying social and academic backgrounds and you’ll begin to appreciate the sacrifices your parents have made for you. You dislike being seen as the smart person so you'll use the survival skills you’ve learned from Central and working at the restaurant to mask your intelligence in class. IB has set you up to breeze through your classes and you’ll continue on with the blueprint of going home every weekend. You are about to quickly learn that while you may not struggle academically, Fort Valley will challenge you in a variety of ways.     

           You’re going to go to class and straight back to your room each day counting down the days until Friday. You won’t attend or participate in any on-campus events which means the people you know on campus will be extremely limited. Your only friends will be your CDEP peers until a boy stops you as you walk out of class asking if you know where the CDEP director’s office is. Later the week he will realize that you both live on the same hallway and he’ll make himself a frequent visitor. You’re a naturally passive person and so you’ll allow the unannounced visitor to continue throughout the year. He will eventually join CDEP and in the process get you into your first piece of trouble. One night you will let his intoxicated roommate, who is also your co-worker, come into our room and they will begin to play fight. Eventually, our frequent house guest decides to spray YOUR fire extinguisher at his drunk roommate, and you can guess what happened next. For those who don’t know when you use a fire extinguisher, the contents inside expand once it is sprayed. Within a minute, Building 7’s fire alarms were sounding and everyone was forced out the building. Your new buddy will flee the scene due to enraging his drunk roommate who is scared of getting in trouble due to underage drinking. What happens next will teach you a very valuable lesson about being wary of the company you keep. Campus Police in conjunction with the Fire Department will come and investigate the setoff. They’ll come out of the building and call for all residents of 207 to come with them back to the station. All eyes will be on you and your roommate as you are whisked to the station. You aren’t worried because you know you didn’t do anything wrong but your roommate is panicking as if he has never been in trouble. You’ll both write your statements, they’ll match and both of you will be let off the hook. The lesson you will take is simple. Watch the company you keep, because those you allow into your environment can either positively or negatively alter the trajectory of your life. This isn’t Central anymore and as you get older more people will want to be your friend. Choose wisely or suffer the consequences. You’ll forgive your house guest but not after a good period of time, learn the power of love and forgiveness early to those who are genuine. We’ll talk about this later cause your personal life is going to spiral. The good news is that nothing else too interesting will happen your first year and you’ll slowly become acclimated to your environment. You’ll join the National Society of Black Engineers and travel to Kansas City on a road trip and through that experience, the people on that trip will also become your friends. The culminating point of your freshman year will be when you receive an offer to do research at an Army Research Laboratory in White Sands, New Mexico that you will accept.

We haven’t talked about finances yet so this is a great time to discuss it. You’ve never really had a large amount of money that belonged to you in your life. You work in the family restaurant 4 days a week, and during a good week you make $80. You spend that on gas, dates with your girlfriend, candy, and save the rest for a videogame or whatever you’re interested in. Your “bag” is about to drastically change from the excess scholarships your mom forced you to apply to. On that 4th Friday when refunds drop you’ll go from having a couple of dollars in your account to 5 figures overnight. This is why your mom was on your case about applying to scholarships because it will afford you financial freedom. However, you will learn that you can very easily lose that freedom. While you are indeed very literate, I’m here to tell you that you suffer from financial illiteracy. Within a day of your refund dropping, you will spend over $5,000 on things such as a laptop, new phone, an unlimited data plan, insurance, and some other toys you don't need. Let me ingrain two things into your head, separate your wants from your needs and it’s not about what you make, it’s about what you keep. Money can change both you and the people around you. You’re going to let the money get to your head, and you’ll pretty much blow through the money for that semester. You do a little bit better the next semester, but your financial discipline will still be poor. Now you’re going to go across the country for 10 weeks to live on your own, and for the first time nobody will be able to bail you out if you run into any problems. 

    New Mexico and Georgia have almost nothing in common. For example, rural in Georgia means you’re surrounded by trees while rural in New Mexico means you’re in a desert with no vegetation. The military base and desert in New Mexico will make Fort Valley feel urban. You’ll walk 15 minutes everyday to work, buy groceries out of the convenience store, and every Friday eat Subway, which is the only restaurant on the base. On the bright side, you’ll have free housing while making $20/hr and being located in the desert will keep your cost of living low. While in the desert you’ll learn that money will not make you happy(if we ever get insanely rich we’ll revisit this statement), and how important it is to try new things. At work, you’ll learn you hate doing research and eventually it will get to the point that you dread Sundays because you know Monday morning you’ll be walking to work. The money you’re making doesn’t entice or motivate you at all, you’re ready to go home. This is important because you’ll realize that pure research is uninteresting to you if you’re not passionate about it so you’ll understand that getting a Ph.D. is probably out of the picture. However, the most important lesson you’ll receive is the importance of fighting through adversity. For the first time in your life and for ten consecutive weeks you’ll feel like the dumbest person in the room. To add insult to injury you’re the only person of color in the whole office who isn’t a sanitation worker and one of three college students. You just got hit with your first haymaker and you’re 2000 miles away from home. For the first few weeks, you will stay on the canvas and allow yourself to be defeated. However you’re going to rise off that canvas and regroup, I cannot stress how important it is for you to pick yourself up. Life is going to throw haymakers and some of them are GUARANTEED to connect, no matter how much it hurts I need you to get back up as quickly as possible. A paradigm shift is what is going to push you to lift yourself off the canvas. You’re going to realize that you’re the only person from your college, a historically black college and university while also being apart of the handful of minorities on the base who have been afforded this opportunity. You’ll realize that the program’s perception of not only you but your entire institution will be based on your performance.  This will motivate you to fight against that adversity because you understand that your performance will affect, positively or negatively, the people who come after you. As you’ve been told often by your dad to just equal with your peers of other ethnicities you’re going to have to work twice as hard. As the weeks pass by you’ll begin to reach out for help, learn more about your research topic and work through the adversity. There’s going to be a bunch of things you don’t want to do in life that you will have to do because people are depending on you, learn this sooner rather later and you might avoid a knockdown.

    You’ll handle your business in the desert and be thankful for the opportunity. You learn a lot about yourself when you’re placed outside of your comfort zone, I encourage you to willingly go outside of your comfort zone. For your second year at Fort Valley is going to be the most tumultuous year to date and I’ll start by giving you the good news. You’re going to follow the same formula as before, going home every Friday but I forgot to mention you were elected President of the National Society of Black Engineers at the end of your first year. Your biggest goal is going to be getting your members to conferences because you notice a problem at Fort Valley is that students have a lack of exposure. You’ve never been President of any organization before, to be quite honest you don’t like elections because usually they are not based on merit. Leadership is tough, and you’ll see firsthand how difficult it is to manage personalities, plan for conferences and solicit money. Also since you haven’t cultivated any relationships and you struggle with asking for help you’ll be a one man army. This is going to be very taxing, ineffective and limiting but just like every obstacle you’ve faced so far it will come to pass and you’ll get your peers to both NSBE conferences. 

Also for the first time in your life you’re going to attempt to have an actual wardrobe and as a byproduct start flipping shoes. People who have known you know that you’re one of the few black men who doesn’t care to brush their hair or dress presentably. I actually can bet you’re wearing a graphic tee and bootcut jeans right now reading this letter. What will prompt you to try out a new wardrobe is the concept that people intrinsically treat people better or worse if they are dressed in a certain way. So yes in effect this will be a social experiment and what will confirm is that how you are presented matters to a substantial amount of people. This year-long experiment will teach you there are people who base their perception of you solely on how you present yourself, and while you don’t care too much about your appearance you quickly realize having a respectable wardrobe is an advantage. I’ve already talked about your finances so please avoid Lenox Square Mall at all costs. You’ll thank me later if you follow this advice and please don’t get caught up in the name brand hype. After owning and paying for designer brands and shoes you’ll realize it’s a money pit. There’s an influx of stylish and affordable clothing available, pick from it. I’ve given you the results of the experiment so you don’t have to do it yourself, save yourself the time and $.

We haven’t talked too much about friendships but due to meeting your uninvited houseguest’s cousin, he’ll slowly expose you to a completely new side of Fort Valley. The Fort Valley you’ve avoided. In addition to this cousin, you’re going to befriend a photographer, an educator, and an aspiring campus queen. They will each bring you different perspectives of Fort Valley, inspire you to attend events and unbeknownst to them ultimately change your perception of Fort Valley State. Your houseguest’s cousin will eventually turn into your roommate your senior year but before that his spontaneous nature will lead you into many situations on campus, good and bad. You’ll learn from him that being bold can get you places you didn't think you would be able to. Your photographer friend, who is also a biology major and aspiring pharmacist, will show you the power of kindness and to pursue all your passions no matter how varying they may be. Your educator/athlete friend is going to be able to expose you to varying ideologies, new people as well as knowledge and wisdom about the University. Your aspiring campus queen will teach you the power of perception and staying true to who you are. We’ll save your roommate and uninvited houseguest for another time, you might just have to experience their impact yourself because it’s going to be a roller coaster ride. Before your second year ends, a group of you are going to decide to found a new organization on campus, the Faithful Black Men Association, in order to help bring change on campus. It starts as a joke but you’ll quickly begin to take it seriously and in turn so will they. I want you to remember that you’re a leader and people will naturally feed off your energy, positively or negatively. Channel that energy wisely and make calculated moves. We’ll talk more about this later because unfortunately, that’s the end of the good news and you’re about to face a bunch of (L)essons. 

Since you’ve been back from New Mexico your relationship has been deteriorating and for once you won’t have a solution to the problems. Also in November, you’ll lose your great aunt who was really starting to become more like a grandmother since you began working at the restaurant. By the start of 2018 your relationship with your girlfriend will be no more and after nearly three years you’ll be without the first person you loved outside your family. There’s going to be a lot you take for granted in your relationship but you’ll also learn about your likes and dislikes. My advice to you is to cherish what you have now bud because as I told you earlier life owes you nothing. You are an internalizer and so you will internalize these losses and block out anyone from knowing exactly how you’re feeling or that you’re feeling anything for that matter. I cannot put into words how you’ll feel but for the rest of the school year there will be a void in your heart. You will learn firsthand that love can be such a beautiful and twisted thing. I also advise you to set aside time to grieve and learn that it is okay to show your feelings to ones that care about you. During this time is when you’ll realize that your friendships and relationships with people are what matters most to you, not career success, not money but being around the people who want the best for you and you want the best for them. We’ll dive into this later, we’re not done with the bad news yet. You’re also going to make some financial mistakes solely on the basis of pride, you need to learn that it is okay to fail and that is a natural part of life. Using money to cover up your errors will only delay the inevitable and once you’re unable to patch up the situation anymore the errors will come back compounded and it will hurt worse. I haven’t mentioned that you’ve been afforded the opportunity to attend a few conferences and received a few job offers for the summer. You’re probably wondering why this wasn’t placed in the good news section. You’re going to decline your offers and hold out for one company in particular. You won’t get the job, and you still haven’t mastered how to handle failure. It’s just going to feel like another blow to a sinking ship. Let me tell you something though, betting on yourself and FAILING was the best possible outcome. You’re a very risk-averse person in general so when you take bets you almost always win. I cannot emphasize how important failing is and learning from your failures. However, there are still more lessons to be learned and your situation will get worse. Due to your financial decisions, declining job offers and your mental health, you’re not going to intern anywhere over the summer. You’ll actually have an opportunity that you’ll decline because of the factors in play. You’ll be at the house sulking and realize how quickly you can go from the top of the world to ground level. The same advice I gave you after your breakup is the same advice I will give now. Always remember that life owes you nothing and that everything you have now can be gone in an instant. I cannot stress though that being at home was the best possible outcome because you needed time to actually grieve everything that had happened over the school year. You had internalized everything that happened and kept it all in, but like a volcano, you will eventually erupt. In June, you’ll realize that you’re starting to show signs of instability in front of your friends, which never happens. You’ll realize it is time to temporarily decommission yourself and take time for yourself. During this time you’ll also plan out your options for your senior year, I will get to that very soon because another curveball is coming. I just want you to know that your health is most important and you should always prioritize it as such, don’t get lost in the sauce, trust me. People are depending on you.

Soon it is August and your senior year will begin. Once you’ve hit rock bottom, you ain’t got nowhere to go but up so you are extremely optimistic. You haven’t figured out what school you’re going to transfer to and you’re not even sold on the idea of getting an engineering degree. Remember how I said it is important to have a plan but sometimes your backup plan is better than the original? Your first semester will exemplify this. With your newfound perspective on Fort Valley and the help of your friends, you’re going to try to make FBMA one of the few organizations that actually uphold their mission. You remember that lesson we learned about adversity in New Mexico? It’s going to be put to the test from the jump. There’s going to be people who don’t want your organization on campus because they think you’re trying to copy them. Now they’ve never had a conversation with you all about it but they will have their perception of the organization and have it as their truth. People are going to hate on you regardless of what you do so don’t try to be the people pleaser that you have been.  They almost succeed in blocking your organization’s creation but as the saying goes  “almost don’t count for nothing”. In your first week of hosting events, a few of your close friends won’t repost your flyer or even attend your events. One event you’ll have five people show up to. This will teach you the importance of supporting your friends in everything they do. It doesn’t have to be verbal and you don’t have to make a scene, just show up when you have the time. You’ll be angry at the close friends who give you excuses or none at all but forgiveness is a powerful thing. Learn to forgive and communicate early because it might even salvage a relationship or two. Despite the initial showing, your organization will host a lecture series, motivational speeches, food drives, and much more in its first semester. While the phrase “Who runs the yard” usually refers to Greek organizations or Royal Courts, you all will indeed “run the yard” that first semester. Embrace the storms in your life and keep going full throttle. (Don’t be scared of hydroplaning)

As crazy as it may seem, through analyzing your friends you’re going to realize Fort Valley is full of potential but that potential isn’t being transferred correctly, there are failures on levels between administrators, faculty and students. You’ve been placed in extremely great situations in your life and it is going to put you ahead of the curve. Remember to be grateful and practice humility because you know that it can all be lost in an instance. You can either extend a hand to those who need help or run your race. I recommend you take the selfless route but we’ll talk about that later. Sitting in class I'm sure you’ve googled Fort Valley’s 4-year graduation and noticed it varies between 5% and 15% depending on the year, and it’s 6-year graduation rate hovers around 30%. This will further push you away from even considering Fort Valley an option. When you googled University of Florida’s 4-year graduation rate conversely it was 67% so when you inevitably come to Fort Valley you will trot in with an elitist mindset. As you can see life is going to humble you, so I’m telling you now that it’s better to learn from what I am telling you now. You are better than no one, but no one is better than you. As cliche as it sounds, treat everyone as your equal it will get you further in the long run I promise. 

Scholars in CDEP are expected to graduate in 3 years and after glancing at those graduation rates your plan of going home every weekend is going to reduce the chance of you meeting anyone out of CDEP that could put you off your path. However, from NSBE and your circle of friends who are outside of CDEP, you will begin to realize a few things. First and foremost,  “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a very accurate quote that is applicable to many areas of your life. Secondly, Numbers rarely paint the whole picture, you need to read into the numbers. You will discover that a sizable amount of upper levels are only offered once a semester, so if you fail you will have to wait another year and most of these courses are only offered in the summer. People will tell you advisement isn’t the best and you’ll notice that the culture here can be similar to a black hole. Most importantly, graduating in four years isn’t a recipe for success or matter if you’re doing what you need to do. People learn at different speeds and if you look at historically who HBCUs take in, you would know that the system has indeed failed a portion of the population up to now. Besides by CDEP standards, you’re going to be a "failure" anyway since you’re actually going to graduate in four years. I can guarantee that you're startled now, and this is where having backup plans come into play.

In your third year, you’re going to be afforded the opportunity to go to many conferences in a variety of fields and have your eyes opened to many different paths that you never knew existed. These conferences are convincing you more and more to ditch doing the second degree required by CDEP and to pursue other opportunities that you are more interested in. You’ll look into graduate schools(that aren’t heavy on research), full-time roles, and internship opportunities. You’ll be afforded a mixture of these opportunities and this will allow you to go from having one preset path to a handful of paths. Life will throw you curveballs and this is why it is important to have plans because you’ve been doing this all on the fly. This is where I remind you yet again about sometimes your backup plan is better than the original plan. You’re going to be afforded the opportunity to become an Apple HBCU Scholar, a program you were too scared to apply for in your second year of college. This opportunity will afford you the chance to make twice what you were making in New Mexico an hour and receive a $25,000 scholarship. The catch is you’ll have to stay an extra year to serve as an ambassador even though you’re going to be complete all necessary classes for your Mathematics Degree in May of 2019. You’re going to be conflicted about this because inside your CDEP cohort will graduate EXCEPT you. I challenge you to start looking at the positive in every situation and to stop comparing your journey to someone else’s. You’ll realize that by deferring your matriculation you can maximize your paths, receive additional scholarship money, help your peers and use your newfound wisdom to make the best decision for yourself. You’re in your own lane, everyone is different so while you may be creating your own path don’t be afraid to take your own path.

While I’ve let you in on some defining moments you still have a lot to experience and learn. To help you out a bit more  I’m going to leave you with a few more pertinent pieces of advice. The first piece of advice is simple and that’s to do the right thing. It’s much easier said than done, especially when it becomes an inconvenience for you. Having integrity and strong moral values will get you much further than you realize now. By now you should realize that you’re inevitably going to make mistakes in every facet of your life, everyone does. There are going to be times you promise things to people that you cannot fulfill, especially running your new organization. Own up to your mistakes, swallow your pride and make a genuine effort to make amends even if it means staying up all night to fulfill a promise you made. Good things happen to good people, be a good person always.

  Also please remember who you actually are. In high school, you were perceived as the jokester who also was intelligent. In college, you will create facades of yourself that you will show to different people in your life in an attempt to protect yourself. Practice being vulnerable even if the last time got you hurt. Letting past failures affect your future is a recipe for disaster. You will intentionally show each of your close friends in Fort Valley a different piece of yourself. Your reasoning is that similar to a jigsaw puzzle, they’d all have to come together to figure out the true picture of who you truly are and that they won’t have the insight to do this. You’re correct with this assumption but you haven’t accounted for when you and close friends who have seen extremely different sides of you come together to fellowship in one place. You won’t know where to set the boundaries so you’ll make selfish decisions to protect your own emotions and persona you choose the emulate. This decision will lead you to cause close friends hurt in the end so I am going to advise you to become more selfless. I recommend that you save the facade for the outsiders looking in and show those that you’ve let into your life see the real you all the time. This will be difficult because being vulnerable is the last thing you want to be but it will significantly aid in your personal growth. I challenge you to look at vulnerability as one of the greatest measures of courage and take a leap of faith, trusting that your close friends aren’t going to intentionally hurt you. You’re going to make mistakes with your friends so make sure you make a genuine effort to make amends in order to keep them in your life. If you’ve apologized sincerely and made a genuine effort to make amends and accepted your consequences you’ve done all you can do. Your friends are human too and when they inevitably make a mistake in your friendship, practice love and forgiveness if they make a genuine effort to make amends. The more successful and transparent  you become the harder it will be to find people who love you for you and not for what you can offer them.Don’t dwell on situations you can’t control anymore because the ball will no longer be in your court. People don’t have to forgive you and like I have told you before they nor the world owes you a thing. 

Last but not least, work hard and remember that your journey isn’t just for you. You love to cut corners, and you’ll gain a  reputation as a person who works smarter not harder. While efficient is a great thing to be, you’re going to learn that sometimes you just have to be able to work hard. Some processes just take time and there are no shortcuts to everything. Your dad is going to tell you one day before you graduate that “You never will know your limits into you put all your effort into something” and I am here to tell you that he indeed was right. Eventually, you are going to have to put in the hours and it’s better for you to build your work ethic right now in high school. Start small and read the books assigned for your literature classes and not SparkNotes. Remember, Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

While you’re never going to care about being on the Royal Court, SGA or any organization that could give you high exposure, don’t think you won’t have any responsibility to better your University. At all of the conferences you attend, you are generally the only Fort Valley scholar at the conference. You’re going to grow wary of trying to apply for conferences or opportunities for HBCU students but your HBCU isn’t one of the selected HBCUs. You’re going to get tired of people and top tier companies have no information about your University or Fort Valley. You’re going to realize that your performance can change the circumstances for the people that come behind you and that these people’s perception of your ENTIRE school will be based solely off of you. First impressions really do mean a great deal. You will have to learn things on the fly and deal with pressures that no one else on your campus will be able to relate to. I told you that you’re creating your own path and in the end, you’ll leave the vast majority of the people you meet with a positive lasting perception of your institution. You hate being in the spotlight and revealing details of your life and while you never asked to be a trailblazer, however it will be quite evident that you are becoming one. As they say with great power comes great responsibility, which means there will be expectations you are expected to uphold. You will realize that one of the responsibilities you have is to prepare your peers and the people that will come after you because as Nana always says “IV, there’s always someone watching you.” Anyone that tells you Fort Valley’s culture is great is lying but anybody who says it isn’t improving is naive. Fort Valley is full with potential just as you are and it is now your responsibility to help others unlock theirs which in turn will continue to unlock more of your own. Never get to the point where you think you’re too good to help someone else because I as I said earlier you definitely didn’t get to where you are alone.

You probably have a lot of questions and I have only given you summaries of a few chapters in your Book of Life. There are tons of both triumphs and heartbreaks I have left out that you will inevitably experience. I want you to quickly realize one of the best teachers in life is learning from other people’s experiences so I beg you to take all the experiences I have gifted you and learn from them. It is way less painful this way so pay attention to details and learn from your peers' experiences as well.

As Deion Sanders says, Life is about moments. We each have a multitude of moments in our lives. It’s what we do with those moments that separate us. You’re going to have many more moments in your college years but I am telling you to maximize the moments starting now as you walk through the hallways of Central High School. Your life is about to drastically change whether you’re prepared or not, so I suggest taking the preparation route. In three years you’ll be twenty years old reflecting on your college experience and for the first time in your life you’ll write down your goals for the upcoming year. While you may not have known your life was going to change when jumping from high school to college this time you’ll know that as you finish your Mathematics degree your life is going to change yet again.  While I cannot predict what will come next in your life I do know that everything you have been through has prepared you for whatever you will face next.

Bet on yourself. You have a winning lotto ticket in your hand and I expect you to use all twenty years’ worth of experience you have to decide what to do next. 

I believe in you bud.

With Love,

Filmore

PS: Go see your mom in her office sometimes, call your dad and aunt occasionally, and attend some of your brother’s soccer games. They always have your back, return the favor.