Dear 18 year old Norah,

Oh boy, do I have a lot to tell you! I know right now you are stressing about which college to pick, and I feel for you. Picking a college is really, really hard. I know you are up late at night, making lists in your head and frantically wondering if you will have any friends wherever you end up. I know that your heart is set on William & Mary but you are scared - scared that you are not fast enough to swim there and not funny enough to make friends and certainly not smart enough to stay afloat in your classes. I know you just had a recruiting trip there and loved everything about it even though it was raining the whole time, and I know a girl named Nina raced through the downpour with you to get a t-shirt at the bookstore and I know a boy named Chris yelled "See you next year!" at the end of the night as you both walked through the Sunken Gardens for the very first time. And I know that you want to commit there but are just so, so terrified of the future.

I know all these things, and you know them too, but here is what you don't know: William & Mary is a pretty difficult school, and being both a student and an athlete will push you in more ways you can count. Your freshmen year will feel like walking on a cloud, everything will be easy and of course you don't mind waking up for Adair mornings, and of course your roommate will feel like a sister, and of course your swim class will declare themselves to be the best ever, as close as can be, nothing will separate us. And of course you will come back from a 70 point deficit and win CAAs, because this is freshmen year and freshmen year is sacred.

But, little high school Norah, some of the most magical parts of your college experience will be revealed in the struggle. Because there will be moments when you swim a time in a dual meet and it is so so slow that you wish the ground would just eat you up. And there will be times when you study relentlessly for an accounting test only to totally and completely fail it, crying in your car outside of the business school. And times when your body aches from a hard practice and you still have to bike home. And there will be times when there is so much friend drama that you feel like your head will explode, and times when you are scared, and times when you are just flat out exhausted.

The good and the bad, so completely interwoven into one singular, amazing experience. Because I will not sugarcoat things, little Norah, these four years will change and mold you into a different person than the one you are now. There will be good times, and there will be bad times, but such is life. And there will be a moment, four years from now, in the middle of a pandemic (yeah ... some strange things happen in the future) when you are forced to say good-bye too soon. And you will walk around campus one last time, and see the pool one last time, and you will remember how completely this team and this school shaped you. And you would give anything, absolutely anything, for five more minutes as a part of the Tribe.

So, 18 year old Norah, don't be scared. There will be hard and bad but there will be infinitely more good, so much good you cannot even understand, enough good to fill books and books of memories. Take the good. Learn from the bad. Listen to your heart, and if your heart is telling you to join Tribe Swim, then do it. You will not regret it.

Love,
Future Norah