Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. [Chinese proverb]

My Dear Prospective,

Today you are a five-year-old leaving cookies for Santa.
Your purity is a rare beauty.

You are yet to shake hands with week one.

I know why you're reading this.
You want secrets; the sullied truth from a weathered soul behind the brick and neon.
But I won’t give it to you.

It doesn’t work that way.

I could tell you every idiosyncratic tick each professor has,
I could show you all the coffee-stained assignments,
I could warn you incessant emails and meetings that don’t end when the sun says goodnight,
but it wouldn’t do much except tango with your nerves.

No one fully understands something until they’ve experienced it themselves.

And we have.
For sixty hearty weeks.

It gives us a past to pull from,
And morphs us into the future of this industry.

We learn by doing.

Kelly calls it focused chaos. Fenske calls it magic.
I call it sugar-free Red Bull.

We work behind a velvet curtain, tuning the unexpected
so what you never saw coming
- that moment, that reveal -
is genuine, real, and completely delightful.

I want you to retain that, if only briefly.

So clasp your purity like a new leather wallet.
Week one will pick your pocket soon enough.


Talia Ledner