Below are two letters to myself. The first one addresses my future self and explains what I want to achieve in the next year. The second letter addresses my past self and reflects on my weaknesses and achievements. These are both for my media assignment. 

Dear Future self,

This reminds me of writing a new year resolutions list, except this is in letter form and I’m explaining myself. I’m sure I’ll laugh in the future when I re-read this and look at my goals. There is so much I’ve always wanted to do, but maybe the problem in achieving these goals wasn’t that I wasn’t motivated, it was that they weren’t detailed. I needed to create goals that would improve me. Which is what I’m going to have do here.

I’d love for in a years’ time to hear that a new magazine had been realized that was dedicated to all women. The magazine wouldn’t use Photoshop to adjust a models natural weight and it would feature emotional and helpful articles. It would be a magazine that women turned to when they need hope or happiness. I personally wouldn’t be able to achieve this but if someone else could, that would be the main highlight. If this happened it would make me want to become a better person. I would have people to look up who had made a difference in the mainstream media. It would make me feel happy, and proud of print media because it was doing something good.

A year from now I wish to have begun a blog. A blog tailored to critically reviewing movies and books. I do not – as of yet – have the desire to follow this a professional career, however this will allow me to become more articulate and analytical of media. I can use these analytical skills in the future and it’s a great skill to have.

Additionally, I may start a second blog, perhaps one that isn’t updated as frequently but is still updated at least monthly. This would focus on current social issues. I’d love to see a magazine or news show in the future that isn’t biased or one that doesn’t make assumptions based on someone’s race, gender and more. I’d like to begin something to project an ideal like this. I would research topics and then write a short article on a blog to present these findings. Not only will this help my writing skills but it will place me into a frame of mind where I except everyone’s opinion and can create an unbiased report based on these thoughts.

A year from now I want to be fully comfortable presenting in front of a group of people. While I do believe I have mediocre skills at the moment when it comes to presenting, I wish to adapt these skills to a highly professional standard. I have enough confidence to present in front of an audience, but this confidence comes from my own amusement. To present with confidence I try to have fun but this unfortunately means most of my presentations verge on the edge informality. I want to be able to achieve this level of confidence in front of different audiences and maintain a formal demeanor throughout.

While the list of goals may be small, I’m sure they will have a significant impact on me personally and make me into a better person.

Dear past me,

I recently realised that we go through a huge personality change during teenage years and this is presumably because of our surroundings. It certainly was the case for you or should I say me. Reflecting on the past is one of the best ways to improve yourself and discover how to make yourself a better person.

I started my first Media lesson four years ago, which is a scary thought. To think that I only discovered a subject I would come to love by chance and only four years ago is insane. I remember that you picked the subject because you had to. You had three options and that was the most appealing. It was requirement and you honestly knew little about it beforehand. I don’t think you’d expected to like it as much as you do. Our favourite part then and still is now being the researching element. You really shined when you were researching families in advertisements and the greatest music video of director of all time, along with the projects where you had to analyse these forms of media. I bet you never thought that you’d be reading through a sociology book trying to learn about different types of families over the years and how the decrease in the amount nuclear families directly effects the presentation of families in adverts too. I was using skills that I didn’t realise I had, to relate statistics to the media. I remember looking forward to these lessons and thoroughly enjoying something so entertaining. I feel silly now, remembering how I had no idea how important the Media around us is and the effect it has. I was oblivious to how the media shapes people and I’m still learning to this day how powerful it really is.

One quality I remember we possessed so much that stifled us, was the confidence. Or rather the lack of it. You were shy, extremely shy but you do improve. You improve massively so don’t threat! At the point of time you are being addressed here (year 10) your strengths lie in written reports, a platform where you can express yourself without being stifled by that shyness. It was rough presenting. I remember the sense of dread it brought, the only relief being the fact that you were allowed to present in front of a small group of people.  The first time, we were a mess. Stuttering, hardly maintaining eye-contact and the doubt in yourself was huge. It was bad, but you grew in yourself. You know that this is a subject your passionate about you wanted to do well, in fact when you did another presentation at the end of year 11, nearly two years later, you aced it. You were confident! You discarded your notes (which might not be the smartest thing to do in the future) and spoke without them. All you needed to do was present yourself as confident and believe in yourself. Surprisingly it works.

While believing in yourself is sometimes hard to do and honestly is such a huge cliché thing to say that I wouldn’t be surprised if you argued with me on this, having others believe and congratulate you is huge help. Believe me when I say I never expected some of the awards I got from teachers. You defiantly wouldn’t believe me. You won an award for best use of special effects in your music video! Not the embarrassing one from year 10, we have improved since then. Out of everyone in your class (In a-levels there was about 15 of us) you won the award! You see, while our ideas are creative (that’s one thing that you should start being proud of) we weren’t always spot on with taking our research and making a form of media from it. That documentary we made over a year ago, was entertaining to research, no doubt there. You picked feminism and you really went into depth to explore people’s views on it. The only issue is, that when you put your footage together to make the documentary it wasn’t logical. It didn’t feel like a documentary and could’ve done with more substance. All the research from learning about the different types of documentaries went to waste.

It was a relief to see that I’d learned from this mistake. While that project missed out on the grade you wanted, when you moved on to social action videos a couple of months ago, you got the highest grade for it. One huge concern of yours was making the social action video too much like a documentary, so a key focus in your research was making sure you didn’t confuse the two. When you first constructed the social action video, while it definitely wasn’t a documentary, it became more like a music video. Original footage accompanied by music with words typed on screen wasn’t effective. It was dull. That’s when you stopped and broke it down. You kept the music the same but with the added presenting clips, where you spoke to the camera, you added more substance. You’d successfully turned a mess, into a good social action video. You’d learnt from your mistakes. You took a step back and reviewed what you had and made changes to make sure you achieved the main purpose.

I think now, if I had to pick a time where we changed the most, where we tackled our weaknesses head on, was when you got the job at Mothercare. It was your second job, but it was permanent.  Even that one little factor made everything more important. We both knew that I needed to present myself as confident in order to get the job. I think the best part was when you told your friends that the interviewer said that you were confident! Your friends couldn’t believe it! The thing is, and I’ve only recently noticed this, is that in a room full of strangers you can talk. You can create someone new and confident and people don’t know who you used to be. But the people who you’ve been at school with for 6 or more years labelled you as the quiet girl. You couldn’t break it because you were the quiet one. Now though, you are not someone who would get labelled as quiet! While loud isn’t the right term either, you definitely are more confident. You can thank your job for that. You were put into situations where you had to approach customers and help them with whatever you could. Your entire job was centered around learning about babies, car seats, pushchairs etc. In fact, one great thing you got out of working there was developing that sense of independence and responsibility. It forced you to grow up and do things on your own. It also made you feel responsible for your actions. I hated that part of the job where I had to fit car seats or inform parents of the safety features regarding them. It was important to get these right, because you could be endangering a child’s life. You became so much more responsible for your actions through it.

We’ve had a pretty easy life though haven’t we? We were quiet, we didn’t stand up for ourselves much less our friends at times. The latter was one thing that upsets me to this day but people change. We have learnt since then. We know now that we mucked up. We have learnt from those mistakes though and that’s the main thing.