The Vonnegut Letters

Letter One - "Fates Worse Than Death"

Letter One:

August 20th, 2015 - 10:16 PM

Dear Vonnegut,

I am an idiot. I figured that you, of all people. should know this from the beginning, seeing as I'm going to be writing these letters to you for most, if not all, of the school year. It only seemed right to give you fair warning before we began.

Then again, what am I even talking about? You're dead. Maybe receiving these letters from me will actually prove to be a "fate worse than death."

You're probably rolling in your grave. I apologize.

If we're supposed to be writing these letters seriously, I guess I should probably explain to you why Jesus has suddenly decided to tell you that your mailbox is overflowing with letters from a teenage girl who thinks more about cats than college.

My Honors English teacher, Mr. Lynch (whom everyone just calls Lynch, for some reason - I think I'm starting to get the hang of only calling teachers by their last names at this school) gave us a wonderfully ridiculous assignment to complete over the course of the school year. We have to write at least 100 pages of letters to someone we consider an influential figure, living or dead, in our lives. They can be a parent, an author, a friend; it doesn't matter. As long as they've made a significant impact on our lives, they can be our recipient.

That's where you come in. Reading your speech Fates Worse Than Death as part of the summer assignment for this class began to change the way I thought about how everything worked. From there, I only dove deeper down the rabbit hole, and now I'm pretty much hooked on everything you've done. I've listened to the audio recording for Fates more times than I can even remember, which is straight up commitment, there. (I'm sorry if that's creepy. You're just an admirable guy who thinks the same way I do. I hope you understand.)

Lynch said that he won't be reading these letters - the most he'll be doing is making sure we didn't just type "pasta" over and over again on every page, or copy and paste the entire script of Hamlet. We're pretty much free to write whatever we want, as long as we can prove we actually did the assignment.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I'll be writing to you about yet. Maybe I'll never be sure and these letters will be full of useless banter. Regardless, this assignment is worth 50% of my final grade in this class, so I'd better get a damn A. At least I'm already doing better than the girl that sits next to me in class - she's double spacing all of her pages and writing everything in size 18 font at the smallest. Yikes.

I should probably get back to the main point of this letter: the fact that I'm an idiot. Of course, you'll probably learn this after reading just a few of my letters, but I think I should start being more honest with myself and everyone else, so here we are.

I want to be a journalist, but I'm introverted and always terrified of leaving a bad impression on people. I want to go to New York and write, but I barely make enough money at The Hummingbird to pay for my college tuition. (Scratch that, half of my tuition. For the first year.) I want to keep my grades up and get a scholarship so I don't put myself in terrible debt, but I have neither the energy nor the willpower to keep up with 100% of my schoolwork. It's a vicious cycle, and I'm always caught in the middle, and I always end up looking like I'm a dumbass, and then I let it get to me. I'm trying not to fall back into that this year.

The only thing I have going for me right now is that our local newspaper, The Arrow Bridge Eye, has an open internship for three high school students, and I was selected as one of the finalists for my work with photography. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to balance busing tables at The Hummingbird with the internship, but I can't give this up. The fastest way into journalism is to have connections, and I think it might be time to start making ends meet.

Oh, shit - it's almost 11, and I still haven't done my reading for AP US History. I'm gonna have to leave this one where it is at the moment. APUSH is currently carrying my GPA, and if I want that scholarship, I'm going to have to at least try to keep up this year.

Thanks for listening to me ramble about my life. I'll be back sooner or later.

Signing off,

Aisling Beck