A Letter To My 17-Year-Old, Future Mansion-Having Self, By Zoe Coombs Marr

If youth is wasted on the young (someone enlightened said that once, right?), what would you have told your 17 year old self? Together with UTS:INSEARCH – which in a nutshell is a service that helps you find another way into UTS – we approached some friends of Junkee and asked them to pen a letter to their younger self as they prepare to head out into the big wide world.

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Dear Zoe,

Greetings from the future. I’m writing to you from a café near the ABC studios. You (we?) work there now! Also, café culture has really taken off. So has kale! What is kale, you ask? It’s the future. Find out what it is and invest in it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ve never been good at staying on track, you know what it’s like. Oh, and we still procrastinate, sorry. This thing is due in, like, a second! But of course, you know what that’s like too. God, I feel so comfortable talking to you.

I’ve been asked to contact you to talk about your future, a lot of which is my past, so I don’t really care about it as much as you and there are huge chunks of it I can’t even remember (turns out we like beer – a lot). I also don’t really know the rules of this time-travel thing, and for all I know, this letter could end up rupturing the time-space continuum and changing the course of events a-la Back To The Future, so when I sign off this letter and look up to find myself in a mansion, I’ll know I gave you the right advice. Fingers crossed.

Now I don’t want to give too much away (see: time-space continuum) but I will say this — your suspicions are right. After this year, nobody is going to care about your UAI, which is a bit of a bummer because it’s actually pretty good and you love bragging. But it’s not called a UAI anymore, I don’t even know what it is called and neither does anyone you know. That’s how much nobody cares. A few people will care about where you went to school, but those people are douchebags.

Also, the term ‘douchebag’ will enter common parlance around 2005. Yes, it’s probably a bit on the misogyny spectrum, but resistance is futile, so please don’t hit me with that copy of ‘The Female Eunuch’ you’re reading.

And, good news, feminism’s back! At least that’s what a lot of op-eds are saying. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. See, we’re adults now and eventually you’ll look around and realise that some of the best and most successful people you know didn’t even finish high school but have gone on to earn PhDs, so go figure.

You see, Zo, it all comes out in the wash. I mean, keep working hard and everything (come on mansion!) but don’t stress, you’ll get lots of chances. You see, my child *leans forward in armchair, peers over spectacles* life is full of second shots and TopChef Last Chance Kitchens (which also doesn’t exist yet, but you’ll get really into that later, maybe too into it) and while it doesn’t feel like it, you kind of have time.

So DO take a gap year, and DO NOT listen to Dad. I know he’s telling you it’s a bad idea, but he’s wrong. AND in a while, he’ll even admit he was wrong, which I know seems inconceivable right now, but is absolutely true, I promise. Also, Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar! Shane Warne dates Liz Hurley! Tony Abbot is Prime Minister! The world is a crazy place.

Anyway (you’ll never work out how to stay on track, sorry!), taking a year off to work out what you want to do is one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. I mean, you want to be an actor for Christ’s sakes! Mate, you don’t want to be an actor. It’s a crappy road of waiting for phone calls and dieting and doing terrible plays with rubbish directors and, mainly, you can’t act. It’s fine though, because you’ll end up doing exactly what you want to do at all the places you dreamed of, just in a different way. I can’t even tell you what they are, because you wouldn’t understand. Sorry, but you’ll have to work that out for yourself. That’s what uni is for.

Oh, and sorry to sound like Dad for a second, but yes, DO go to uni. Even if you choose the wrong degree at first (you will) you can and will change and end up where you belong: doing performance art pieces at COFA covered in vegemite and glad wrap. Before long you’ll be having a great time living in filth (seriously though mate – take out the garbage, you’re not in The Young Ones), hanging out in the Queerspace talking about Foucault, while flirting with everyone and eating free Hari Krishna food from the student union. It’s here that you’ll first do stand-up, where you’ll be introduced to career options you didn’t even know existed.

The people you meet and the stuff you do during this time will set you up for a long and interesting chain of successes in a whole lot of fields you didn’t even know anything about – playwright? Comedian? Voiceover artist? Slam poet? It gets good, trust me. Well, except the slam poetry thing, but let’s not dwell on that. That’s an unfortunate phase and like I say, there are plenty of second chances.

Basically, anything is possible and most things are forgiveable. Except that haircut you give yourself in second year that makes you look like Cynthia from Rugrats. People still bring that up.

So: go forth, have fun, do stuff, and remember to floss. We have a dentist appointment coming up and you could really help out there. And in closing, everything will work out excellently, especially if you follow these ten simple tips:

Melbourne Cup winners:

2014 – Protectionist

2013 – Fiorente

2012 – Green Moon

2011 – Dunaden

2010 – Americain

2009 – Shocking

2008 – Viewed

2007 – Efficient

2006 – Delta Blues

2003-5 – Makybe Diva

See you in our mansion,

Zoe (older version) xx

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Zoe is an artist, writer, theatre-maker and comedian. She grew up in Grafton where she and her best friend wrote and staged a musical instead of going to Schoolies week. Her play ‘Is This Thing On?’ recently premiered at Belvoir. She is one third of the performance company post, a regular on ABC2s Dirty Laundry Live, and in 2006 won the National Poetry Slam Championships under dubious circumstances.

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UTS:INSEARCH gives you a second shot at getting into uni if you didn’t get the ATAR you need. They offer courses in Business, Communication, Design & Architecture, Engineering, IT and Science and in some cases can FAST TRACK you into the 2nd year of a UTS degree. Watch the UTS:INSEARCH movie trailer to find out what it’s all about!