annette lin
president, 2023-2025

Dear Freshman!Annette, 

In four years’ time, you’ll face a blank page and type a little paragraph about being a mother. You’ll smile and delete it all in a familiar pattern of keystrokes, one practiced over so many years of starting, erasing, and starting again. 

In four years’ time, The Alias Magazine has received its first award. You, too, have received your first awards for your words. You call yourself a mother—and, at times, you’re indulgent (delusional) enough to really believe it. You are not satisfied. In four years’ time, you will face a blank page and type a little paragraph. You’ll smile or grimace—it’s all a matter of perspective—and delete it all in a familiar pattern of keystrokes. In four years’ time, you will not have lost your fear of starting, erasing, and starting again. 

Here’s what’s new: I’ve graduated from collecting dictionaries into collecting grammar manuals, from correcting “anyways” into embracing “anyways.” I’ll soon graduate from high school, adolescence, “training wheels.” 

I have not graduated from literary paralysis. Here’s what stayed the same with that: I still lament that you had the misfortune of editing the magazine so early in its life. It works so well for the narrative, so I’ll only reluctantly admit that this is no longer a true complaint. You’ll become the sole editor of The Alias Magazine before the first time you sleep through an entire class period, and before you know the names of all your favorite commas. I do not even think, now, that I am fully qualified for my position, the presidency that you will hold for two (and a half?) years. I don’t know how you made a new website, organized six issues, and won the magazine’s first ever award with a series of full-page screenshots compressed into a PDF. All things considered, I don’t know why you’ve survived. Yet you continue, as you have always done—which is to say, in spite of expectations. 

Indeed, when an irresponsible pediatrician told mom that you wouldn’t live past the age of four, that’s all it seemed you could do. You are rapidly approaching five times that number of years, now. What I mean to say, in so many words, is that I am the person that you are, yet another in those other ways. Nothing and everything’s changed. I am longer and wider in all directions, not least chronologically. In four years’ time, you’ll be the mother of your own four-year-old, who won’t be yours for much longer. You will have planted seeds in a garden that will not bloom in your time. This is no disaster: you will read Stoppard’s Arcadia and decide that you, too, can die on the march. 

This is probably the only real change. In four years’ time, you accept that you will die on the march. Your work is never finished, and your battles are never won. Your life is still a mosaic of mediocrity, and your romanticized walk to the summit is actually a Stairmaster—you’ve just stopped minding. 

In four years’ time, you will face a blank page—a familiar obstacle. Today, you’ve written your way into this wonderful creative writing club, and you’ll write your way through much more. Grief, change, striving, falling: apart, behind, to pieces. In and out of love. You’ll write your way into university, out of disagreements, away from crisis, toward the light. Always toward the light. 

I have no advice, only requests (this is just like that Rita Dove speech about “blessings”—if that wasn’t advice, I don’t know what is): stay rested, stay quiet, stay happy. Never study too hard. 

You were never one for school spirit—it never made sense to you. In the place of your school’s name, cherish what it’s brought you. I owe my great fortune in large part to the beautiful people I have met at AHS. Of them, I must formally thank: 

Mr. Maertens, for tolerating filterless Annette with saintly patience. 

Ms. Wang, for the first math class that didn’t make me feel like a worm under a rainbow (which is to say, dying of slow dehydration while looking into the face of greatness). 

Mme. Krikorian, for crossing out “Je continuerai à écrire et un jour peut-être je publierai quelque chose” & replacing it with “Je serai une écrivaine célèbre!” 

c.w. & v.l., for playing Clara Schumann with me & never being mean, even when you could have & maybe should have. 

k.w., for all the books you ended up giving me over the years. I’m incredibly grateful for your (unintentional) guidance, even in navigation. 

m.m., for never taking the rodent names too personally. May your multitudes flourish. 

the rest of history bowl 24-25, for tolerating my social media delusions and being very nice to me when I dropped my emotional support wallet at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. 

a.t., for always staying in contact despite schedules. You've been my most constant support for the past six years, and I probably learned a lot from you. 

w.p., for helping me look for my phone when I dropped it at the 2023 AHS graduation & freaked out. Remember when we thought the seniors were old? That’s us now. Cry about it. (I know I will.)

There are countless others that I should mention, but whose contributions to my life are difficult to put into words. Someday, I will be a better writer, and I will be able to recognize them as they deserve. Until then, I remain:

loopily, extraordinarily, 

TWD's 2023-2025 president,

Annette Lin