To my dearest friends,

Sorry, but I don’t think I can keep the promises I made. I won’t be able to photo dump any aesthetic photos of my campus on my instagram story. I won’t have any videos to send you of frat parties. I won’t have any stories to share of my dorm room adventures or late night escapades. I probably also won’t be able to hook you up with any American college boys. All the fantasies we derived from romanticized TV shows are really just that 一 fantasies.

Four years ago, I came to America with the goal of living the High School Musical life, to suck out the marrow of my teenage years, and maybe build a better future for myself.

Four years later and not a single person has broken out into song in the middle of the hallway, Dancing Queen is not the song I would use to summarize being 17, and I’m more hung up on the future I could’ve had rather than the one looming in the form of a college application.

I thought if I tried my best in high school, I had every right to a good college, to a good education. Isn’t that the whole point? To not only learn the skills you need for whatever you want to do with your life, but to learn about the person you want to be when you’re living it?

I’m sure you all will get that chance. Oxford and Cambridge are well within your grasp. They only require the intelligence I know you all have, and not your entire bloodline’s hard earned money.

I was naïve to think that knowledge was my currency. I’ve played my cards right for years. It was supposed to be so simple. Be a good student, and have a free pick of the colleges you deserve. That was supposed to be the only decision I had to make. I was never supposed to decide if picking the cheaper and closest college was worth sacrificing my livelihood and years worth of anticipation.

If somebody told me the average yearly tuition in America knocked the overall cost of your UK university years completely out of the ball park, I would have reevaluated every decision leading up to this moment. With college tuition in America ranging from “$11,011 for the 2024-2025 year compared with $43,505, respectively,” I think I’ll take my chances with the fixed “£9,250 [annual] for tuition” offered by my homeland for all schools. Sometimes, the bigger the number isn’t necessarily better– especially if there’s a dollar sign before that number and you’re looking to me to pay it off. I’m sure by the time you’re all thrust into the work force after bagging your degrees in a measly three years, your debt will be nothing compared to the one I’ll have with only one semester under my belt.

While I’m stuck in this familiar caged environment for the foreseeable future, I hope you will all take your Uni years as a way to explore new horizons. Hopefully you’ll live your lives without debt feeling like a parasite.

That’s not to say I haven’t had fun here— I have. However, it’s all fun and games until you have to pay off your college debt with your funeral bill.

I miss you all so much. Hopefully we’ll meet when we’re in a stable and happy place in our lives.

Sincerely,
Princess