Uncanny prescience

And now a word from my just-turned-17-year-old self.

5 December 1999

Seeing as the millennium is fast approaching, I thought it would be good, for posterity's sake, to predict my own future. In the year 2025, a quarter century from now, I will be 42, and hopefully comfortably settled into some sort of stable lifestyle. I should be relatively healthy, if a bit overweight. I will have gone to Yale, and afterwards gotten some kind of advanced degree elsewhere. My first job will most likely have been some kind of internship or had some sort of family connection. But I will then have gone on to become a teacher, in spite of the fact that I currently believe that I will become a lawyer.

I found this gem in an old journal. And it's me, all right. Note the characteristic verbosity, and the overabundance of commas and adverbs. And the almost crippling lack of surety ("some sort of...some kind of...some kind of").

As a matter of context, I should note that getting into Yale was a major preoccupation of mine throughout high school.

I'm not surprised that I thought I would end up as a teacher. It's the path of least resistance that I've been trying to swerve off of for a while now.

I am surprised that practicing law was on my mind so early. Did I sincerely want to be a lawyer, or was I already so disillusioned that a more creative occupation seemed hopelessly out of reach?

Over six years have passed since I wrote the prediction. Half has come true. I would make a few revisions to the second half, but I'd be afraid they might come true.