To The Fortunes of Tomorrow For the Unfortunate of Today

Before I give you my sincere wishes for your futures, I have to ask: Is fortune the top priority for your future, and is fortune purely monetary in nature?

I hope you answered no to at least one of these questions.

I, like you, was looking at graduating into a recession in 2009. I, however, graduated with $104,000 in student loan debt and hope that none of you have to deal with that. I moved to China after graduating because I studied East Asian Studies and there wasn’t really a recession there so I was lucky enough to find a job. My salary was quite low because the fashion industry pays poorly but also because the cost of living was so low. So I’ve worked to barely survive and lived my entire adult life in debt, and yet I can honestly say that I’ve generally felt successful.

So how could I feel like I’m doing so well if society and tradition and logic are all telling me that I’m not? Well, I think it really all comes down to my health. My Uncle Jim had a stroke in his 30s and eventually became paralyzed, and he eventually lost his will to live last year. He always told me “Timothy, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything”, and that rings truer now than ever before. So my first sincere wish is for your individual and collective health.

My second sincere wish for you is to find your own path and purpose. The world is experiencing nothing short of a paradigm shift, and the reason I was initially attracted to China was because I wanted to witness the country’s transformation and my own. With this new environment you are no longer beholden to convention, and you can be whatever you want to be. My first business card said “Fashion Theorist” and no one really understood it, including myself, but I created my own path!

So no matter what you want to do, please don’t hold yourself back and do not let circumstances hold you back. Let this environment force your adaptation and your evolution. Try and look at the world as something of a tabula rasa, malleable and primed for the visions of youth to bring about a more perfect future. And the vision doesn't have to be big. It was my small acts of kindness that I am now most proud of, and it will take many to weather this storm. And some will weather it better than others, but this past decade has taught me that you not only have your own path but you will also traverse it in your own time.

So go your own way, and at your own pace. Take it day by day, breath by breath.

Timothy M. Parent ’09 was an East Asian Studies concentrator in Leverett House.

This piece is part of a series of letters written by members of the Harvard College Class of 2009.