Thommas Phan, M.S.

A Letter From My Younger Self (2016)

An article I wrote as a high school junior, republished in full, annotated with a decade of context attached.

September 5, 2026 · Thoughts, Career, Education · 88/100

The article How I Plan For My Future As A Junior on Plexuss, bylined Thommas Phan, Content writer @ Plexuss.com.
The piece as it ran on Plexuss.

Ten-plus years ago, as an unpaid high school intern for Plexuss, I wrote a short piece called How I Plan For My Future As A Junior. If that link ever breaks, or Plexuss goes away entirely, I've copied the full text below and annotated it with what I think now, a decade-plus later.

The article is reproduced exactly as it was published. Everything I have added since sits behind the superscript numbers. Hovering a note, or the sentence it answers, highlights the other half of the pair; clicking either one pins it, and you can pin as many as you like.

How I Plan For My Future As A Junior

Originally Published in 2016, annotated on September 5, 2026. Text unedited.

If you're in High School like me, you've probably began to wonder where and what you're going to be in the coming years of your life. It's a little strange to think that our grace period of living with our parents and having no other concerns other than school and extracurriculars are going to hastily come to an end. But hey, the coming years after you graduate are the biggest step into adulthood, and it's best you come prepared than coming in blind. How have you prepared for the future?

  1. 1It's 10 years later. Unfortunately, some of my former-classmates still live with their parents and have even less concerns than school and extracurriculars; they've become absolute degenerates. Others have become doctors, parents, millionaires, or some combination of it.
  2. 2Oh boy. I thought that when a person turned 18, they would immediately become an adult. Turning 27 very soon, I still don't feel like an adult. Perhaps that's a good thing.

Here are my thoughts:

I think the best way to plan for the future is to have an outline that is susceptible to change. I've met more than enough people that are 100% convinced they know where they will be 8 years, 3 months, 21 days and 15 seconds from now, I really wonder how it will play out for them. Perhaps it comes down to personal preference, but I truly believe that having every moment of your life planned out can (key word: CAN) end disastrously. After talking to a lot of college graduates about where they plan on going after college, the ones that seemed to have it all figured out in High School ended up to be the most confused. Sometimes the things you think you love don't turn out to be as fun or as intriguing as you thought it'd be. That's okay. That's why I think you should keep an open mind, be ready to change lanes and take a different route. Make an outline for yourself, and most importantly; try new things.

  1. 3I can't believe that my teenage self would say randomly profound things. In fact, my vocabulary back then was far better and versatile because I was forced to take multiple courses. After college, I was forced into a specialty and become very familiar with the same words. A word I loved back then was “susceptible”. Being susceptible to change is a very good way to put it. These days, I would say “flexible”, but man, susceptible makes you sound way smarter doesn't it?
  2. 4Wow, a giveaway that AI didn't write this. A weird sidetrack to make a point by saying “8 years, 3 months, 21 days and 15 seconds from now”. What's funny is, many of those kids ended up succeeding. Granted, they were all in medicine and the path is laid out.
  3. 5This was false. I made it up to justify my own confusion. Or I don't remember who tf I was talking about. How much access to college grads does a high schooler have? Especially one as antisocial as me.
  4. 6The same applies to the people you think you love. But you'll find out, kiddo.
  5. 7I wish I listened to my own advice more.

I'm only a Junior in High School. My idea of what my future will look like will probably be wildly different in a few years. So I can't tell you in great detail what my plans for my future are without being immensely vague. For now, the best I can do to provide a good foundation for my future is to focus on the shorter term goals. I want a great SAT score. I want to keep my grades high. I want to score well on my AP tests. I want to have some great college apps. Note; these are all things that are ahead of me. Things that are ahead of me are things I consider stress worthy. I can no longer change what happened in the past, I can't change that Calculus test I totally bombed last semester. (heh) No big deal, I just need to do what I can do RIGHT NOW to change what will happen in the future. Cheesy, yes I know, but I can't stand to see some bright young minds give up too early because of a few crappy grades that they had freshman year. Don't justify your own lack of planning because of things that happened already. Remember to give it your best effort and enjoy the ride.

  1. 8Noob.
  2. 9I read so much AI writing now. What a well put together, non-AI sentence.
  3. 10I kept the same attitude through university and always focused on grades. This is clearly an asian immigrant mindset. Where were the soft skills? Where were the friends? Grades are important for survival, but so are the other things. Talent can be taught, character cannot.
  4. 11It's funny, I was talking about myself. I was pretty much a B student up until late junior/senior year of high school, where I started getting all As. For most of college and graduate school, I was an all-A student. I'll write more about this in a separate blog, but long story short: school's just a game.
  5. 12I wish I listened to myself more.

So how does this have anything to do with how I've planned for the future?

Outline. It's all an outline. I've built this foundation of my own grades, my own extracurriculars, even my own hobbies that I am proud of. These things that I've worked for are made around things that I'm passionate about, and from speaking to counselors to college kids, to adults, they've all told me the same idea, which is to find a passion and chase it. Now please recall that this is all what I have done, and I expect nobody else to do the same thing as me or even agree with everything I say but this is just my idea of it all. I have always loved 3 things; writing, math, and science. Time has went on, and those things have gotten more specific. It's become more as thoughtful writing, real world application to mathematics (that's why I enjoy Calculus and Physics. Weird, right?), and the human body. I'm sure as I get older those things will be infinitely more specific, but those are the things I enjoy.

  1. 13Now that's cheesy, and also extremely upper-middle-class-plus. The unfortunate reality is: if you have the privilege to chase your dream, you should. Not many people do. My mother did a good job of raising me in a neighborhood where I thought this privilege was a given.
  2. 14This hurts my soul to read because my ego is too large to admit a teenager can read my mind. I ended up spending the next 10 years writing, doing math, and loving science.
  3. 15It's funny you say that, kid. The things you do ultimately encapsulate all of this.

With these things, I've set a goal for myself, and I hope to achieve it. I want to go to USC and obtain my masters degree for Physical Therapy and specialize in Sports Medicine or maybe look into computer engineering. College is meant for endless discoveries, right? Well that's what I plan for, anyway, but I'm ready for it to change. I'm an avid sports enthusiast, whether it's playing or watching the sport, but I do enjoy mathematics to a certain extent and will look into it. Although we do things to improve our college resume, I'd rather do something that I'm passionate about. Just hopefully colleges will see that I choose things I'm truly passionate about rather than things that are essentially meaningless busy work to me.

  1. 16I never did this. I did end up talking to USC and pitching their locomotion and PT lab about the Kinoped, and I did get a masters degree. But at this point in time when I wrote this, I didn't really know what statistics was. To me, it was just mean, median, and mode.
  2. 17There's a subset of mathematics that you'll love.
  3. 18They didn't. College applications are brutal. I didn't turn my grades around in time, and that's okay. I went to UCSC, the best ranked school I got into, then dropped out after a quarter to go to community college. I ended up being one of the best students in statistics at UC Davis in both my bachelor's and master's, where I think UC Davis is top 15 in the USA in stats.

These are just plans, anyway. I wanted to write more about my plans because I'm not in the position to tell you how things have went, just yet. These are just ideas for how I think plans should be made for your own future and not good, solid advice. I wish I could tell you guys more than what my aspirations are, but I haven't lived enough life just yet. Maybe in 2 years, when I've graduated I could tell you more, but for now all I have are goals. So let me ask you something; How do plan for yourself? Comment below and tell me all about it, I'd love to read your own thoughts on outlining your own future. Thanks for reading this :)

  1. 19It's funny. 10 years later, I'm still not in that position. I will tell you that the trajectory seems solid.
  2. 20LOL.