Future Me

Future Me is a neat little website where you write yourself a letter about goals you plan to accomplish for the future or whatever you want to write about. You set an email date and Future Me will email your letter to you. At that point, you can revisit the letter to check for any accomplished goals. Neat, huh? You can also get Future Me as an app on the iPhone.

Future Me can also be found on Facebook and Twitter too. To date, there have been almost 2 million Future Letters written. Click This now to start writing to your future.

I think it would be awesome for students to try this tool and have it emailed to them one or so years later. In the midst of trying to find a picture to go with this post, I stumbled across a young person who did this as a student in high school about 5 years ago. I read his post and found it funny that he thought the idea was pointless but still he compared what he had written to what was going on in his life right now.  Although at the time he really didn't want to do the assignment, I think it's a great tool to get students thinking about the future. I emailed Jacob with not much hopes from hearing from him but to my surprise, I got a reply in about an hour. I asked him a few questions in my email and his responses are a much-needed reminder for educators to make sure they are well-prepared for their classes and that we show as much enthusiasm as possible when teaching. If we aren't excited about a lesson than how can we expect are students to be?!?

Jacob wrote:

The only thing I remembered about the class: 1.) that I wrote the letter to myself, and 2.) I would have rather been in other classes. From what I can recall, I would say it had good intentions, but it was poorly implemented. I think if the teachers were more on-board with the idea, and the lessons were better prepared, I would have found it useful.

He continues to write:

I am glad I wrote the letter though, even though I think half of it was just garbage text I wrote to take up time and space ("remember Heroes?" for example). It made me remember the ambitions and goals I had back then. And even though my life didn't turn out like I had planned, I'm very happy with where I am now.

Thanks Jacob, for your time and input. I hope it's a simple reminder to us educators that it's also our attitude that matters and not just the kids.

Check out Jacob Low's Dear Future Me post here.
Image from Jacob. Please do not copy.