“I Hope You Know I’m Proud of You”: Reflections on the Postcard to My Graduating Self Project

Abstract

Background

Student transition to university can be a challenging time. Research suggests that providing space for student reflection and goal setting may facilitate this period of transition.

Objective

I describe the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project, in which psychology students were invited to write postcards to their future selves. In the postcards, students were encouraged to reflect upon their goals and plans for their psychology degree.

Method

I ran the Postcard Project as part of an induction program of a BSc Psychology undergraduate cohort. One hundred and sixty-six undergraduate psychology students completed postcards.

Results

In my reading of the postcards and experiences of running the session, students appeared to use the postcard project as (1) a motivational tool, which prompted thinking about future goals, (2) a reflective device, which encouraged reflecting upon previous experiences, (3) and a social experience, which brought students together in unique ways.

Conclusion

Facilitating students’ writing postcards to their future self may foster social connections and provide educators with richer insights into the student experience.

Teaching Implications

I provide tips for conducting this project in other institutions and encourage educators to consider using the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project.

During the first few weeks of university, students must navigate complex new environments that can be intimidating and unfamiliar. Therefore, efforts to support students, understand and appreciate their unique experiences, and facilitate a successful transition to university are crucial, particularly in the first year of study. Due to this, there have been a plethora of different strategies, tools, and initiatives proposed to encourage successful and engaged transition to university life (e.g., Briggs et al., 2012; Hassel & Ridout, 2018). Supporting students during the transition to university is particularly important given the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on students’ ability to acclimatize to degree-level studying (see Pownall et al., 2022a). Interventions to facilitate student transitions include social support initiatives (e.g., Pratt et al., 2000), programs designed to improve perceptions of effective learning (Van Herpen et al., 2020), and institutional orientation programs (Braxton & McClendon, 2001). Interventions that are designed to support students above and beyond classroom activities are referred to as “first-generation” interventions (see Wilson et al., 2016) and can be useful in providing early support to groups of students, which can then be implemented more broadly into the wider curriculum.

One potentially useful, and relatively underexplored, strategy is facilitating goal setting and bolstering motivation by prompting students to think about their future selves and their plans for their time at university. There is pedagogical evidence to support this notion. For example, Destin et al. (2018) drew upon the theory of identity-based motivation and demonstrated how the activation of successful future identities can prompt “action readiness” and thus bolster students’ capability to deal with challenges. The potential pedagogical impact of asking students to articulate their goals and plans has been explored in the literature, albeit not in the context of supporting transitions and facilitating staff–student understanding. For example, Chishima and Wilson (2021) describe a letter-writing intervention whereby students write letters to and from their future selves, to improve students’ feelings of self-continuity. In this example, the letters acted as a mechanism to enhance feelings of connection with ones’ current self and an envisioned future self. Similarly, Chishima et al. (2021) adopted the same methodology to mitigate against negative affect on students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Park (2021) used a video-based methodology in which students created videos of their future selves and found that this promoted academic literacy. Beyond teaching and learning contexts, letters to past or future selves have been used extensively in contexts such as leadership training (Cohen-Derr, 2021), medical education (LaFrance & Rubenstein, 2022), and expert coaching (Szedlak et al., 2021). However, while the value of writing letters to a future envisaged self has been addressed in the literature, it has not yet been tested as a strategy for facilitating transitions to university in a postcard form.

Further, beyond facilitating student transitions directly, student goal setting via reflexive letter writing may also provide a useful opportunity for educators to understand the nuances of their cohort of students’ unique lived experiences, which can, in turn, further support transitions. For example, Scanlon et al. (2007) note how students’ ability to craft and maintain new learning identities during the transition to university is facilitated by relationships with staff, which requires a level of mutual understanding from both parties. In theory, letter-writing tasks may be crucial in providing educators with insights into student's goals, beliefs, and intended outcomes for their time at university, in a structured and friendly setting. This may be particularly useful to explore, given how perceptions of reciprocity and mutual trust and understanding in staff–student relationships is associated with successful transitions and feeling of support in students (Tett et al., 2017). However, to date, no scholars have yet discussed the potential of letter writing as a mechanism to help educators to understand the student experience in a way that might contribute to transitions.

The Postcard Project

In this project, I initially wanted to understand what brings undergraduate students to Higher Education, what they hope to achieve from their time at university, and what their goals are for their time in their undergraduate program. I also wanted to design and run an intervention that facilitated students’ sense of belonging with one another, in order to ease the transition to university. I started the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project in the introductory Welcome Week of a BSc Psychology undergraduate program at the University of Leeds in 2022 (a large, UK-based research-intensive university). During “Welcome Week” (or “Freshers’ Week”) in England, students typically do not have formal academic classes, but instead participate in welcome, induction, and transition events to acclimatize to university life, meet other students, and familiarize themselves with the campus. I introduced the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project to undergraduate students during welcome events hosted by the School of Psychology, for each respective year; first, second, or third (full-time undergraduate programs are 3 years in the UK). In total, across the events that I ran, 166 psychology students completed and submitted a postcard. 86 were in the first year of their degree, 28 in the second year, and 52 were in the third and final year. On communal tables, students were provided with blank postcards and coloring pencils and were invited to write a postcard addressed to their “graduating self.” Students were advised that they can include “whatever they like” on the postcard and were provided with three broad prompt questions to steer their discussions:

What brings you to the University of Leeds?

What do you hope to do or achieve during your time at the University of Leeds?

Do you have goals and hopes for your time at university? What do these look like?

The actual student-facing materials can be openly accessed (see Pownall, 2023). Students deposited their postcard in a secure “post-box” to indicate their consent to share the postcard and created a unique code, so that their postcards can be returned to them when they graduate at the end of the course. In this sense, the project acted as both a reflection exercise and a time capsule.

Reflections on the Project

At the start of this project, I obtained institutional review board approval to use the postcards as research data, granted by the School of Psychology, University of Leeds on 16 August 2022, Reference: PSYC-581. I had intended to use the postcards to collect meaningful qualitative data about students’ experiences, in order to inform transitions-related pedagogy and further student education practice. I had not anticipated, however, the extent to which running this project would not only “provide” me with pedagogical data but rather would prompt a moment of critical reflection and be a useful pedagogical process. At the start of this project, I envisioned that I would focus solely on the postcard contents, identifying common themes across the postcards, and suggesting recommendations for facilitating student transitions as a result of this reading. However, after sitting in the room with students as they completed their postcards, I felt that subjecting their artifacts to formal, qualitative analysis only captures a small and limited portion of this project's impact. Therefore, I have chosen to instead present my own reflections on running this project, with some example quotes from postcards that stayed with me during these reflections.

The process of completing the postcards was more personal and intimate than I had anticipated. Some psychology students used the space to write long letters to themselves using both sides of the blank postcards, some students drew pictures and doodles, and some filled their postcards with motivational quotes and phrases. Others had more structured approaches; for example, one group of students used the postcards to write out tick-lists of activities that they would like to accomplish during their time at university, others filled theirs with stickers, and one student used the postcard as a diary entry for their day so far. During my reflections on the process of being involved in running and delivering this initiative, I identified three unique ways that students approached the postcard project; students appeared to use the postcard project as (1) a motivational tool, which prompted thinking about future goals, (2) a reflective device, which encouraged reflecting upon previous experiences, (3) and a social experience, which brought students together in unique ways. I will now elaborate on each of these, with examples from the postcards. I provide quotes that have been carefully selected to ensure anonymity and not be identifiable.

The Postcard Project as a Motivational Tool

In many of the postcards, students chose to use them to envisage a future for themselves in a way that serves as a motivational tool, and the postcards thus allowed students to articulate their dreams and ambitions for the future. I encouraged students, as they were writing their postcards, to think about what they would want to say to themselves on their future imagined graduation day. Some students really fostered the milestone moment of graduation to “manifest” their successes. For example, phrases such as “YOU DID IT!” and “Hi future me—I knew you would graduate!” were common across the postcards. Some postcards included long personal and sentimental paragraphs that drew upon wider sources of motivation, including students’ faith, religion, and other beliefs (e.g., “I hope you know I’m proud of you for not giving up”). Other postcards, on the other hand, were short and heavily illustrated and featured broader sentiments of motivation. In particular, I noted that students often framed envisaged graduation as a key life milestone, which then unlocked or opened up a different “chapter” of life. For example, one included a drawing of a rainbow with the words: “OMG yaaaaas bitch, you did it! NOW GO live your life!.” Others included similar sentiments, constructing the end of undergraduate studies as an entry point into a new part of “the real world.”

Interestingly, beyond the broad motivational contents, throughout the postcards there also were specific examples of goal setting, above and beyond generic statements such as “hope you did well” and “I hope you enjoyed uni!.” For example, some students had specific targets, including career-related goals (“hope you went on to be a clinical psychologist <3”), extracurricular ambitions (“did you ever become president of the dance society?”), and personal goals (“hope you dumped him!”). The goals and ambitions that students discussed were personal and felt important, particularly given the small amount of space to discuss such goals on the postcards. During this process, these personal goals served as a reminder that the “student experience” exists beyond students’ individual identity solely as a student and demonstrated how their time at university is entangled with other significant life events. It is important, therefore, for educators to recognize this, in order to advance the principles of student-centered education (Starkey, 2019).

This process of goal setting and articulating specific ambitions may confer important pedagogical benefits. Indeed, research demonstrates how a successful transition to university involves developmental changes to ones’ overall sense of self, which can be facilitated by goal setting of personal growth (Maunder et al., 2013). Indeed, in Chester's (2013) five senses of student success, the ability to articulate personal goals and explore their reasons for being at university is an important component of successful transitions. Therefore, this process of articulating and envisioning future goals and plans may be useful in students’ transition to university and the development of sense of self. Furthermore, beyond personal goal setting, students also used postcards to set out specific academic goals. For example, many students included manifestations of successful grades (e.g., “hey future me, you got a first-class degree!”) and others used the postcards to explicitly state their hopes for academic success (e.g., “I really hope you tried hard and did well in your exams this year” and “I hope you passed the Research Skills module”). Importantly, the process of stating these goals may have tangible downstream benefits for students’ learning, particularly as this constitutes the first step in self-regulated learning, which involves “an active, constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning” (Pintrich, 2000, p. 453). Research has also noted how the process of written goal setting can bolster academic performance (Morisano et al., 2010). Therefore, the act of asking students to commit their goals to paper may be a useful way of starting this active process of setting goals for learning.

The Postcard Project as a Reflective Device

Secondly, beyond prompting students to articulate their plans and goals for their undergraduate experience, the process of completing this project also offered a unique opportunity for reflection upon students’ previous experiences and accomplishments. Some students, particularly those in the first year of the degree, used the postcards to celebrate the experiences that brought them to university. For example, one student used the postcards to write a letter to themselves, which started with a long reflection on their experiences of pre-university learning: “High school wasn’t easy but despite it all, you got into [university] and I’m proud of you.” Similarly, I noticed that many of the students used the postcards to “take stock” of their current experiences at university, reflecting upon the achievement of getting into university. This included notes about “how far you’ve come” and celebrations of “you got into uni!!!.” In this sense, not only did students use the postcards to envision a future, but they also used them to reflect thoughtfully upon their past experiences, which felt powerful.

Further, beyond using the postcards to celebrate students’ previous successes and to articulate the journeys that brought them to the university, some students also used the postcards to simulate a self-directed “pep talk” (e.g., “You got this. You got here. You’re good, girl!”). This may be best understood through a lens of Moon's (1999) map of learning, which posits that student learning occupies five levels, from “noticing” (i.e., memorization) to “transformative learning” (i.e., meaningful, reflective, creative learning). This model provides a framework for understanding how students “[analyze] the events of learning in order to locate reflection” (Moon, 1999, p. 152). Therefore, this process of reflecting upon previous educational experiences (e.g., “I still can’t believe we got into uni. We really did it”) and taking stock of existing experiences may have pedagogical advantages in the short and long term. For example, it is well-documented that engagement in reflective practice facilitates productivity and engagement. Therefore, providing space and time to encourage this reflective practice may be beneficial to encourage deeper, transformative learning.

The Postcard Project as a Social Experience

Finally, I also noted how students’ experiences of completing the postcards in a shared space seemed to encourage a different kind of socializing to the rest of the induction activities. For the first-year students, the postcard project was implemented on the fourth day of their university course, during which point most of the students were unfamiliar with one another and most were yet to make friends. The postcard project appeared to facilitate connections between students, by (a) providing a shared experience and highlighting students’ common ground, (b) facilitating a parallel conversation (i.e., talking while doing). This is important, given how the forming of meaningful connections has been found to promote a successful transition to university (Palmer et al., 2009). I noted too that while some students were relatively formal in their approach, others felt deeply authentic and personal. For example, one group of students cried and hugged as they completed their postcards (despite meeting for the first time that morning), others laughed together while they compared their illustrations, and other students completed the postcards in breakaway pairs, huddled together in the corner of the room. As an educator, this felt like a success, particularly given how the formation of meaningful social connections is considered a crucial part of successful psychology education, from students’ perspectives (Pownall et al., 2022b).

What struck me as I was reading the postcards and discussing the project with students was the level of humor and personality that students injected into their postcards. Phrases that used dry humor, wit, and character to communicate their goals and plans were particularly memorable (e.g., “can’t believe you graduated—what a fucking miracle!” and “you graduated uni! did we kill the cactus?”). It felt powerful to be able to allow students a curated space to allow this humor. Beyond the clear opportunity to building social connections and fostering feelings of authenticity, there may be wider pedagogical benefits. For example, humor is a useful tool to foster staff–student rapport and bolster student engagement (Masek et al., 2019). I also found that the incorporation of humor allowed me to understand students’ experiences in a more nuanced way, because this helped students, particularly first-year students, to navigate the unfamiliar academic/student territory that they were not used to. In this sense, while the postcards provided a useful space for students to forge meaningful social relationships with one another, it also allowed me as an educator to form more informal and authentic connections with the students.

Discussion

Overall, the postcard project was successful in prompting psychology students to reflect, set goals, and socialize during the first week of the semester. It was also useful for me as an educator to understand, in more depth, the student experience of transitions and allowed me to gain a better sense of who my students are, what they bring to the course, and what their hopes are for their time at university. Through this experience, I felt that I got to know my students in a unique way, and now have a much more nuanced appreciation of their goals, plans, and experiences associated with the transition to university. Student feedback was also positive; for example, in an evaluation of induction activities, one student said that “the postcard to future self made a lot of us really emotional and we saw the raw emotions of each other—sharing our experiences etc.” Although the evaluation was related to the whole of the suite of induction activities, other students also commented here that “staff were amazing and very welcoming” and 96% of students agreed that they were provided with a “warm welcome to my school.” From my perspective, the postcards worked as a pedagogical practice because they come with a certain set of norms and expectations but are not rigidly structured and inauthentic. For example, I imagine that the prospect of writing a formal letter to one's future self may be more daunting and intimidating than the postcard context, particularly when colored pencils were at-hand, and the mood of the room was friendly and warm.

Tips for Running the Postcard Project

In my local institution, the Postcard to my Graduating Self project was well-received and allowed me to connect with students in a unique way. This practice may be useful for other educators who may wish to implement a similar intervention for their students. Therefore, I now share four tips for running the project. These are intended to be a guide and I encourage other educators to adopt the principles of the project flexibly, attending to the needs of students, pedagogical context, and resources available.

Set Clear Boundaries in the Introduction of the Project

At the start of the project, it is useful to clearly articulate the boundaries. For some students, for example, the postcards were emotional and involved telling personal narratives about their journey to (and through) university. Therefore, to provide psychological safety, it is important to tell students that the level of disclosure and the tone of the postcards are entirely up to them to determine. I did not want students to feel pressured to write or draw about topics or experiences that felt prematurely or inappropriately personal, particularly in a group setting. This can be achieved by briefing students clearly in advance of the project and making it clear that there is no one way to participate (and, indeed, that participation is voluntary).

Offer Different Ways for Students to Participate

For some students, the experience of completing the postcards collectively prompted a social experience; however, other students preferred to complete their postcards in solitude and some asked if they could take their postcards home to complete them alone. I found it useful to be flexible with how I allowed students to approach their postcards, and this may, again, promote psychological safety. Similarly, I made it clear that the postcards were not mandatory and that it was acceptable for students not to participate. This is another useful caveat, to ensure that students feel safe and comfortable with the project.

Clarify the Function of the Postcards

As I mentioned at the start of this reflection, I had initially intended for this project to constitute a formal pedagogical research project and explained to students that their postcards may be selected for formal qualitative analyses. It felt important to clarify the function of the postcards, so that my reading of their contents did not feel voyeuristic or inappropriate. This can be achieved by clearly articulating the function of the postcards (i.e., Are they simply a time capsule for students? Will you be reading them? Will anyone else read them?). This felt particularly important, given how personal and honest some students were in their reflections.

Listen to Your Students

Finally, once you have established the function and boundaries of the postcards, I found that reading them provided me with a uniquely insightful and honest window into students’ lived experiences. As I was reading the postcards, they made me laugh out loud, smile, and (more often than not) cry. It was humbling to hear about how varied and complex students’ goals, hopes, and plans for university were. This was an opportunity for a different type of listening, I found. Although they were anonymous, they made me reflect upon how I can actively and fully listen to students’ experiences in other parts of my pedagogical practice.

Conclusion

Overall, the postcard to my Graduating Self Project was a powerful experience and provided a unique opportunity for social connections, meaningful listening to the student experience, and provided a space for students to reflect upon their previous experiences and set goals and aspirations for their time at university. While I have shared reflections here, it would be useful now to test the downstream consequences of this project more empirically, including an investigation into how the project may impact outcomes such as engagement, successful transitions, social adjustment, and belonging at university. Capturing the impact of the postcards empirically is the next step for this project. I also now plan to run this project annually and look forward to the experience of returning postcards to this first cohort of students on graduation day.