How to: Have a pen pal

1.) Choose the pal. This, of course, is the most critical decision you will make in this entire process – right after your decision to reinvigorate the muscles in your hand responsible for writing and cut ties with G-Chat, that is. Obviously, you want to pick someone who you wouldn't mind reading about his or her life for months on end and who you don't mind telling, chapter and verse, about yours. Particularly suspicious friends and people that have distant ties to the CIA are not good choices. Not only do they read between the lines too heavily, but, in my experience, these are not funny people. You need someone who is either exceptionally hilarious or poetic as a pen pal, so that their sweet, sweet verses or downright knee-slappers burn themselves in your mind and carry you through to the next installment of your correspondence. You also don't want someone you know too much about already – like a roommate or a family member. "Oh, you're going on vacation to the Bahamas in two weeks, Mom? Me too! I wonder if I'll see you there. Most likely I will since we're going together." Boring. Or, "Hey Julie, that stinks that your roommates kicked you out of housing next year. Maybe if you would have cleaned your spam encrusted dishes more than once a semester those broads would have taken you back. See you later!" Obviously, both of these situations are incredibly awkward and can lead to nothing but tumultuous real life consequences. Yet another reason why it is good to have someone who lives hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.
2.) Choose the time of year. Cold, dreary months in which nothing of importance is going on are not the time to forge your first letter. For example, don't think that you can start your correspondence in the middle of March and expect it to be good. You won't get a response, or, at best you'll get, "It's March and you wrote me a letter about your life and signed it with a smiley face. Are you kidding me?" June is a much better bet. The copious amounts of sun will delude them into loving you and mask how boring your writing is by the third paragraph.
3.) Choose the topic of conversation. Specificity is key. Everyone has a dog, and everyone's dogs roll around on the floor, and it's overwhelmingly adorable. We get it. Boring. Not everyone has a boss that resembles Danny McBride that you made seriously explicit and inappropriate drawings out of that he discovered. That is something worth filling a page.
4.) Spice it up. I don't mean season your letters with paprika, though you totally could if you wanted to, but you may run the risk of having them intercepted by the USPS police and get thrown in jail for sending potentially harmful substances through the mail or, more likely, your pen pal could be deathly allergic to paprika – in which case, you're out a pen pal, and now you have to deal with the fact that your DNA is all over that letter. No, I don't mean literally spice it up. Rather, I mean go beyond the written word and offer a little something more – like a mix tape of all the songs you are currently listening to, a book that you stole from your roommate's summer library, the swag that your mother picked up for you at the community health fair, that portrait of your boss, or Polaroids from all of the really cool things you are up to (a.k.a. incredibly boring things that only look mildly intriguing because you captured them on Polaroid film. It's all about presentation). Speaking of presentation, you have to make sure you have superb stationary. So you're a poor college student and all you can afford is lined paper and the envelopes you steal from your work-study. Stop it with the excuses. Go to Papyrus as soon as possible and invest. Lovely stationary is like a lovely woman – not only is it nice to touch, but it makes you more attractive by association.
    I hope that these introductory tips help you to get off the ground with your first pen pal correspondence. Admittedly, it can be hard at first, but the simple pleasure derived from opening your mailbox and finding a sweet, sometimes scented letter addressed to you (that isn't from your grandma or bill collectors) is literally one of the best things on planet Earth, right up there with snagging the last vanilla Chobani in Corcoran Commons