Calligram with Illustrator

 Letter to future self:

I found this assignment very frustrating. No matter what I did the words wouldn't come out the way I wanted them to come out. I tried various techniques but just couldn't figure out how to put them together nicely. There's a lot of space where there shouldn't be. The hair and the shirt were the hardest to figure out. I wonder if I made the shapes too big and that is where I steered wrong. I also wonder if instead of creating all the outline of shapes first, if I should have do it one area at a time with text. I'm not sure. I'm not happy with the finished product but I'm unsure how to fix the errors.