This part's really, really fucking long and I apologize in advance and I don't blame you one bit for skipping it lmao

This is what happens when I find just sitting down and typing out my thoughts to be therapeutic lol

On May 25th, 2018, I officially graduated high school

It honestly feels so weird to say that, especially since when I first started on here, I was a dumb fourteen year old freshman (9th grade) whose writing skills were absolutely terrible, who was cringey as hell (What am I saying I still am lmao,) and someone that had pretty much never shared their writing with anyone (to this day, I still don't really know what compelled me to join this website other than the fact that my now ex-friend was on it at the time and I LOVED their writing and wanted to impress them since I really looked up to them)

But now, I'm eighteen years old, graduated from high school, and starting college in the fall (I'm so iffy about what I'm going to major in, but we'll talk more in detail about that in a little bit) and I'd like to think that from the time where I was a dumb 9th grader that barely had any idea what fanfiction was (even though I wrote quite a few in 7th and 8th grade without even knowing it at the time) and had horrendous self-taught writing skills (lowkey still self-taught to this day since I never get constructive criticism on here and it kinda irritates me but whatever. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it when you guys praise my stories and love them, but I still wish y'all would take the time to give me some constructive criticism since I would like to continue getting better and better as a writer,) I have grown quite a lot not only as a writer, but as a person as well. Even though I still struggle with my shyness and anxiety once in a while, I feel like I've gotten better over the years because when I was in elementary school, my shyness and anxiety were so bad that my parents thought I had an anxiety disorder and my teachers actually put me in this speech class to help me with it and they were shocked when I ended up being the best one in that class in terms of test scores and whatnot since I never really gave any real effort towards my schoolwork and homework until like 4th or 5th grade because I figured that I'd never be any good at school nor did I actually have the motivation to try since all I cared about at that time was video games and immersing myself in the world of video games as much as possible

Speaking of video games, for the longest time, they were the only thing that I had because back in the day, I had some fake ass friends (although I didn't even realize it until years later) and they never wanted to hang out with me after school or during the weekends and I didn't ask them because, again, my shyness and anxiety were both really bad during this time. I don't even think I had my first sleepover until like 5th or 6th grade or something like that and it definitely took me longer to actually spend the night at someone's house (mostly due to the fact that I was terrified of having to eat dinner at their house and having to eat something that I didn't like since I'm a picky eater and to this day, the thought of eating dinner at someone else's house and going out on a dinner date is still terrifying since I don't really like people knowing that I'm a picky eater, even though they eventually figure it out if they stick around long enough)

Let's see... I've talked about how I've gotten better with dealing with my shyness and anxiety, how video games were my only friend for the longest time and obsessively played them as a result, and how I'm a picky eater. By the way, I've gotten a little bit better with that as well. Am I still picky? Hell yes I am. Do I eat more foods than I did years ago? Hell yes I do, and I consider that to be improvement. Honestly, you'll really only understand why that's considered to be improvement if you yourself are also a picky eater

Another thing that I've gotten better with (very on and off though, not gonna lie) is biting my nails. For as long as I can remember, I've been doing this because of shyness and anxiety and while I still do in my extremely bad moments, it's more so because of boredom and habit these days. For me, I find that constantly keeping my nails painted stops me from biting them for some reason. However, if they aren't painted (like right now since I'm going to a convention for the next four days starting tomorrow and I'm cosplaying two boys and one girl and therefore don't want my nails painted,) I WILL eventually bite them and if they have a pretty decent length (for me, at least,) I WILL bite it all off and will have to start from square one. It sucks, it's a constant struggle, and trust me, if I could just stop right now and never bite my nails ever again, I would. Thankfully, one of my teachers gave me this really nasty stuff that's supposed to stop you from biting your nails because it tastes so bad (I can assure you that it does because I've put it on before) like a week before my graduation and I'm going to use that until I can paint my nails again so I don't slip and bite the tiny bit of growth that my nails have right now

Okay, I'm done talking about the past (for now, at least) so let's talk about the future. As I said before, I'm going to start going to college in the fall. I also said that I was iffy about what I was going to major in. This is because during my junior (11th grade) and senior (12th grade) year, I attended a school that's specialized in preparing you for a specific career field based on what you choose from the semi-long list and variety of choice (a vocational/technical school basically) and stuck with what I chose for the entire two years that I was there because I was convinced that that was what I wanted to do with my life since my mom told me that I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life that wasn't becoming an author (not so lowkey still want to but it's probably never going to happen lol) so that's exactly what I did.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I chose to study forensic science since I really love Forensic Files and was really fascinated with how they were able to find and obtain forensic evidence. Unfortunately, things didn't go the way I wanted them to go in my program and I know just as much as I did about forensics before I entered the program as I do now that I'm finished with the program. This is because my teacher was God awful and barely even taught us anything that was actually related to forensics. Instead, he taught us criminal justice, even though there was literally a separate program for it and the only forensics related activity we did was learn how to dust for fingerprints and how to transfer them onto paper and stuff like that. That's it. In two years, the only thing I learned to do in a FORENSICS program was how to do fucking fingerprints. Because of this, I'm now trying to figure out if I want to major in forensics in college or not since I figured that these last two years would help me figure out whether or not I wanted to further pursue forensics because I thought we would do forensics stuff and not criminal justice bullshit. But God forbid I expect to do forensics in a forensics program, I guess. Oh yeah, because of the bullshit my teacher put me and my class through, we're all more qualified to be police officers than forensic scientists. Yeah, it was that bad. And don't even get me started on his teaching style. Good God, who the fuck gave him a teaching license?
Tbh the only good thing that ever came out of that program was the AMAZING friends that I made. Seriously, I love them all so much (I love all of my friends equally but still) and I'm so grateful to have met them and grown close to them these past two years.

Anyway, I'm so torn on what I want to major in in college. I understand that I can go in undecided, but I'm not the kind of person that likes to commit to something without really knowing what I'm getting into (committing to attending college, in this case) so I'm really only going to go in undecided as a last resort kind of thing. My heart and brain are telling me two completely different things. My brain is telling me to go into forensics since I can actually do forensics related activities for once if I major in it, but my heart is telling me to become an English major since English/language arts has always been my favorite subject and I've always had a passion for it. Before the thought of pursuing forensics even came along, the passion and the love for English was there. Now, I'm not the kind of person who follows their heart because your brain is the one that does the thinking and not your heart. Plus, I'm honestly really scared to follow my heart because... Well, I don't really know to explain it to be honest. It's just an ever present fear that I have. It also doesn't help that I'm scared of disappointing people in my family (mostly my mom tbh) with my decision, even though I tell people all the time that they should just do what makes them happy and not worry about what other people think.

With all of this being said, I'll let y'all know when I FINALLY figure out what I decide to do what my decision is

Oh my God, if you actually sat down and took the time to read this, you are insanely awesome because I rambled a lot and about all kinds of shit so thank you for taking the time to read what I had to say :)

Alright, I'm gonna go now and end this extremely long part here. Even though I'm extremely terrified for what lies ahead, I'm also excited to see what the future has in store for me.