Dear future me,

I dropped out of college. Intentionally. I stopped. And oh boy, it wasn’t easier at all. No, in fact, it just started to be a journey to learn to be a disciplined half badass and a lot of days playing video games.

So, how did it happen? You’ll know that I was totally enlighted by the idea of being a neurobiologist. I was hyped. I thought everything is sorted out, I stand physics, maths, chemistry, and when I reached the third semester a meteorite hit my face. Nothing was sorted out. I hated working in a lab, I hated that I needed to talk scientifically, which let me despise speaking English, I hated the stress, the experimenting with animals, the math and analysis, but mostly I hated that I failed. I’ve never failed so hard, the last time was when I smashed against the leapfrog instead of jumping over it. It was embarrassing but hadn’t hurt as much as this. It was devastating, what could I do? I wasted two years of my life. Should I just go on? Do it anyway? I could stand it, but for what reason?

Just to have something that brings me no joy, no job in the future? Now you know what you did. You tried to satisfy everybody. You wanted to become a teacher because your parents told you, you were afraid when people told you why you didn’t finish your studies.

You believed their words, even if they never have studied before. Even if they didn’t know you or what you studied at all. You endured all their advice and were ashamed of yourself. You cried and felt miserable because you didn’t know what you want. Lastly, you were afraid of failing again. So, you said I need time. And you did your biggest decision at all: waiting until next year and try things out. Why was it your biggest decision? Because you stood against everybody, but you vouch for yourself. Even though you know, you couldn’t do anything, you are a doer, you wanted to make everyone happy, you made a decision and that was doing what you would love to do.

I’m proud of, you should be too,

The Present Annie.

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