I can be incredibly silly. How to be myself? Stop trying to fit into the expectations of others or my assumed expectations of others, I guess. The harder part is recognizing when I'm doing it. It happens almost subconsciously, and it's often not until long after I'm involved that I start asking myself why I'm doing something.

I'm a little peeved still that he seems to think I stole the idea of chemistry from him. I understand his stance, but I wish he would give me a little more credit now. I'm trying to step away from that old me. The "hard sciences" do not belong solely to him and it was not the first time I had ever considered studying a science. I wanted to become a nuclear scientist for the Navy when I heard how high my ASVAB scores were in high school. But I didn't have the grades they wanted. There were a lot of other things that I was "into", but I had no idea how those actually related to a career. Someone describing themselves as wanting to grow up to be a "scientist", "businessman", or "artist" sounded incredibly vague. I didn't actually know what I would do after high school, after I figured I wasn't that good at the visual arts even though I enjoyed them, that I couldn't be a scientist for the Navy (sounds ridiculous but for all I knew that was the only place I could study nuclear physics), that my chances of becoming a famed actress or writer were close to nil, and that I had fucked up on a lot of other things and even though that "7 intelligences" retarded test we all took pointed me out as being good at kinesiology, I didn't want to be a fucking gym teacher.

I did know that at that time the most joy I was getting out of school was in choir and percussion ensemble. Music seemed to come easily enough for me, so I embraced it as much as I could. I'm starting to think I gave it the death squeeze by mistake. :/ Even at Shasta, I didn't know for at least the first semester what was expected of me as a music major, and I didn't have any of the classes I was supposed to have. I remember enjoying the hell out of my chem lab at Shasta, but I didn't realize at the time what was meant by "for the liberal arts" as a course descriptor, and was pretty discouraged by the fact that that class and chem2a were not really equivalent. The longer I spent without being enrolled in a lab or something, the more terrifying the prospect became of trying to do it over. Did I give up on what could have been something great? No use wondering about it right now. And even though I'm using my past to rationalize future decisions, I'm not going to drag up every little polished rock. It's about using the past to help identify what I'm still interested in now, not just what I used to be interested in. I remember when I wanted to be a veterinarian. Today that would be a hell no.

Perhaps it is a little early to stop the spinning wheel and declare a new major. But I'm trying to find something that both stimulates and challenges me. I may think of something similar, or a specialization within the field. Or it could be entirely different. I'm past that freshman fear, I suppose. Knowing that I'll already be done with a degree, that terror of not knowing whether I'll be good enough to understand something or pass a class doesn't even apply. I DO have a life-long fear of finding out I've been utterly unintelligent my entire life. But that's different. Even then, all humans have their idiotic moment in the sun. Perhaps I should be giving a little more credit to stupidity. Anyway, I just don't feel like I have anything to lose at this point. I may as well see what sort of tough stuff I'm made of, quite literally.