Three Strikes You're Out

Two days ago, as I was casually playing online Drinking Scrabble with my sister, Carinne of Waffle Snob, she sends me an oh-too-familiar link.

My blog from high school.

I glared at the link, feeling my chest get tight, sweat beading on my brow from anxiety, my fingers twitching from fear. I clicked on the link...

Ok, so I just made that up. But I really did not want to read the musings of my angst-filled emotastic 17-year-old self. My memory of myself from high school is one of a shy, frizzy-haired, whiny, stereotypical teenager who thought my life was over every other day. Oh, who also, shocker of shockers, hated high school and everything associated with it. Spare me.

The last thing I wanted to do was deviate from my super-cool and not-even-almost-nerdy game of Scrabble and read: "Ohmigod, you will NOT believe what my bff Blah-blah-blah did to me yesterday. She hit on the guy I like, Wuh-wuh-wuh! She is SUCH a bitch! I cannot even BELIEVE we were EVER friends..." (Again, exaggeration. But only slightly this time.)

But, curiosity, as it always does, raised it's damn head again. I just had to click on the link. How else would I know just how miserable I truly was back then?

I clicked on the link, and was actually pleasantly surprised. I used commas, and semi-colons, and periods appropriately! Grammar! I occasionally used words with two, even three syllable words sometimes! Vocabulary! Best of all, there was not one "ohmigod," "totally," "like," or "my life is overrrr" to be seen! Dare I say it, I was borderline intelligent? Now, that isn't to say I was interesting; oh hell no. The content left something to be desired. I wrote quite a long epic post about walking my dog. And my last post was on my senior class schedule. Hardly the stuff of literary geniuses.

So that whole long post about nothing, means simply: I'm back! With a slightly more advanced grasp on grammar and a few more multiple-syllable words under my belt, and a college degree to boot. This blog will discuss what life has to offer after graduation.

More importantly, this blog will discuss what will happen in my life after graduation.

Let's play catch-up, shall we? And then I SWEAR I'm done writing this God-forsakenly long post.

As of tomorrow, I am a proud graduate of West Virginia University where I received my B.A. in History. Wow, I'm sure you find yourself thinking, what kind of loser gets a History degree in this economic climate? Right you are, reader! In the beginning of my senior year, despite my pretty good grades and several jobs so my resume is all spiffed up, I had no marketable talents to find a career. Nor did I particularly want to become some office drone, a la Pam from The Office.

Did some soul searching, and I realized what I want to do with my life, which included getting my masters degree. So I started the annoying, and grueling process to apply for masters programs. I started school as this major, and dropped out because, as previously noted, I was still a little too emotastic and self-centered at age 20 to want to try anything resembling a career. So I knew what I was in for. Still wasn't fun.

God, I love narrating my own life, don't I? Ok-skip forward a few months.

I am now going to the University of Pittsburgh for graduate school. I am going to Mountaineer Hell for this. I have accepted that fact.

So here I am, rejuvenated blogger, five years later. High school diploma, forthcoming college diploma, lotsa "Cheers, Beers, and Mountaineers!" chants ingrained in me. In the same place I left you. Living at home. Going to school in Pittsburgh. Talking about nothing for long periods of time. I've come so far.

Get a beer; you'll need it for this one.