Had two cups of coffee already and am still ready to fall asleep 😴

Regarding the post you reblogged about life after high school getting better, do you have any tips for that? How to get into a good college even if your high school grades were just average? What degree did you take- and then what job did you end up getting? Was that hard? It's completely fine if you don't want to answer- thank you thank you for your help if u do, and blessings from a very stressed out high school student

For people whose grades are kind of average/not great, I honestly suggest community college. It’s not just the grade thing, but like...cost-wise it lets you try college classes on for size for a much more affordable price than most four-year universities. 

There’s this pressure to go to college at X age and then to like...live “the college life” and lemme just tell you that...from most people I know who did it? It wasn’t great. Or even good. It just...was. It’s definitely not worth paying 4x the money for. The media kind of hypes it up to an extreme degree but for the love of God don’t buy into college as an experience. It’s education.

Community college not only lets you try college for cheaper but it can help you figure out what you want to do for cheaper--and it can help you figure out if college is even for you for a price that won’t make you weep. They tend to have a pretty wide variety of classes and you can try something in an applicable field to see if it suits you/if you’d like to continue.

Don’t rule out trade schools, either. Or apprenticeships. Electricians, Heating/AC people, plumbers, mechanics, carpenters: they can make good money because everyone went to university and nobody went to trade school to get certifications. If any of those things are Potentially Interesting, look up some youtube videos/look for blogs on the subject. Seriously. If I could do it over again I’d have taken advantage of a background around remodeling/building and I would have done like my grandfather and been a master carpenter. Lost opportunities my guy.

Anyway, I started getting an English Education degree, then switched it to Creative Writing and finally to Literature and then with like a year left of school I dropped out: $44,000 in debt. Now I work in the billing department of a construction/concrete company doing a mix of billing and intercompany inventory work--something completely unrelated to the degree I was getting. I mostly use my degree knowledge to talk big about anime. Yikes.

Anyway working has always been easier for me than school. I like getting a paycheck. College was hard but mostly because of the commute (an hour each way every day), plus there was a lot of awful financial pressure on my entire family. (When gas was over $4/gallon I was Suffering.)

I enjoyed my college classes most of the time. My initial goal was to get a PhD in English Literature and teach college classes. It wasn’t even really a pipe dream, either: I somehow wormed my way into the good graces of all of the people in charge of the English department and was told I ought to consider pursuing a master’s or PhD. 

But in the end I quit to move to another state to be with my now-husband, so I don’t regret it (and honestly feel it was the best choice for me, though it wasn’t easy moving 10hrs away from my family to a place where I knew nobody).

Like, long story short: college isn’t for everyone. Higher education isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t even really for me, though if I’d have stayed in Ohio I’d probably be working on that PhD still. Like, I went to college at 26 because I was crippled and couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have a degree. If I hadn’t gotten hurt in the first place, I’d have never gone. 

The best thing college did for me was teach me that I wasn’t stupid. I always felt like maybe I was. I’m kind of a know-it-all and I’ve always been one, but in my family we had the Creative People (one brother and I) and the Smart People (youngest brother and sister). The youngest two graduated valedictorian and got full-tuition scholarships to universities. My other brother and I did manual labor and then when we both went to school we ended up in the liberal and fine arts (instead of getting degrees in Math and Science like the other two). Hell, my sister’s in optometry school right now. I always worried I’d go to college and it’d be too hard for me. But...it wasn’t? It was so different from high school. I didn’t feel like I belonged there (I was older than most grad students and was mistaken more than once for the professor of a class lmfao) but once I got into my lit classes, man... God, it felt good to have professors tell me that they wanted to hear from me because I “always have something good to add” and shit. What the fuck? 

Anyway as it turns out, college helped me find my talent of literary bullshit ramblings and it flung off this bitterness I had on my shoulders that just wouldn’t go away that made me think I was bad at doing anything that wasn’t monotonous physical labor. I don’t think college is for everybody, but I do think it’s worth trying out. My dad went back to college after his factory packed up and moved to Mexico and like, he graduated with an associate’s degree at 60. He thought he was stupid, too, and he struggled with some things, but he was in there getting straight As...! 

So check into community college and see about what kinds of programs they offer. If you hate it: you can bail with very little loss. If you love it, you can get a lot of gen-ed credits in and move onto/transfer to a 4-year school. You can also try working part-time and taking a couple of classes at a community college to see how you feel about it (if you enjoy working and aren’t very confident in how much you’ll like college). 

Take a deep breath, anon!! You’ll get there!

My first Ed Sheeran Concert / Argentina / May 2017

I know nobody reads my blog and I’ve got literally 5 followers and this is going to be a long post but I really need to write this down ❤️

So last Saturday was my first ever Ed Sheeran show (and first ever proper concert experience) and I’ve got to say...IT WAS THE BEST FUCKING DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE!!! I’ve lived a pretty decent amount of years and had experienced some beautiful, unique things through out my time on earth but OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO AMAZING, I just can’t get over it, it’s been a week and I’m still super excited about it (I’m also a pain in the ass for everyone who knows me because I just can’t shut up, I’ve literally been talking about it non stop since Saturday) 

I arrived to La Plata at 10:30 am, I live in a small town 620 miles away from it, on the northeast of the country so I had to take a really really REALLY long 13 hour bus ride to get there. I rushed to the hotel, quickly changed my clothes and went to the stadium. My cousin/god-daughter was already queuing with her older brother who was saving my spot. All this madness actually started because of her, in September she’s turning 15 and when the tour dates were released I knew this was the most perfect present for her (she loves Ed). Long story short, at first I wasn’t going with her, her brother was (he’s not keen on Ed), I had to work plus I’m doing a master’s degree that should be finished by the end of may so things were complicated, but then I though fuck it, you only live once! and decided to join her. By the end of march I surprised her with the tickets (which I kept secret for a whole month) and our Ed Sheeran journey began.

I got to the stadium at 11:30am, we had general admision ticket (the front section) so we had to queue to get good spots, when I arrived there were like two blocks of people queuing, some of them arrived on Tuesday and were camping outside for 3 days! We started chatting with some girls who were next to us and spend the whole afternoon together, we were like 6 girls and a dad, laughing and having fun, talking about Ed and stuff, it was so nice to get to know them ❤️ We even heard Ed doing the soundcheck and started screaming like maniacs (Argentinean people scream a lot hahaha)

By 4pm the queue started moving and we were slowly entering the stadium in groups, we ran like crazy (while screaming, obviously) even though the guards kept telling us NO RUNNING! When I entered the stadium I was so shocked by how huge it was and how close we were to the stage! I had no hopes of being close since I was arriving on the date of the show, I even brought my glasses because I thought it would be so hard to see him but, to my surprise, we ended up like 6 or 10 people away from the barricade, we were so so happy we send a voice message to our family screaming in joy. 

And then the wait and torture began, we were literally compressed, I coudn’t even move my arms and sometimes it was really hard to breathe, my cousin ended up a little bit further away from me because I went to get merch when we arrived but I kept an eye on here most of the time. The first oppening show (a local singer) was pretty good, a bit boring. Then it was Antonio Lulic’s turn, he was super charismatic and fun but I was so uncomfortable I just wanted to go, there was a point where I though “this is awful, I’m never getting general admision tickets again” How wrong I was.

It was a really cold day, 9º and it rained a few times, by the time Antonio was done and we were waiting for Ed it started pouring heavily, but we where so hot and pushed together that it was a relief. At 20:30 exactly the screens were lit, we where like 40,000 people inside the stadium, and boom there he was, in all his ginger glory, playing Castle on the Hill with his small guitar sporting a red hoax t-shirt over a flannel (I was hysterical about the flannel lol I just missed them so much) and those lovely tight jeans. And at that moment I knew, everything was worth seeing him, the wait, the cold, the rain, the pain, the pushing, the hair of the girl in front of me in mouth, he was there, a few meters a away from me. It was surreal, seeing him there, I’ve watched so many videos, and I was seeing him live so clearly, he was incredibly beautiful, he had the warmest smile I’ve ever seen, his hair bright orange and the red suited him perfectly, his eyes bright and excited. 

As usual, when he arrived people screamed to the top of their lungs and the Ed Sheeran party began, we were so so loud, and he was so so impressed. After Castle on the Hill he said “Hello, this is amazing” and told us he was looking forward to coming back to Argentina because he remembered how loud we were, and dared us to be even louder than the whole european tour (we were).

The rest of the night was pure magic, I was still uncomfortable but it was so worthy, I kept moving from different spots because people literally dragged me, sometimes I was closer to the stage, sometimes not so much. I sang, jumped, cried and scream through the almost 2 hour show. Apart from being amazingly talented as always and his voice just as sweet, beautiful and powerful, he was super happy to be there. That was the best part, seeing him enjoying the experience as much as we were. 

He kept moving closer to the edge of the stage and I was swooning every time he did, you can literally hear me in the videos sighing “ahhh”.

He sang Castle on the Hill, Eraser, The A Team, Don’t / New man, Dive (which he asked us to sing the loudest while it was raining heavily), Bloodstream (one of my favourite to hear live, because of the energy that performance has and the heavy guitar action), Galway Girl, Feeling Good / I See Fire, Barcelona (every time he sang the lyrics in spanish he smirked, he knew we would scream even louder, Perfect, Happier (where he asked us to turn the lights on, the view was beautiful), Thinking out loud, Photograph (I cried through the whole song, you can hear me sobbing while singing in my video) and then something amazing happened. In between songs we, the people in the general admission area, started screaming “Give me love, give me love” to which he answered “Try next time”. After Photograph, he grabbed his guitar, looked at us while we kept screaming “Give me love” and asked Trevor to bring any guitar that was on tune and HE STARING SINGING GIVE ME LOVE, we were hysterical, we asked, he did it, it lasted nearly 9 minutes, it was breath taking, he even set up a chorus in the crowd, dividing us in Higher Harmony, Lower Harmony and asking to sing non-stop, no matter what happened while he sang and directed us like an orchestra (you must have seen the video by now) It was magnificent. Then came Nancy Mullingan (he asked us to sing the nanananana instrumental part) and Sing (we jumped and screamed like psychos, it was super fun and energetic). He then run to change and came back with the Argentinean football t-shirt, I have to admit I was one of those people who thought it was silly when singers do that, and I didn’t understand the excitement of it, but when he came back I nearly peed in my pants hahahahaha it suited him so nicely, bringing out the blue in his eyes 🎵 Shape of you began, we where all dancing and jumping, and for closure, You need me I don’t need you, where he got all excited moving and running trough the stage like crazy while waving an argentinean flag. (overly excited Ed in YNMIDNY is my favourite Ed) And then he was gone.

I took a few pictures, almost all of them awful (I’m really bad plus my phone is crap) and videos where you can hear the crowd (and me) more than you can hear Ed hahahaha I tried to enjoy the show through my eyes rather than my phone, and I’m so glad I did.

Since december I’ve been strugling with a lot, went through something I thought I’d never had to deal with that got me really really down. The person I loved the most, that I thought would never hurt me, crushed me into pieces and the last 6 months were awful. I was depressed, didn’t leave the house, didn’t showered, lost weight, cut contact with all my friends and family but then the latin american tour was announced and I bought tickets for my god daughter. By the end of march I made the decision to go with her and from that exact moment things got better, I was finally looking forward to something, dreaming about the experience, smiling once again.  Ed’s music lifted me up in a way I tought it was not possible. The moment I saw him my heart was pounding so much. He was there, he was real. People tell me “If you didn’t go you’d have regreted it so much”. Now, being aware of what this type of experience is, what it makes you feel, I would never forgive myself if I decided to stay. I literally never imagined it would be THIS GOOD. 

20.05.17 is, by far, the best day of my life, I’ll never forget it. Thank you singer songwriter Edward Christopher Sheeran. You’re a magical human being.

*Sorry for my english but as you might have guessed is not my first language.