Hey, how's it going? I need to rant for a minute, or just get some of this garbage out of my system. Feel free to keep reading if you want, or stop whenever you need to.

So, I'm experiencing what one might consider to be a "quarter-life crisis". Is it even a thing? Is it even the thing I'm going through right now? Who even knows, but it feels real enough to me.

I had a conversation with a professor I've taken a lot of classes with since my time at college. I wanted to discuss grad school with him and get some sort of advice. He threw a lot at me, but unfortunately very little of it was positive. It was an exposure to an unfortunate truth about the trajectory I'm heading down; fight tooth and nail to get into one of the top schools, then get on your knees and pray anyone cares about anything you're doing. It's the world of academia!

The thing is I do not want to be in the academic side of things at all. Like not even a little bit. I genuinely think that if I get my doctorate and become a professor, I'll probably take my own life before I even get my degree. I'm serious. I'd rather work retail than be an academic, that's really saying something.

I'm coming to this horrifying realization that maybe I went down a path that isn't good for me financially or mentally. I'm going to graduate this year with a music degree, and then what? The thing is is that this is not the only professor who's spoken to me about this. I took lessons with a lecturer, and he told me the exact same thing, and advised me that I go into creative media stuff instead. But I'm not even sure if I want to do that either. Making music under a crunch like that, just for the director to tell you they don't want it would also make me suicidal most likely. You also need to have connections to even enter that sort of field, something I don't have the privilege of possessing.

I genuinely have no idea what I should do, and my family is unfortunately not being incredibly supportive. They want me to go straight into grad school after I graduate, but I don't believe I'm ready to. I don't have a lot of recordings from my portfolio, I'm so stressed that going to class has been sucking the life out of me, I can feel burn out coming around the corner. If I take a gap year, my parents will make me get a job. Not only do I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I believe it'll be a better thing for me to do until I can figure out what I want to do and what steps to take to achieve it.

All of this is feeding into a real fear I have about becoming a full-fledged adult. Being an adult means that nothing is garaunteed, and that very little is in your control. I absolutely hate it, and this is making it so much worse. I thought I had a well thought out plan of what to do after undergrad is over, but that is very clearly looking not the case. It's clearly showing me that I may have made a mistake, and I need to seriously rethink what I want to do so I don't become homeless or starve to death.

I'm probably gonna call my sister this weekend, as I know she struggled with this too. I just need someone to listen to me and maybe at least support me in whatever decision I need to make for myself.