So I’m young and 18. I’ve always been the outside in my family less smart intelligence wise but much more adept socially. Anyway I’ve always been the golden child, the kid that anyone would want to have had, one who never really caused trouble, never cried or whined. Good grades in highschool, constantly being complimented on being polite, respectful, charming. The list goes on. I’m not one of those prodigy kids though who knows calculus and was in all AP’s and had internships and whatever. But it’s recently just gotten to me that I kind of dislike being the golden child. I just want to be me.

Anyway I’ve constantly felt pressured to go to college. Everyone else in my family has mostly. My parents have PhD’s in physics and my brother has a masters in computer engineering. But I’m adopted and not at all like them personality wise. My true passion is cooking, I’ve done it professionally learning from Chefs that I respect. Doing that made me feel strong, I was in my prime and strongest physically, I was able to do 13 hour shifts of physical labor without breaks. And I managed to make 18,000$ by the end of high school and save around 14k. I’ve written a novel by my senior year and am currently working on five more books (not all in the same series) That was the peak of my life and I really enjoyed it.

I miss cooking so much, I miss learning under chefs and feeling like I can be different and unique from my family. They’ve always encouraged me to go to college and I understand the reasoning. Yet I wanted to go to culinary school and they weren’t willing to pay for it, but of course were willing to pay for a liberal arts degree. And I realize that this made me feel like they would support me in anything that they felt was good for me and not what I actually want to do career wise. Anyway I got a good scholarship to my college but I’ve been struggling a bit in my French course as I’ve never been good at languages, it’s required for freshman unless they speak a language other than English at home or took 4 years in HS (I only took three in Spanish)

Anyway French is just a really crappy workload and like I said I’m terrible at languages. Yet I don’t want to drop out of college as my parents paid a lot of money for it and I have as well. All I want is to make my family proud and I just can’t bear to tell them that I regret not going to culinary instead.

I’d just like some kind words or any advice, I’ve just been feeling really down and kind of alone here, and some motivational words would mean a lot to me. Thanks and sorry for the long story.