High school turned out to be a... thing. A wild, uninhibited, crazy thing.
You picked a track that seemed to fit with your preferences, music, English and a bit of social science. While you were hardly a slouch at the natural sciences on leaving elementary school, this track appealed to your artistic side.
It started off a little slow. You met your classmates, began the introductory courses, attended the first real party where beer seemed less a slightly forbidden thing and more something that you just
did and... well, something clicked for you. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was just the atmosphere. Maybe it was all the attention. Maybe all of the above, but whatever it was, you
loved it.
You still went to your classes of course, and you still did your work as best you could, but on entering high school, you essentially transformed from slightly bookish girl to the life of the party.
You dated wildly and with a sort of almost reckless abandon. You discovered pretty early on that you liked kissing and cuddling and dancing, so you sought it out. You didn't mind who it was, as long as they could catch your fleeting interest. Sometimes, you'd be with someone for an evening, and never see them again. Sometimes you would kiss half a dozen people during the same party. The longest you dated someone was two months.
On reflection, you left quite the wake of broken hearts. Not the thing you're proudest of in your life, but not something that really bothers you that much either.
There's a culture, to high school. It's not the culture you'd seen in the movies or the like, those mostly being American, but it's a culture all its own nonetheless. Specifically, it's a culture of parties, of drinking, of being free to do what you want, and of trying to remember to keep others in mind even so.
Denmark is not a dry country by any means, but few places do alcohol flow as freely as high school. In this, you were no exception. Though you had little money to pay for it, living off your allowance and the grace of your parents, you drank heavily, mostly in cheap beer, for lack of much else you could afford. In the end, you found you had to supplement what you could bring yourself with what others would give you to catch your attention.
On reflection, you have slightly mixed feelings about all that, but in the end it was part of what made high school the place that it was.
The climax of your wildest days came on the trip in your second year. Vienna was a wonderful city to visit, especially with a class full of people who loved music, and you will doubtlessly remember it fondly even many years from now. However it was the evenings, the time you were let loose upon the city, that you had been anticipating.
You don't remember much from those evenings. There is a gap between arriving at a bar, and waking up with a thundering headache, lying half on your bed, half on the floor, with two of your classmates piled on top of you, everything sticking of alcohol, that sticks out to you as the
moment.
The moment where you resolved to maybe moderate how much you drank.
Your mom cut your allowance to ensure you kept... drier. You got pretty drunk a few times during third year too.
For all these things though, for all that you had a blast almost every day, for all that high school was to you everything it was supposed to be... you didn't, in the end, make a lot of
friends. Maybe you just weren't trying. You have a ton of people on your facebook, and you're friendly with everyone, you went to all the parties, but...
Your friends were different people. They
are different people. They're the people you've known for twelve years, who you've grown up with from when you were tiny (and in your case not so tiny) kids playing with lego and running around playing tag. They're the people you've stuck with for more than half your life.
For a lot of your high school life, you saw them in the gaps. The days you didn't have a date, the days you didn't need to crunch an assignment, the days you weren't going on a party, those were the days you spent with your friends.
There are four of you in total. You and...
[ ] write-in three friends, make it three keywords for each of them
The rest of your time, somewhat to your surprise, often went to your siblings.
There was kind of a vague sense, when you started high school, that your life was going to change somehow, and that what you spent time on was going to be different. That was
true, but not in the ways you thought. The niggling expectation that you and your younger siblings would drift a little... it didn't happen.
Astrid was ten when you started high school, well into elementary school herself, a proud new fourth-grader, while Markus was eight, and had just entered second grade. Your parents were both working full-time, and sometimes they had a hard time picking up your siblings early. On the other hand, you had several days that ended around two, though plenty enough that ran to four as well. Often, you were thus the one to find them and take them home... or take them elsewhere. It turned into something you just did, bring them to parks, playgrounds, museums, the movies. You'd play with them and carry them around and show them all you knew of Copenhagen. Sometimes you'd even take them with you while meeting your friends, and you'd go out somewhere, all six of you.
Likewise, the old artist you'd started taking lessons with was someone you just stuck with. Sometimes you came in, hungover and feeling like death warmed over, or worse still, like kiviak in the spring. But you never skipped a lesson, and though you've never worked yourself to the bone on your art, you've managed in the end to be
actually good. Maybe not good enough to make a living off it, but then, who can?
Your music, likewise, gained a lot. Taking a musically-oriented track taught you a bunch, including a lot of formal and academic things which has given you a new perspective. You're a
pretty skilled tuba-player, and you're
not actually bad at composing either. You've also picked up
passable basics in a wide assortment of instruments.
But of course, high school doesn't last forever. And for you, time is up. The third year finals have come and gone, biting down on your life, chewing it up and spitting it out in a mess of exams, stress and horror at the idea you might mess up too badly to get into your chosen field at university.
Well, unless you pick one of those easy ones that have more spots than applicants, in which case they'll let bloody anyone at all with a graduation in.
In your case, the results ended up being...
Pick one
[ ] abysmal. Fortunately there are courses that will take literally anyone.
[ ] bad. You're not getting in most competitive places.
[ ] average. As long as you're not going for something very prestigious you should get in.
[ ] good. There are still some fields that are denied to you, but they're pretty few.
[ ] great! You can probably even get in and study medicine!
[ ] better than straight As. You can do literally whatever you want, you disgusting overachiever, exploiting the system!
(Top grades kind of need some focus on school work. Who knew, eh?
)
Lacking a completely clear direction for your life, you decided to at the very least get a bachelor's degree in something. You thus applied for…
[ ] IT Universitetet (ITU)
[ ] Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)
[ ] Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
[ ] Roskilde Universitet (RUC)
[X] Københavns Universitet (KU), look, this is the one I know, okay?
And attempted to get into the field of…
[ ] write-in field or pick from:
Bacheloruddannelser – Københavns Universitet
(If grades are worse than the minimum required to get into the chosen field, I will adjust them until they're valid. Except for ones that Annelise just can't get into, because she didn't dedicate her high school life to ensuring she'd get in. There are also certain fields that have prerequisites. The relevant ones are mostly the natural science ones)
After a final drunken bender after graduation - if you don't see a wagon full of high school students drinking cans of beer and making noise again for the rest of your life, you shall consider it a blessing from the heavens - and then a long, relaxing trip to Greenland, you've more or less recuperated from the entire three years.
There really is something special about the old homeland, even if you wouldn't want to live there all the time anymore. Maybe when you get old.
Now you've been back in Denmark for about two weeks, catching up with your friends and getting your course material for your first term. You haven't drunk a drop of alcohol in several weeks and as it happens Greenland is not particularly conducive to dating, especially when you're running around the middle of nowhere, sleeping in the outside and hunting seals. You also haven't really had a good chance for a party since coming back.
That might be changing though. There's a big introductory party for all the new students at your chosen faculty. There'll be a meet 'n greet of the others beginning in the same field, and you'll get to meet with the tutors that are going to help you settle in during the first term, and who'll arrange freshmen's short trip. All in all it sounds pretty neat. On the other hand...
Pick one
[ ] It's a party! Of course you're going! All aboard for High School Life: II - the Return of Bad Decisions!
[ ] Yeah, you want to go, definitely! Though, you're going to be a bit more... mature. And not drink too much. And maybe kiss at most one person.
[ ] A party sounds like a challenge. You're going, sure, but...
you're not going to drink and all! And
you're not going to seduce anyone! Wow. That's kind of scary to think about. You've never been to a party where you didn't do those!
[ ] Actually, screw parties. You have an entire week before classes start that are going to be introduction arrangements and stuff to get people to know each other. The party is just extra. You're going to go out with your friends instead.
[ ] Honestly you just want to stay home and play with Astrid and Markus. Your siblings are better than parties anyway.
(going to the party means focus will be on university and meeting new people, going with your friends means they will be introduced and focus will be on them, staying home means a focus on what is going on at home. The focus will switch later, but this determines what the first "real" update will be about!)
***
The following is not a "real" vote. It's more a public poll. I'd appreciate if you "voted" anyway though. It'll help me figure out expectations and the like.
Would you prefer...
[ ] Full realism except for all the not-quite-human people around
[ ] The world plays by subtly different rules, encouraging odd situations and maybe with a few real mysteries
[ ] There's a world of small mysteries and gentle magic that meshes with the mundane life of Annelise and her friends
[ ] There's a separate world of mysteries and gentle magic which sometimes connects with the mundane life of Annelise and her friends for more startling events
Would you prefer...
[ ] Polar bears are the only weird species
[ ] General kemonomimi among the populace
[ ] There are also weirder things, like centaurs and naga and harpies and driders
[ ] The world could be the prelude to Shadowrun except for the lack of moustache twirlingly evil megacorps and all the "people dying" stuff.
Would you prefer...
[ ] A focus on slice of life
[ ] A focus on small mysteries and investigation
[ ] A focus on solving problems for other people and being a good influence on your surroundings
[ ] A focus on competition and on trying to become a popular artist or musician
Or would you prefer something totally different such as...
[ ] write-in
***
Alright! This is it! The end of the beginning. Hopefully I won't make this many choices again for a while.
Class reunions must be awkward.
Or her elementary friends for the matter, since they're all likely to have dated once upon a time.
High school reunions could definitely get awkward! However Annelise was kind of a bookish teacher's pet during elementary school, and had yet to awake to the joy of parties and kissing, and besides she was literally taller and stronger than anyone else in her class, which kind of put the boys off, and liberation in sexual norms aside, most girls take a bit more than the end of elementary school to figure out that they'd like to kiss other girls, I believe. Even if the girl in question is the cutest polar bear girl.
So my conclusion was that her friends have ended up being kind of bemused by the frenzy of dating that Annelise suddenly began, but if any of them secretly wanted - or want! - to date her, then they haven't spoken up about it, because they presumably were or are a bit more serious about the idea than "last for two months tops".
Now her
high school friends...
But then, all those friendships ended up a little more casual. You'll have chances to connect with them later on if you want, I suppose, but right now they're set to drift out of her life.
