Rule No.13 - Remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe you're parents any explanations...

...you don't owe your professors any explanations."

This rule goes out to Smart girl and Crazy Beautiful specifically. You do not need to explain a thing to family, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends, acquaintances or strangers. You just need to explain to yourself. If you want to do something and it feels right in your heart, by all means do it. And if family and friends question it, you should feel confident enough that you made the right decision to not have to defend yourself.

When you start doing things to make others happy, that's where the problems start. It has to be for you cause in the end, you going to wake up the next morning, still as you, and then the next morning and so on. So you want to wake up each morning knowing that you are doing everything you can to make yourself happy. I'm really one to be preaching this as up until the other day, my only purpose in life, it felt, was to keep everyone else happy. I had to go through some tough not so nice times to learn that in the end, it's just gonna be me, and if i spent my whole life keeping others happy and making myself miserable, I would have missed the whole point of living.

It sounds incredibly selfish, but trust me, once you make that decision, you feel like a new person that could take on the world. Try it, and don't ever feel like you need to justify anything to anyone. Unless you do something criminal. That isn't a good idea and you won't be happy in prison. ;)