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General discussion is fine! My dating advice thread has 90 some posts so far, you just have to get people in with the right hook (or Badgenome's recent "cumming at your dad's funeral" thread)

25 years old, five sentences, five years a sentence. Hmm.

I was an only child, so my formative years got a fair amount of parental attention (and other attention from adults) and also as much TV as my parents would let me watch.
Get into elementary school and I was a nerd, though it took me until age ten to find out and I was happy as an outdoorsy kid with a focus on science and a solid group of friends.
Through puberty and early teens, however, i went hardcore nerd, no longer going outside for much, getting into anime and hard into video games, with my academic interests switching gears to politics and history and embracing the "outcast" angle.
Late teens to age twenty I stayed solidly in nerd-dom as I went off to college, though kept a group of friends through high school and college and got better at socializing.
In my twenties I passed out of college with great promise only to find nothing waiting for me on the other side, and living at home made me even more introverted until the past year when I got a job at a gas station, then enrolled in graduate school, and lately everything's been going great for me, though i've still got a ways to go before i qualify as well-adjusted.

.

I got born.
I did baby stuff for a while
I went to school
I'm still in school, at college, almost done with school.
I like music.

Sorry, I don't really feel like going in depth. It's a mess. 

Is that you on your profile picture???

I was my mum's second daughter of three children, and my dad's seventh daughter of eight children.

My dad put so much pressure on me as his "last hope" for a successful kid and pushed me to "Not be like the others" that I over-achieved in school and outside of school, was pretty sheltered - video games and books were my only refuge.

I started my first semester of university in the same month that my parents separated, my dad had a breakdown and tried to kill himself and I ended up, four years later, graduating with a first class honours degree as well as a bunch of awards for extra-curricular shit.

I was good at pretty much everything at school, which means (first world problem) I had no focused idea on what I should be when I grew up - as it happens, I'm in my final year of my doctoral degree in science and I realised I much prefer the written subjects (history, languages etc) and I absolutely hate what I'm doing but I'm trapped in it.

I've been pushing away the depression that's been threatening me since my parents' divorce, and I've suffered from anxiety which I'm beginning to overcome.

Bonus sentence: I struggle to form stable relationships.

Early years: First born, out of wedlock, parents had no real qualifications to speak of, and extremely poor-paying jobs; early years of my life I didn't see much of my dad, as he had to regularly pull in 6 day weeks and 12 hour days, on top of this, I was born with a few medical conditions (that don't affect me now) so I was in and out of hospital a lot back then.

Over the years, I got 2 brothers, and my dad's career progressed nicely - as a family we moved from working class to being within the UK's "1%"

Never really excelled at school, just coasted my way through to University (first in my family - had to pay my own way), had a bit of a breakdown in second-year, loneliness, days in bed, suicidal thoughts - life turned around when I got an offer to do a year long internship with a bank in Hong Kong.

Loved my job, and life in HK, met my girlfriend, etc, all around fantastic year, bank offered me a full-time-job upon graduation, so long as I hit a certain grade.

Final year of university, worked harder than I've worked in my life - 50 hour weeks, etc, massive turnaround in grade performance, back in HK now, hard work paid off, I'm a top performer, one of the best, and am the subject of internal poaching, etc - I honestly believe that there are very few people out there at my age who have the skillset that I do in my area of knowledge (the bank needs me more than I need them, and that does very well for my pay packet).

Theme of these five sentences (loose definition of the word 'sentences'): work hard and self-improvement. It moved my dad up, it moved me up. Doesn't matter where you start in life, so long as you work hard, realise your flaws and try to improve them, and have a molecule of understanding of how the world works, you can come on leaps and bounds. Not everybody can be the Bransons or Musks of the world, but they can be the Bransons and Musks of their world, and that's what is important.

As an aside, I notice in this thread that there's a lot of people with self-doubts or personal issues. I can be a great person to communicate with, I don't have any professional training, but I can lend a caring ear.

I was a baby.
Then I was in 2nd grade.
Then I was in 5th grade.
Then I got addicted to porn.
Now It's getting better.

See you on February 5th.