As I’m no longer accidentally writing 2015 on things, the year is truly over and I think I’ve found ample words to describe it.  At the end of 2014, I had high expectations for the coming year. I was going to graduate college, find a job teaching English in a middle school and finally embrace adulthood. I laugh just reading that sentence now. 2015 was a miserable year that I had to battle through. I faced multiple failures, insults and a death of a good friend. There were some high points by the end of the year though, including several wonderful weddings, graduation and my engagement.

Here’s how I started the year. On New Year’s Eve 2014, one of my professors emailed me to let me know that I had failed out of the School of Education. At the time, I was at a water park with my friends. Try juggling the giddy excitement of a water park combined with the despair that comes with failing out of college. I was scheduled to start student teaching January 5, 2015, but it would never actually happen. You see, I’m an idiot and didn’t pass the prerequisite class to student teach. I was one semester away from being a teacher, and I couldn’t do it.

I had to drop my Education major, finish my English major (which felt like a silver medal) and reconfigure my life plan. I ended up working as a teacher’s aide in a Charter School in Fort Wayne, a position I thoroughly felt comfortable in. I began to think that maybe I needed to not student teach so that God could use me in this school. Unfortunately, at the end of the internship I was told that I was not a good match for the school, and wouldn’t be asked to join the staff. Whooooooo.

I was determined to teach, but Grace faculty made it clear that they would not allow me to student teach through them. The Indiana Department of Education didn’t pull any punches either; getting a license from them was nearly impossible for me. At this point, I was living in my cramped bedroom at my parents’ house. I was miserable. I had two interviews to be a news broadcast anchor in Fort Wayne, but that fell through as well.

The year did start to turn around in June. Kinda. After graduation, I was offered a reporting job at the Warsaw Times-Union newspaper. I have minor in journalism and I knew I could do the job, but anyone can tell you newspapers are not hot jobs. I was thrilled to get a paycheck, but I still feel shorted that I’m not teaching. Life kind of meandered on from this point. I had a house, a job and a pretty girlfriend, normal stuff.

In October, someone I love very much took his own life. This beautiful, funny, popular 17-year-old boy from New Haven shot himself, and I don’t think myself or my sister will ever be the same. Nate meant the world to my sister, and his family still means a lot to both of us. Losing him covered my world in an ugly gray Instagram filter. Everything seemed jaded.

From that point on, 2015 did get better. Morgan, my pretty girlfriend, became my pretty fiancé in November. Then Christmas with our families were as delightful as they had ever been. Morgan and I then rang in 2016 drunk on Bourbon Street in New Orleans; perfect. So this year wasn’t a complete failure; I graduated college, got engaged, visited my favorite city, but I can’t say that I’m happy with how it unfolded.