But Not You
Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you.
-Jim Rohn
Christine Chapel is unfailingly average in every aspect of her life. She has average parents (a dentist and a museum curator), average looks (she's pretty, but not stunningly beautiful like Melissa Thorpe, the prettiest girl in school), average friends (God bless them, they are the best friends a girl could have though), and she makes average grades (in everything).
There's nothing wrong with any of that. Being average is not a bad thing. She doesn't even hate it.
Most of the time.
It makes it hard to decide what one wants to do with one's life, though. There's nothing she's terribly interested in when it comes to her subjects, and she doesn't excel at anything to help her decide or at least narrow down a field, even if it is something as nonspecific as "science" or "history." Anything would be better than nothing.
A part of her wants something exciting, though it's indecisiveness is not particularly helpful in solving the problem. She doesn't feel adventurous enough to pick a career dangerous and exciting.
So, in the meantime, she rebels in small ways. Or, one small way.
Christine loves her hair; it is average like the rest of her, but she has a particular shade of blonde that all the brunette girls are jealous of. Nothing synthesizes this exact color, despite numerous dyes that try to come close. When she was a child, her mother would style it all sorts of ways: in bows, in braids, in ringlets, pulled back, pulled up, with all manner of bobby pins and hair clips and hair ties.
Really, it was only natural for her to experiment with it, after being so used to having it styled. Once she was a teenager, she got to look for inspiration all on her own, and do whatever she pleased. She takes great pleasure in finding all kinds of hairstyles, most from cultures as different from her own as possible. For nearly a year when she was fifteen, she ran through every Betazoid fashion catalog she could, picking styles from it. She thinks her Betazoid year was her favorite, with its gravity-defying up-dos and fantastically long and impractical curls.
And though she loves her natural blonde, she's ran the gamut of visible spectrum colors. During her Betazoid year, she stuck to browns (with a brief foray into red and black, and even a color that looked black until the light hit it and it was actually blue instead), but she's done every color she's liked enough to try. It's not long before she returns to her natural color, that perfectly pale shade that is unabashedly blonde, not white, not gold, but blonde.
Not that she's always managed to get away with her crazy and ever-changing hairstyles. When she was sixteen, she got in trouble at school because she had strung little iridescent lights that blinked and alternated colors through her fauxhawk. She's still proud of how she pulled that off, considering she was concerned about looking like a Christmas tree had attacked her with its lights and possibly a buzz saw.
Anyway, school hadn't liked it because, "it's distracting your peers," which she couldn't deny. Nearly all of her classmates had continuously stared at her, as if mesmerized by the twinkling lights.
Her parents weren't too pleased either. "A fauxhawk! What were you thinking, Christy?" her mother had exclaimed, dramatically dropping her face into her hands, and her father had said, "I'm extremely disappointed in your carelessness, Christine. You should have known better than to go to school like that."
She didn't care about their reaction. It's not often she gets in trouble, so she gets more slack than other teenagers. They grounded her for a few days, long enough to last the rest of the week and the weekend, but they let her keep her computer access. The grounding is only given so she knows she did something wrong, but her parents know it's not an offense worth real punishment. It's not like she took the hovercar out for joyriding.
Her second-favorite hairstyle was the fairly impressive imitation of a beehive when she was seventeen. She dyes her hair honey-blonde for that, and adds bee-shaped pins with sparkling, flickering wings. Her best friend Anna adores it, and can't resist gushing over it and even occasionally touching it, squealing when one of the pins buzz at her.
"You should become a cosmetologist, Chris," she says over lunch at the best little oyster bar in the city. "You would be excellent at it."
Christine laughs, mainly at the thought that she'd excel at anything. It is something she decides to consider, though, because she is nearly out of high school and she still doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. Except, honestly, cosmetology is not something she's interested beyond her own hair, so she's back to square one.
Summer comes quickly and she graduates high school with no fancy honors, and she still hasn't chosen a college. "You're applying to LSU," her mother says matter-of-factly, even as she's looking over a PADD of art shipments the museum is expecting.
"I'm considering UCSF, actually," she tells her parents glibly. She actually hasn't even looked at UCSF, but it was the first one that popped into her head, and sometimes, she likes to wind them up.
"UCSF?" her mother repeats, finally looking up from her PADD. "Are you serious? That's in California!"
"Yes, it is," Christine nods, and doesn't say anything else.
Her father is the one who breaks the silence. "That's out-of-state," he says, because occasionally, her father likes to state the obvious. "That's going to be expensive, Christy."
"I'll get scholarships," she says defensively, but relents a little, "I'd like to visit the campus, Dad."
That's how she winds up in San Francisco, and once she sees UCSF, she really thinks it might be the place for her. She's good enough at sciences, and they've got some impressive programs. For the first time, Christine thinks her life plan is beginning to take shape.
Then she sees a file on the announcements board, the Starfleet Academy logo catching her attention. She reaches out, touching it, bringing it closer so she can read it. They're looking for nurses and they're willing to give a full scholarship to anyone who passes the exams. It's a two-year program with a five-year service requirement, and then you're free to do whatever you want to do. If it's further your education, Starfleet will pay for that, too.
It all clicks into place in her head (nursing degree, five years, then medical degree and she'll be a doctor), and Christine is quick to send a copy of the file to her personal PADD, so she can look at the information later.
Well, she thinks, it'll break up the monotony at least.