As a freelance artist, I've illustrated a published book by age 21, and have been hired again to illustrate the sequel.

I'm working on chapter 17 of my ongoing web serial after a fairly long intermission. Currently, I've written 872 words out of an estimated 4000 for that chapter, and plan to release it by the end of February.

I'm graduating college in May with a B.S. in biological sciences, and for my senior thesis project I've been identifying orphan peptides on the genomes of arthrobacter bacteriophages. I'm hoping my work with genomics and proteomics will help me get a job doing something with life extension research.

"Harry had refreshed the Transfigurations he was maintaining, both the tiny jewel in the ring on his hand and the other one."

Hermione, probably.

The play on words with the title of the chapter (Riddles and Answers) and the final reveal was neat. Harry might be a copy of Quirrell!mort who's had his memory erased (rememberall,) and good ol' Quirrell!mort needs Harry to get the stone because...?

I'm still really curious how the Deathly Hallows are going to tie into this.

Also, where the hell is Cedric Diggory? Will it be another situation like what happened with the troll? The spare gets killed, or Harry is the spare, and is found defective?

Oh dear. Bets on how badly this will end?

Confirmation the prophecy isn't about Neville:

Neville Longbottom... who took this test in the Longbottom home... received a grade of Outstanding.

Harry raised the parchment with its EE+, still silent.

The Defense Professor smiled, and it went all the way to those tired eyes.

"It is the same grade... that I received in my own first year."

AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL

Thank you, I really needed that spelled out.

Fun fact about the questionare: when I excluded all "I don't know" and "sometimes" answers - I got "yes" exactly 80%.

I appreciate the time you took to describe a very detailed plan. Just one thing: I live in Colombia, not Cambodia.

Your parents did you a great disservice, though that doesn't mean you can't self-improve. I've faced similar struggles, though arguably not as severe. My parents were also a large driving force in my life and had me make decisions I did not want to make. For depression, I'd say to make it a habit to find a couple things every day to be appreciative of. For cash, I'd try tutoring people online english. A lot of parents of high school students concerned about their children's grades and getting into college, and will spend money to have them tutored, even if it's online. There are also agencies to go through for that.

For that matter, there are a lot of ordinary tasks people will pay money for you to do. You can be someone's online PA (again through agencies) or a copywriter. Point is, there are a lot of ways to earn money on the side, so you can get your head above water financially.

I don't know enough about the writing career to give any advice on that, nor do I know much about the state of Colombia. But from what you say, it sounds pretty difficult to make it there. This might sound a bit extreme, but have you considered moving to another country?

You're fluent in english, which means you probably could learn another language if you wanted. Duolingo has a number of languages on there that you could learn, so if you do consider moving to another country, you wouldn't be limited to countries that speak spanish or english.

Also check out holiday/work visas. I don't know if Colombia is one of the listed acceptable countries. You can work/holiday in australia, saving something like $18k-20k+ USD. Check out this post. As a potential plan, you can save up the money you need to get the visa using secondary income via tutoring languages, and then spend a year in Australia. There's no reason you couldn't keep taking online courses while doing that, and you'd end the year with a fair amount of money in your bank, which might allow you to study full-time for a bit, depending on the cost of living in Colombia or wherever you choose to go.

How confident am I that this can work? Well, I'm basically giving you my plan, except my side job is as an illustrator.

Congratulations!

What's the business? What inspired you to go freelance?

I started a freelance business and have a client already.

Impressive! Both the art and the web serial.