Why do I feel pressured to choose one path or identity and stick with it forever?

Because adults are often terrified of change, and they project that fear onto you. There's this underlying belief that if you're not locked into one clear identity by sixteen or eighteen, something's wrong. But that's a story, not a law. Sor Juana lived in a time when women had even fewer choices than you do, and she still refused the script. She became a nun—but not the kind of nun her superiors wanted. She studied mathematics, theology, philosophy, music. She wrote. She questioned. She was pressured relentlessly to pick a single acceptable version of herself and stop. She pushed back, knowing it would cost her. What she understood was that a life of genuine intellectual and personal integrity sometimes means not fitting neatly. You don't have to know at seventeen what you'll be at thirty. You're allowed to explore. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to be the kind of person who's interested in multiple things, who doesn't move in a straight line. That's not instability—that's complexity. The pressure to choose one thing and perform it forever often serves other people's need for predictability, not your actual development. Give yourself permission to be a work in progress. That's not a failure of identity—it's how identity actually forms.