For as long as I can remember, I’ve taken great pride in my fingernails. They’re long and skinny, and they’re almost always been painted. At a very early age I learn how to paint my right hand with my left, and in eighth grade, when the new principle banned fingernail polish, I bought the sheerest shade of pink I could find and continued to paint them anyway.

In high school, a few girls noted that a “fun fact” about me was that my fingernails always looked perfect, but college changed that. Gone were the days with little homework and a vast amount of free time.

Instead of painting my nails and binge watching Gossip Girl after school, college filled my time with a scattered class schedule, tons of papers to write, and meetings and sorority events galore. On top of that, I decided to add two internships into the mix, so the little time I was left it was spent half-asleep in a lofted bed watching Friends.

My nails began to suffer. They would chip, break, grow out or go unpainted for a few weeks at a time. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. It was that my free time was scattered so randomly throughout the day that I very rarely had two hours to sit down and give myself a manicure.

That’s when the idea for acrylic nails popped into my head. I knew a few people who had them, attended to them regularly and absolutely loved them. They claimed it was addicting but one of the best decisions they’d made.

So when summer rolled around, and I knew I’d be out beachfront vacations, I decided to put some money towards perfect nails and see how it went. Here is the cold hard truth about acrylic nails.

When you first get them on, you want to take them off.

For the first day or two, I didn’t want to touch anything, which was difficult because I had to do laundry. Anything I touched felt foreign, and picking things up or scraping my nails along something the wrong way felt like it was going to rip the whole thing off. It was terrible and gross.

As soon as you get used to the feeling, you fall in love with them almost instantly.

By the third day, I didn’t even register that there was something fake glued onto my nail. They just felt normal, and wow they looked beautiful. How often are all of your nails the exact same length and shape? Never, unless you have acrylics.

Paying for shellac on top of the acrylics isn’t worth it.

After the manicurist put the acrylics on, he tried to talk me into getting shellac on top of them. I’m not a firm believer in shellac to begin with, but my understanding is that shellac is supposed to last longer and stay shinier. You don’t need to pay for that because you have to go and get the acrylics filled about every two weeks anyway. Plus...

Regular nail polish stays on perfectly.

In the four weeks I had my acrylics, the nail polish did not chip. It was a miracle.

The nails don’t have to be super long.

Contrary to what some might thing, you don’t have to have acrylics that are creepily long. They can do acrylics to be whatever length you want, even if it’s just slightly longer than your natural nail at the time.

They can be just about any shape you can imagine and you can change the shape at any time.

They don’t break as easily as people think.

I mean, your nails aren’t just going to snap off. The acrylic is dense and essentially super glued to your nail. They are supposed to be durable and long lasting.

You learn how to adapt to longer nails really quickly.

By the second day, I knew how to clasp necklaces and by the fourth day, I had learned how to open pop cans. It wasn’t hard to adjust.

You can’t really scratch anything.

This one caught me by surprise because I’m still not sure it makes sense, but for whatever reason, I could not itch the countless bug bites I got despite how long my nails were.

You start to notice how fast your nails really grow.

Most salons recommend you have your acrylics filled every 2 to 3 weeks, but I barely lasted two weeks. Maybe my nails grow faster than normal, but as soon as I saw growth, I wanted to get them redone.

You can change the polish color in between your fills.

Using non-acetone nail polish remover allows you to repaint your nails in between fills. It is important that you do not use acetone to remove the nail polish because it will upset the acrylic.

The sound of your nails clicking on your phone is addicting.

It is the most beautiful noise.

They become your pride and joy.

When my nails consistently looked good, without breaking and without chipping, people started to notice, and I began to once again take pride in how well-kept they were.

Removing the acrylic isn’t as terrible as people make it seem.

If going to the salon to have them saw off your acrylic sounds as scarring to you as it did for me, there is an easy way to do it at home and it is entirely painless.

Step One: Use a Q-Tip to put Vaseline around your cuticle.

Step Two: Soak a cotton ball in acetone and secure it on top of your fingernail with a piece of foil. Let it soak for 20 to 30 minutes.

Step Three: Remove the foil and the cotton ball from your nail. You will see that the acrylic has essentially begun to disintegrate. Using a dental floss pick, scrape the acrylic off of your fingernail.

Step Four: Repeat if necessary.

You may get onychomycosis.

Onychomycosis is a fungal infection of the nail. And it’s disgusting. I would know because I have it. When I went to change the polish in between my fills, I noticed that three of my nails were discolored.

Panicked, I removed my acrylics and went to the doctor who placed me on a 6-week anti-fungal treatment.

The tools the manicurist used on my second fill must not have been cleaned all the way. Acrylics trap moisture in the nail which provides an environment for fungus to grow.

I don’t know if fungal infections from acrylics are common or not, but four weeks ago, I had no idea that my acrylic manicure would lead to this.