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Growing and styling a beard at any age, and especially when you are younger, is very much a matter of making the best use of your resources, and I think you have done well in carving out a chinstrap for yourself which is often the best style for guys whose beards are not yet fully developed. Your beard is still quite light, but you have made good progress for only 3 weeks growth, and I think it will look better if you resist the urge to trim and let it grow out for a few weeks more. Given that you are only 17 you can expect to see a lot of improvement in both coverage and density over the coming months and years, so keep the beard growing and like a good wine it will improve and mature with age.

You may have been a little hasty in shaving your mustache since this tends to be slower growing than the rest of your beard, but if you feel that it is not yet sufficiently developed to show well, so be it. However, lack of connectors should never be sufficient reason for not growing a 'stache. A beard can still look good with an unconnected 'stache, and the lack of connectors is not something that other people are likely to notice or to pass comments on.

It is quite usual to have a bare patch under the chin when your beard first starts to grow, and this will usually fill in eventually. However since you have opted for a chinstrap style with a high neckline the patch presents no problem for now.

The fact that the growth on your jawline is stronger under rather than on top of your jawbone is, again, not unusual for a guy whose beard is starting to develop. Some find that their mustache is the strongest area to begin with, others the side burns, and others - including yourself - the area under the chin and on the neck. I wouldn't say that there is a particular "proper" way to have a chinstrap. As I said earlier, you have to make the best of what you've got, and I think that the line you have carved out looks OK, although perhaps in the future as your coverage increases you can bring the line up a bit higher.

Regarding shaving and edging, I think you will find that with practice the process gets easier until eventually you go onto "autopilot" when you shave. At least that's what I found, and I had a carved-out style of beard for a number of years. As for the tools to use, I recommend a razor with no more than two blades and a clear shaving gel such as King of Shaves. The former helps you to get a cleaner edge to your beard and the latter lets you see exactly where you are shaving and what you are doing. If you are using a cream or lather I recommend only applying it to the areas you are going to shave, although there are some guys who lather or put cream the whole beard and then wipe off with a finger the part that they don't want to shave - a technique that I think needs some practice.

As for the haircut, I don't think it matters a lot either way, but since your beard is just starting out I would say shorter would show it off better than longer.

Keep growing. Stay bearded!

wulff

I think the left side is not quite as well defined as the right, but rather than trying to make the right side match the left and risk messing up a good thing, try not shaving so close to the edge of the left side of the strap for a week or so in order to give yourself some stubble which will enable you to raise the line and edge it to match the right side.

To trim your beard, ie. to shorten the length of the hairs, you need a dedicated beard trimmer with an adjustable guard comb. Alternatively you can use scissors - but they need to be proper haircutting scissors. Keep them parallel to your face and very lightly snip the protruding hairs until you get the length you want. However, I think you need a few more weeks before you need to carry out either of these operations. Your beard may look a bit untidy meanwhile, but you need to let it bulk up a bit before embarking on a trim. And BTW I recommend that if you use an elctric beard trimmer you trim with the "grain" of your beard rather than against it.

Keep growing. Stay bearded!

wulff

I think that most of us get "bad beard" days from time to time, but they are probably worse when you are just starting out and when your last shave wasn't so long ago. Just take a deep breath and give yourself at least 24 hours to reconsider any urge to shave, and remember that at your age the longer you keep your beard the better it is going to get.

Keep growing. Stay bearded!

wulff