Your Time Line Isn’t Linear. And That’s Ok.

By Kate Castello

Have you ever woken up at 5 am drenched in sweat and sick to your stomach because your life isn’t going as you planned?

Yep, me too.

For some inexplicable reason halfway through my sophomore year, I woke up in the early hours of the morning with a dreadful thought already forming: I don’t think I’m gonna graduate on time.

Once I had recovered enough to retrieve my glasses, I hurriedly tried to plan out my classes for the next few years. I knew I was a little behind on math (damn you calculus) but I didn’t realize it would completely throw off the rest of my college trajectory. Unfortunately, it set me back farther than I planned, and unless I crammed in 18 credits of tough classes every semester for the next two years, I wouldn’t graduate on time.

While I’m sure some people wouldn’t have any issues with that workload, as someone who doesn’t do well under pressure, I knew I couldn’t do it. So, I accepted the fact that I needed more time.

I thought I was a failure. Every time I told one of my friends, I felt a cold coil of shame settle in my stomach. I waited for them to reject me for being the idiot I felt like I was. I even broke down in tears outside Langley Hall as I called my mom—bracing myself for my parent's disappointment.

Looking back, perhaps I was being a bit dramatic, but as someone who was raised as a “gifted kid” and put in advanced classes, I’d never imagined such a horrible fate as *gasp* not graduating on time. Thankfully, those terrible fantasies I had of disappointing the people in my life were just that: fantasies.

My friends didn’t spurn me and my parents didn’t disown me. In fact, they were proud of me for prioritizing myself and not pushing myself to the point of complete burnout. My advisor told me there was no such thing as “being behind” and that I would finish my degree exactly when I was meant to. I began to feel better about my decision and eventually learned that many people, even many of my friends, also wouldn’t graduate in four years.

And that’s life. These things happen.

You switch majors or transfer schools, and all of a sudden you feel like you’re behind, but in reality—it was never a race to begin with.

One of my favorite examples of a non-linear timeline is from my old supervisor. She was from New York but chose to go to Florida for college, where she realized she didn’t actually want to go to school all that much. So, she dropped out. For 7 years after, she was a bartender and while she loved her job, she found herself missing school. She decided to reenroll and graduated a few years later with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Now she manages a team of chemists and is highly respected in her position. (And was also an excellent boss and amazing to work with).

I had another coworker who transferred schools, almost failed all of his classes, had to retake Calculus 2 three times (big theme here), and even so, persevered and graduated.

Even my best friend has transferred schools twice and is graduating a year late and another friend has changed her major 5 times.

Stories like these are always comforting because they remind me that we are all on a different path. I mean really, if we all stuck with the major we chose freshman year, more than half of us would be absolutely miserable. If we all tried to graduate in 4 years some of us would be highly unqualified and not ready to work in our fields. These choices, while they may be hard and uncomfortable (going against the norm is scary!) are necessary.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a freshman or a senior or in graduate school, plans change and you can’t beat yourself up when they do. I wish I could go back to myself a year ago and comfort them with these stories and remind them that the world isn’t going to end because I have to take an extra semester of classes.