A few days ago, I was talking to my teacher, and she told me that she changed her major fifteen times and eventually picked it out of a hat. She told me that if she could go back, she would choose a different major entirely. Her answer surprised me. Many of you, especially seniors, may feel pressure about the next steps after graduation. It seems like everyone around us has a clear path, an ending destination they are headed to, but honestly, we are just as lost. Her story made me realize that uncertainty isn’t unusual- it’s something we are all destined to experience, she wasn’t the only one who felt this way. 

That night,  I was talking to my manager at work, and I brought up the topic of graduation and college. She told me that her main goal was becoming a mom, but since she was further ahead in school and her career, it made more sense for her to work while her husband stayed home with the kids. This made me think about how often we assume there is only one “right” way to do life. All of us are taught that college, career, and success will follow a straight line. Her story shows us the opposite. Her choices weren’t wrong or rushed; they were based on what worked for her at that time in her life. 

As students, we all feel like we are stepping into contract plans that bind us to a certain path. How can we decide what’s right for us when we don’t even know who our future selves will be or what path of life we may be on? Let me tell you something- It’s okay not to know, and it’s okay to change. After these two conversations, I went home and asked my mom how different her life turned out. She told me “my life is still unraveling before me, I don’t know how it ends yet, I am 45 and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, but that’s the beauty of it, I get to change and wake up tomorrow and choose to be a different person and choose a different path form what I am on now.” This made me feel something I think many students need to hear right now: relief. If all these women can still be learning, then maybe we don’t need to have it all figured out. High school is not a deadline. We have the rest of our lives to figure out what to do, and even then, we will go through seasons of life that change that path. We don’t have to lock down a certain career for ourselves; we have the blessing to reevaluate where we are headed. You never need to know the answer. None of us is behind; we are all on our own paths and exactly where we need to be.