It took me eight years to finally say “I am in my last semester of college.”

Getting here, I have struggled with various feelings associated with taking so long to finish college. I have struggled with feelings of shame, as people wonder why I still have no degree but have paid for eight years worth of classes. I feel shame when I tell people I am a student and they assume I am completing a graduate degree. I felt shame when I told my family and professors that I was “dropping out” and they tried to dissuade me against my decision. And I felt shame during the two years I took off from school when I was just working meaningless jobs and had to tell people I “dropped out.”

I have felt out of place, as often other students in my classes now are fresh out of high school and I have nearly a decade more experience than them.

I have felt lost and worthless, and generally that I am just not like other people. I have asked myself, “how can someone else be so motivated and know exactly the path they want to take and get it done in four or five years?”

However, despite spending eight years of my life as an undergraduate, I can say that besides being elated that I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is brighter than ever, I am also satisfied with the fact that it took me eight years to get here. There is truth in the saying “not all who wander are lost.” And feeling shame for taking a different pathway than others is pointless.

Okay, so I was a little lost, I admit it. But I believe in being lost, I have gained many worthwhile experiences, and I am now a more well-rounded human being. Here is why.

Part of the reason I took so long to get where I am now is because I was indecisive from the beginning. I began my degree in journalism because all I knew as a 17-year-old was that I liked writing. Soon, I switched to psychology, because that was just all too intriguing. Eventually, anthropology won me over when I realized I could write and travel and get away with it all under the guise of “research.” Why didn’t anyone tell me about this in high school?

I dabbled in philosophy; I became “lost” and took photojournalism courses and creative writing. All too soon, I was so overwhelmed with all the options in life that I decided to quit it all.

I had a friend once say to me, “Isn’t the fact that we have the freedom to do anything almost too much to bear?” It really was.

I went through a phase of thinking all the bureaucracy and jumping through of hoops just to get a paper that says I am somewhat intelligent, and most of all that I can finish what I started, was a load of crap our society forces us into doing.

So when I quit everything, I spent a year saving money by being a barista, a waitress, and a bartender, all at once. Hey, I paid back one whole private loan in three months.

Then, I decided to really jump off a cliff and go work on a farm in France in the middle of a valley with a population of around 700 people. I lived with people who didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak French. I even did this for three months, the exact amount of days I could get away with being in the French countryside without a Visa. I hitchhiked around the country and I couch surfed with people I didn’t know.

But, this is what I learned. When I came back home, I was extremely interested in pursuing a new language: French. I felt like I had finally got out some sense of wanderlust I had all along when I didn’t know what I was doing. And I had a renewed sense of wanting to complete what I had started. Didn’t I say before that, for society, that was one thing a diploma really said about—you can complete what you have started? Well, now I think there is some validation in that.

In struggling to figure out what I wanted to do, and what I believed in, I was able to experience real life situations that directed me to my ideals. And all of this has reassured me that the path I am now on is really the path I want to take. I didn’t get here in the “typical” way, but who is to say what is typical?

Often, society structures a set of norms, and those who diverge from the norm face consequences, whether those consequences be real (ostracized, imprisonment) or imaginary (feelings of shame). But, diverging from the norm can sometimes lead to newfound realizations and a sense of being self-assured.

It may even lead one to decide they agree with the norm after all, or push them to be an active fighter against it. Either way, their belief is well-founded. My struggle in going against the norm allowed me in the end to accept that sometimes the norm isn’t so bad.

The truth is, it isn’t always that everyone else knows exactly where they want to go, while others don’t. Some people stay on the path just because that is what they think they have to do, but inside they may feel just as lost. Others really do know from the beginning where they want to go, and there is nothing wrong with that either. For people like me, being lost may really just be finding direction.

Most importantly, don’t feel shame for things so trivial. Life is expansive, and the pathways to take are endless. Find which one is yours, and then own it wholeheartedly.