If the image that comes to your mind when you think of a college student is a 17- or 18-year-old fresh out of high school, I am not your typical undergraduate college student.

For starters, I already have a bachelor’s degree. Second, I’ll be 30 in a few months, not 20, and I’m married with a child. My outlook on things tends to be quite different than what you might typically find in a college classroom. Plus, I’m probably an idiot for going back for a SECOND bachelor’s degree, but that’s neither here nor there.

As someone who’s been through this twice, I know how fast life can change. I also know how strong outside pressures can be; I can see it. I see when I look around at some of the faces in my last few classes, the ones that either still don’t get it (bless ‘em) or that just don’t have the “spark” that some of us who really feel led to this path we’re on have.

Whatever your situation, my only advice as an almost 30something, is this: ignore the outside pressure. Your journey does not have to look like everyone else’s.

My own journey started pretty typically: I went to college straight out of high school and started knocking the credits out. When my mother died during my senior year, however, everything changed. My values weren’t the same. I no longer wanted to work in Human Resources, I never wanted to work with DFCS, and going into academic research sounded too much like my own personal hell, so what was I going to do with this degree (and debt) in sociology??

The answer: nothing.

I sat on it for a while and then I started trying things. I got some life experience. I did some of the things that I should have done during a gap year (and probably could have done for free then, too).

See, there are people who grow up with a sense of what they want to be their entire lives. One of my old friends from elementary school knew from the before I even met her in 4^th grade that she wanted to be a veterinarian – she just recently accomplished that goal. Another friend of mine from middle school was always into makeup and creatively inclined and she now runs a successful business as a photographer and MUA.

So how did I find myself? Purely through unintentional life experiences. See, sometimes the thing that holds us back the most is the mirror’s reflection. We tell ourselves things, thinking that we really know what’s best based on incorrect assumptions and inexperience. What held me back from realizing that I needed to be a teacher was really a very simple lie that, had I taken the time to actually do so, was easily debunked: the lie that I didn’t like children. Now how could I know that? I didn’t have any siblings growing up, I never babysat, and I never worked in any kind of child care setting.

The journey there was long and very unconventional.

It was that lie that said, “If I can’t make it in publishing, then the only thing I can do with an English degree is teach and I don’t want to have to fall back on teaching. I’d really rather work in an office.” So I switched to sociology. However, interning at an HR firm and working as a receptionist at the world’s worst dealership made me realize that no, I do not, in fact, want anything to do with an office setting. The less than stellar experience I had at a call-center at least made me realize the “aha” moment was amazing, but it wasn’t worth it being in that setting.

My journey next took me to the job I landed later as a school photographer, which got me closer to my purpose. Here, I realized that while I like photography, doing it under pressure and under so much structure wasn’t for me, working with the cute little primary and elementary school babies was definitely in my wheelhouse. That led me to try my hand at my own photography business, but again, customer service is not my strong suit.

At this point, I started to think maybe I’m just one of those people who just…doesn’t have a professional purpose so to speak. Maybe I just stay at home and write or something.

Basically? I threw myself a pity party. “Woe is me, I don’t know what to do with myself. I am clearly not good at anything, nothing is working out. I’ll just quit,” I said to myself. Now, while that sounds pretty pathetic (which it absolutely was), had I not done this, I wouldn’t have been thinking about all my failures as a whole and why I was so disappointed in them.

There was something in most of those experiences that I enjoyed, I just needed to figure out what it was.

That led me to understanding that I like kids. I like teaching. MAAAAYBE I should be a teacher. And that’s where I am today.

My journey there was not smooth. It didn’t make sense and if I’d had someone wiser alongside me the entire time, I probably could have saved myself a LOT of money and wasted time but then again, if I had, I wouldn’t be so convinced that this is for sure “it” for me.

So if you’re unsure, reevaluate. Don’t just shove failures or unpleasant experiences away. They can tell you about yourself better than you can. Take the time to discover whether you really don’t enjoy something or if you’re just scared to try that new thing. And if you need more time, take it. There’s no reason to think that you have to have your life figured out by the time you’re 20.