This semester high schoolers who are going to college are choosing their future school. They have two main options for their college careers: going straight to a university if they have the grades and the funds, or staying at a community college to acquire those grades and funds.

The community college timeline is always explained as two years at a local junior college, then your last two years at a university. But that’s almost impossible. When you start you have 60 units to get through, your general education and your major requirements. Most 18-year-olds don’t know what major they want, or even what school they want to go to. So they have to start pre-planning for each major and school they could possibly want to go to, as to not lose out on opportunities.

I started out my college career at a state university doing pre-med. The commute wasn’t ideal and I didn’t love my courses. I was wasting my time and money doing something I wasn’t passionate about. When I decided to come to Skyline, I took a bunch of elective courses just to see what I wanted to pursue, not something you can afford to do anywhere else.

I’m not about to put myself down for taking longer than my peers who are graduating this Spring. I took longer, but I learned a lot about myself. If I hadn’t taken a journalism course at Skyline two years ago I could still be taking biology labs and anatomy courses (and pulling my hair out).

There’s no right or wrong time to graduate, only your time. Don’t get caught up in how everyone else is doing because they’re not you. They haven’t had the circumstances that you have, and that took me a long time to accept. I will transfer and graduate when I am ready and there’s no way to put a deadline on that.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hustle, keep your grades up and create the best foundation for your education here because it’s easier (and cheaper) to do so. But be gentle on yourself if you do mess up. It’s a learning curve. You can’t expect to be a perfect student immediately but you should learn from every mistake. Keep your head up, you’re doing your best.