It’s on days like today that I wonder if I made the right decision.

I wonder how different it would be. Sometimes I feel like I just continued the pattern of growing up too early.

I have a love/hate relationship with the fact that my friends, and frankly, people that don’t know me well, call me “mom.” I am the way that I am and it was never on purpose, but I’ve had people tell me I’m just like a mom since middle school. Although, now that I think about it, that is when Spring of 2010 occurred, so that could make all the sense in the world, and that is another story for another time.

It’s a year later and I still question it. Should I have followed the original path? There were three different paths laid in front of me and I know in my heart that I chose the right one.

Now, I see all of the friends I started this journey with, doing things together that I can’t be a part of. The ring ceremony, the senior pictures, the probates, the house parties, the late night study sessions. I just feel too old, not to mention I started working two consistent jobs and taking on 16 hours/semester. (If you decide to go to grad school, don’t take 16 hours unless you have nothing else to do.)

There are some people that continuously congratulate me and think what I did was amazing. Its cool and all, but I don’t think I did anything special. If you stay determined, you can do it too. When it comes to school, I’ve just been determined since birth. Thanks, Karen. My point is they don’t get the downsides. (Which maybe there would be less of if I went to grad school somewhere else?)

I watch them doing things that undergrads do, but I have so many graduate responsibilities that I can’t hang like I used to (and even then I was just holding on). In all of this I know that graduating in the three years was the best decision for me and it was God’s plan (yes, I sang it as I wrote it too). I saved money on an extra year of school and I was able to get tuition for my Masters covered.

Sometimes you have to continuously remind yourself that its okay to go against the grain and make decisions for yourself that other people won’t understand. Those decisions are actually God’s decisions and they will help you get to where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there, which won’t always be the same as for everyone else.

I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be there for that fourth and final year with so many of my friends, even if we weren’t in the same classes and didn’t always go out together. I still got that extra time with them while also working to better my future, and now I only have a semester of school without them as opposed to if I was just now starting grad school.