Teyah Parent, features editor 

One of the most irritating expectations of college is the idea that you are supposed to know exactly what you are doing with your life. Pick a major. Plan a career. Build a resume. Network. Get internships. Graduate with a five-year plan. No pressure, right? If you have ever sat in a class and thought, everyone else seems like they know what they are doing except me, you are not alone. I have been feeling that way since my junior year of high school. 

Whenever I tell people what I am majoring in, I almost always get the same question: “What are you going to do with that?” It is a question that sounds simple, but it carries a lot of weight. It assumes that by the time you are in college, you should already know exactly what comes next. 

College is often imagined as a straight path: you choose a major, follow the track laid out for you by your family or your advisor, and graduate with everything neatly planned out. You are supposed to be prepared for the future. But from my experience, college feels a lot less like a straight line and a lot more like a maze. There is a lot of doubling back that people do not talk about. And stepping back is not failure.

I took a gap year for medical reasons, and at the time it felt like everything had fallen apart. I was supposed to start college in the fall of 2024. That was the plan I had built in my head for years. When it did not happen, it felt like my life was over before it had even started.

But now it is 2026, and this spring semester at Augsburg is only my second. The timeline I thought I had is completely different now—and that is okay. My academic path has changed. I came into college planning to major in English. Now I am taking every sociology class I can fit into my schedule. That shift did not happen overnight. It happened through realizing that the things I thought I wanted were not always the things that actually excited me, that I needed more to be fulfilled. That is why I made the difficult decision of double-majoring in English and Sociology. It is okay to realize the career you imagined in high school does not excite you anymore. It is normal to feel uncertain about the future when the world around you is constantly changing, and you are expected to navigate it as an adult.

College is one of the few times in life where exploration is actually encouraged. It is a chance to do things outside your comfort zone, discover interests you did not know you had, and figure out what you do not want to do just as much as what you do.

So if you are feeling behind, remember this: your college experience does not have to look like anyone else’s to be meaningful. Talk to people. Professors, advisors, and older students often have stories about their own winding paths. Try things before ruling them out and give yourself permission to change your mind. And that is exactly what college is supposed to be for.