When you get into universities and begin your journey to a new degree you often times hear a 4-year plan, 5-year plan, accelerated programs, and whatever else they have out there available to students.

Depending on the student, there are different paths we can choose to take to earn our degrees in different amounts of time. While these are helpful in planning out the next few years of our lives, I don't like the stereotypes that come along with it.

The course of action I was on for my degree was supposed to be a 4-year plan. In and out in four years with a bachelor of science in hand. Obviously from the title of this article, you and I both know that this isn't how it happened.

There were bumps in my road and changes to my plan. It has ended up taking my five years to attain my bachelor of science, but at least I got to the finish line.

It can be discouraging when your plan goes south. It can make you want to take time off and reconsider, or just quit school entirely. Finishing a degree can get very emotionally pressing for a person. People struggle and strive in their own ways. For some people like myself, knowing that I wasn't going to be finishing "on-time" hit me pretty hard and I felt so bad about myself.

When I finally quit throwing my own pity party I got my head on straight and buckled down. It put me into the perspective of all the things in my life that I was approaching in the wrong way. I was being too negative about everything with respect to college and realized that I was thinking way too much about what others thought of me and my academic career.

In reality, no one cares whatsoever how many years it takes to get your degree, or why it took this long, or any of the details of the roads you took to get it. No one is watching you struggle or fail, we live in the most selfish era of time.

You think anyone is watching you fail and I guarantee they are thinking the exact same about themselves and not even noticing you or your struggles. All they care about is that you have the degree.

You did whatever it took to get it and that's that. People are wrapped in their own struggles to really spend too much time wondering about yours.

Don't feel discouraged by the time crunch you may feel to finish school. Don't feel discouraged when the people you started college with are graduating at different times than you. It's not like high school, where you have a whole "class" you graduate with. This is all you and only you. get your degree, no matter how long it may take it. Do it for you.