Success is just a construct — I promise.
I was homeschooled, and never went to a day of “real” school in my life. I took community college classes from the ages of 16-21, had a mental health crisis that delayed my schooling further, and then, at the ripe old (young) age of 22, I finally figured out I wanted to study journalism. From there, I took my General Studies Associate’s degree that I had spent five years working towards to the University of Colorado Boulder. I lived with my parents until I moved to Boulder last fall, and have had four different customer and food service jobs over the last year.
I’ve also worked for a professional news publication in Denver, won a first-place award from the Colorado Press Association for a crime and public safety reporting article I wrote, have been on the President’s or Dean’s list in every semester of college I’ve been in, have a current job as a K-12 tutor, and will be graduating with my Journalism bachelor’s in 2025 with honors.
Oh, and I feed myself and my cat Bonnie, make my bed (sometimes), and have a beautiful community around me in the form of my partner, my five lovely roommates, and a little farther away, but still just as prominently, my family.
I call that success. All of it. Even the parts I wouldn’t write home to grandma about.
Having an unconventional educational path? Rad. Taking my time and saving money attending community college, and focusing on my mental health when I needed to? Incredibly important. Working at all those frustrating service jobs? Valuable. They taught me that you can make the person ordering a sandwich from you feel important or turn their whole day around just by really listening to them. Ultimately, this is what I call being successful as a human being.
One of my closest friends was in undergrad for six years, and didn’t get his bachelor’s degree until he was 24. Now, years later, he is a masters-degree-holding aerospace engineering PhD candidate who works with NASA.
Another friend of mine posted on Instagram that she had victoriously fed herself and taken a shower after a trying mental health period, and that might’ve been the most obvious presentation of success I’d seen in a while.
Success doesn’t only necessarily mean stories like those, or the well-known, storied tales of celebrities who finally made it big after years of working in a burger joint. (Though, that’s its own type of success, and that’s great, too!). Some stories of success might look like the reverse of “making it” through a conventional lens.
Take my parents’ stories, for example. My dad worked as a successful corporate leader in the education field for most of his adult life. Then, at 60 years old, he quit his job, moved to a small mountain town, and became a therapist, because that’s what his heart called him to do. He describes feeling more fulfilled now as a therapist than he ever did in a career that garnered him applause and large paychecks. For him, success stopped being quantified by zeroes and suit-clad handshakes, and is now measured by the peace he can help bring his clients. As for my mom, she initially studied engineering in college, then in her last two years of undergrad, changed her major to education—a field with far less praise and little monetary gain associated with it—because success to her meant enjoying the work she was doing, and seeing a lightbulb go off in the head of a kid she had created a connection with was what ultimately facilitated that.
All that to say, multiple things can exist at once, and success doesn’t look the same for everyone. Of course you should shoot for the stars in your professional development, and in everything else you’re involved in that’s important to you; but if you end up resting on a cloud for a while, or find your own version of success out in the mesosphere, know that that deserves applause too.
Success is a chameleon to our circumstances. Whether yours is green, purple, spotted, striped, big, small, or something else, you’re doing great. I’ll keep reminding you, and my past, present, and future selves of that truth for as long as we both need to hear it.