when the time is right.

A common theme at Baylor—or perhaps Texas in general—seemed to be marking your progress in life by whether or not you're engaged by the time you've graduated college, or by the next year (at the latest!). And every time I check up on facebook, it's more than likely that someone's just engaged, someone's changed their profile picture to a wedding photo, or there's even a baby on the way—or it's already arrived.

I know it's all part of growing up, and taking those next steps, 

but sometimes I can't help but wonder... 

am I behind in taking those steps?

Not really.
When you step beyond the Baylor campus, and farther away from the great and mighty state of Texas, you're reminded that not everyone's following that "ring by spring"trend.

Yesterday served as an example of that reminder for me. We threw a baby shower for our managing editor, and even though those usually aren't my favorite things—due to not being captivated by miniature item after miniature item being "oohed" and "ahhed" over during gift-opening time—this one was fun and I took something else from it.

What I took note of was the fact that out of the guests, only a handful had kids of their own (this is the first for our guest of honor), only about half were married, and nobody was engaged. And it was kind of refreshing to see that all at once. (it's far from resembling facebook's newsfeed)

I think it's wonderful when any of my friends gets engaged, and it's perfectly fine to follow a plan and want to reach those points in life at specific times. But for me, it's also important to keep in mind that everyone does everything in their own time.