You’d think juggling a busy acting career in Hollywood would keep Yara Shahidi busy enough, but in 2017, the Black-ish and Grown-ish star also began her four-year undergraduate program at Harvard on top of it all. Studying in the institution’s Social Studies & African American departments, the 22 year old spent four years (plus a gap year) concentrating on “Black political thought under a neocolonial landscape.” Today, after completing her 136-page thesis paper, Shahidi is celebrating her official graduation. “It’s surreal to have finally hit this major milestone,” Shahidi tells Vogue. “I’ve known I wanted to go to college since I was four. By 17, I knew exactly what I wanted to study, so to see that come to fruition is a goal fulfilled.” Completing a thesis while juggling a full-time acting job was no small feat. Her paper—titled “I Am a Man: The Emancipation of Humanness from Western Hegemony Through the Lens of Sylvia Wynter”—explores the work of the Jamaican writer and larger questions as well. “Writing my thesis pushed me as an academic, because the question I was asking was one I care about in my everyday life and in the world,” says Shahidi. “For example, ‘What could the future of equality and equity look like?’ My thesis was a moment to connect these past four years of education to something that connects to what I’m passionate about, and have ground myself in my entire life.”