Delaying Your Entrance

[Saint Therese]

As a very wise priest recently told me, to delay doing the Lord's will for our own reasons is simply disobedience.

[the lords sheep]

I think primarily there must be a distinction made between delaying entrance and taking the time that you need to discern and grow up. Like everything else in discernment, when you enter is not a one size fits all situation. For a few, and I really believe a rare few, they may be called to enter right out of high school. My cousin, and one of my best friends, is one such situation. She knew where she was called, and she entered the October after she graduated high school. I think for many, however, the zeal and the desire to serve God with everything is there, but the maturity is lacking.
Other people just aren't ready to enter, even when they "know" where they want to go. This often manifests itself in a "I have to/want to do such-and-such first" attitude. For me, it was a "I want to go to college first and see a bit of the world, and then I'll enter" (of course, I also didn't know where I would enter at...) Sometimes, I feared that I had disobeyed God in making this choice. However, as I've grown, I've realized that while I thought I was just doing what I wanted, I was also doing God's will too. I needed more time to grow up, to experience the world, to begin to understand others more, so that I could also understand myself. I am a COMPLETELY different person than I was four years ago. I think differently, interact with others differently, pray differently, relate to God differently, see myself differently. My zeal is not manifested in the same way, my love- and my ability to love- has grown and transformed as well. Sure, I've had difficult times and have made mistakes; that would happen anywhere.
I've heard people say "We must give God the first-fruits" "we must give God our first choice" and I've heard people imply that waiting- giving yourself time to grow up- is refusing to offer your full self to God. For me, entering earlier would have not been offering my full self to God, my full life to God, because I still needed time to grow, time to become a more developed person. Because of my experiences, I have more to give God.
In short, each soul, each situation is different. But, in my own opinion, I think that it's not fair of some to make a blanket statement that to not enter a convent the second you suspect you may be called is disobedient to the will of God. Discernment takes time, for some, its more time than others. A good spiritual director will help discern this.