This is sort of a long post, but the gist is: I got a bunch of concussions my senior year of high school, did not fully recover, went to UCSB anyways, had a really hard time dealing with concussion symptoms but also a really awful experience socially, and am currently taking a gap year for my recovery, but I don’t know if I’ll get better, I hated UCSB but don’t know where else to go, and had such a bad experience I just don’t want to go to college in general.
Please, any kind of advice is appreciated. I am so scared and lost in life right now.
Summer before my senior year of high school I got several concussions that have since greatly impacted my life. I had a really awful time; for the next 5 months I could barely leave my bed to go to the bathroom, I was in so much pain. Thanks to accommodations from my teachers I passed all my classes that semester except for English, which I made up the next semester and was still able to graduate. I had to take the ACT and SAT concussed, as well as write my admissions essays only with the help of an unhealthy amount of tylenol.
I wasn’t particularly happy with my college options, but I wasn’t unhappy either. I ended up going to UCSB, even though I had really wanted to leave California and I was nervous that if I still had symptoms, a big school with busy apathetic professors wouldn’t help me get the education I wanted.
I figured after the chaos of college admissions, plus a few more weeks of rest I would get better, but it’s been nearly two and a half years and I still have debilitating headaches every day. I am worried this might just be my life now; not everyone makes a full recovery from these types of brain injuries. This February I dropped out of UCSB: I was doing okay academically, but it was really hard and really painful and I think it is unfair to do that to myself. I had professors who wouldn’t excuse absences or work with me in my conditions (although there were some lovely people at the Disabled Student Program). My freshman year I befriended my roommates, who turned out to be awful and I had a hard time escaping that friend group. After about a year I did eventually make friends who didn’t make me feel terrible, but I feel like I never really found somewhere I fit in at UCSB. I’m having a hard time unlearning all the self esteem issues my first friends gave me, and I am bitter and jaded and just want to get away from UCSB because so many bad things happened there.
So what do I do next?? The plan as of right now is to return to UCSB Winter 2021. I am an environmental studies and art double major, and I really love both of those programs at UCSB. I also want the Proffessional Writing minor, which I think is very unique. Academically it does not make sense for me to go somewhere else, but ugh, I really do not want to go back to UCSB. I am also very light sensitive so the SoCal sun hurts me a lot.
I don’t even know if I should go back to school next year, or if I did, where should it be? I can’t pay anything over 35k, so private schools, for the most part, are out of question, as is a lot of out of state tuition, but I really want to leave CA. None of the other UCs are appealing to me. UCSB has a very good environmental studies program so no matter where I go I worry I would be downgrading. It really is important to me that I don’t go somewhere sunny: I am living in Pittsburgh currently and the change in weather has already made a HUGE difference in the amount of pain I’m in daily. I really liked Lewis and Clark and Reed but could afford neither (they cost around 42k each). I am considering Portland State, Penn State, UMass, and I really like Carleton but am not sure if I could get in. But I am so scared to go back to college! It was hard and frustrating academically but especially socially. My high school friends were not there when I got my concussions. I made terrible friends at UCSB, and once I left them I could hardly make friends. I tried really hard to find a community, but everyone seems so mean. I genuinely have no close friends and hardly even friends at all and I’m starting to feel like I never will. I’m scared to go back to college and face that rejection again. It’s so painful to see everyone having fun, playing sports, hiking, any kind of physical activity in which I can’t partake. Half the time I am in too much pain to go out and do fun things, and I need supportive friends who understand that, but no one likes me and I can’t make friends when it’s hard for me to, you know, go out. I don’t like UCSB but I feel like no matter where I go I’m not going to meet good people, so I should just suck it up and finish at UCSB.
Academically I prioritize envi sci, but a good writing program would be nice to, as would an arts program. I’d like to be somewhere cloudy out of state but can’t really afford OOS tuition or private schools. I feel like SoCal had a superficial culture that I really disliked and could not fit in with, but I really feel like I won’t fit in or like anywhere I go. I tried hard to make friends I liked at UCSB but they did not like me.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should even go to college. I am also thinking about taking CC or online classes, going at a much slower pace, although I was halfway through my second year already so I don’t have a lot of GE/prereqs to do. I am lost and scared and feeling incredibly disheartened. Thanks for reading, and I’d appreciate any kind of advice.
