So I’m not trying to play pity party right now, just simply explain my situation as thoroughly as I can. In high school I got great grades, I was always really social, and I did a lot of extracurricular activities. I decided to attend a university across the country. I’ve had a lot of trouble making friends or even meeting people here. I don’t want to say I have depression because I have not been diagnosed. However, soon after coming here I became very moody and unmotivated. I used to cry for hours every single day for weeks, I’d go multiple days without eating, and it’s nearly impossible for me to sleep at regular times if at all. I have also had two family members come down with serious illnesses, one being in hospice care at the moment. I tried to turn myself around and take up a new job I was excited about while attending university. Unfortunately my boss at the job forced me to come in to the workplace one night and attempted to force me into sex. Again, I don’t mean to play pity party and I hate talking about my issues. But I dropped one class each semester because I wasn’t able to get myself to leave my dorm and fell too far behind in both classes. Because of this I no longer meet the requirements for my scholarship. I have began turning myself around and am doing better now and actually want to stay at my university. The only problem is that I cant attend without the help of the scholarship, and my worry is that despite the issues I’ve dealt with there’s no documentation I can provide. I don’t currently see a therapist or a psychiatrist who could help. What should I do from here?
Do you want my opinion?
College will always be there. I think you should take some time off to figure out what really went wrong with the help of a counselor.
You also need to find out if you can get this scholarship back under any circumstances…where my kids went to college, once they lost a merit award…it was forever lost.
Find out if there is an appeals process. How far off the mark were you. What was your GPA, and what did you need to have? What were your first term marks?
Consider asking for a leave of absence…
But really…if this college is unaffordable without that scholarship, you might need to look at other options that are less costly…once you have your personal situation a bit clarified.
You are not at all alone. I lost my scholarship many years ago. My one son lost his scholarship not that long ago. This happens to a lot of kids for a lot of reasons.
What’s important is that your reason seems to indicate that you have much more important issues to address than the scholarship or the college, or even college at all right now. Does this college offer counseling of any sort? Most schools do because emotional issues are very commonplace, even expected among college students. While you are still at the school these last couple of months of the term, you should visit these facilities and get some help and documentation of your challenges this term, and where you are now. Perhaps a therapist there can help you.
Find out if there is any way you can salvage this scholarship, now that you are pursuing and committing to getting help. You need to talk to a dean or whoever deals with these things and get the bottom line as to where you stand, if there is any chance of not losing it. What you have to do to make it happen if possible. Sometimes there is not. My son’s award had very strict terms and once you lost it, that was it, regardless of reason.
If the scholarship is truly gone, and you cannot return to this school without it, it’s time to look for another option after you leave. Plenty, plenty, plenty of kids transfer to local, state schools and commute after the year away did not pan out. You might want to take a leave of absence from college altogether, whether you are returning to the current school or transferring to pull your thoughts together.