Hi. Okay. Hi. God sorry, I’m just super awkward sometimes. Anyway. So, every story has a backstory, so let me tell you mine.
I guess I’ll start by saying I began skipping school in 6th grade-- I’m not sure how many days out of school year (not including actual sick days); but enough that my 6th grade English teacher said I would be a middle school dropout. So. Encouraging from the start.-- and that lasted throughout 8th grade. I was… I’m not sure how to put it, I suppose scared would be the closest thing. I was scared and anxious of people. It only got worse when I made it to high school. (So I have my middle school across from my high school, right? And before I had a cellphone, I walked back over to the middle school because I was more comfortable using their office’s phone than my high school’s. Of course, the middle school secretaries looked at me like I was crazy.) By the time I made it to high school, I was having blown out panic attacks. I had missed so much school that a truancy officer came by my house. My counselor had offered a ‘home-bound’ solution for me; I went out to the library to try and finish my schoolwork for the freshman year. Somehow I managed to finish the year-- only failing a few courses, thankfully. I tried to go back to school for sophomore year; and while I did go back for a few months, I still had panic attacks throughout the morning and afternoon. My mom didn’t know what to do, so she signed out of school (‘drop out’) to try and find a way to help me from home. However, the only option she could find (to be fair, I was very depressed and didn’t try to help her research at all), was Penn Foster Online High School. I had started Penn Foster by the time I had researched it and figured out what ‘for-profit’ is. My mom and I are in the ~200% of poverty (~ $32,040/2person household), trying to scrape by rent and bills, so using any large amount of money was a bit like damned if you do/damned if you don’t. I ended up finishing Penn Foster by sheer willpower-- it was so boring, honestly. Penn Foster says that you get a ‘high school diploma’ but I’m not sure if it is really equivalent to a true diploma.
Somehow, I managed to get into a state university (Truman State University, Kirksville, MO). I had to withdraw within two months of Fall entry due to depression.
I had figured out sometime in 9th grade that the way I felt wasn’t normal-- my mom and I had gone through a medical trial where someone (I’m not sure what type of doctor, just that it was one doing a drug study) had qualified me for bipolar. Fast forward from 2009 to 2016, I’ve been to countless psychiatrists and only now received a true diagnosis (OCD, PTSD, major depression, anxiety, borderline, and binge eating disorder as well as anorexic tendencies). Back in any of my schooling I hadn’t realized that the things I felt were out of the norm. Neither my counselors nor my teachers had realized I had disabilities, although I’m not sure they’re classified as disabilities-- however, not being able to make it out of my house due to panic attacks and anxiety is quite disabling.
I definitely didn’t have a normal schooling due to my mental illnesses. Nor have I been able to keep a full-time job for a long time. The last job I had didn’t have any disability help (no matter how they said they did) and I ended up having to quit it; although some days there, I was having to work up to 90 hours a work week, so I’m not too mad about it.
I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I want to go to school (preferably a UC, but that’s just wishful thinking). And, I adore learning. However I never got an opportunity to learn more than a few 9th grade subjects. I don’t want to brag, but I used to be really amazing at school. 9th grade, with either two or three APs-- don’t remember unfortunately-- and one teacher recommending me for another; mostly in the A range (90-100 usually per class, unweighted GPA? I think? I still don’t remember how that all works. I just remember I had mostly high A’s.) before the anxiety and panic attacks set it.
I just keep going back to, “how can I learn the things I need from high school?” and “I need to up my ACT because I /know/ I’m much smarter than that.” My ACT practice tests were in the 30’s and my actual ACT came out to a 24, so, that’s disappointing. I want to add APs to my ‘academic resume’, but I’m not sure how to do that.
Anyway, that’s me. Let me show you my stats-- keep in mind the Penn Foster GPA is definitely not an expression of how I learn/test/express because of how much I blew it off while depressed.
GPA Grade 9 (before Penn Foster) - 3.7 weighted/3.5 unweighted
GPA after high school - 3.3
ACT (from 2013):
24 composite
12 essay
I’m currently locked out of my ACT account due to password/email errors and will have to get the rest of the scores later. However, I do know English was my highest score, with Math as my lowest.
I just would like some advice, I suppose. Where to go from here, community college; more ACT; online AP courses? And I would like to know how exactly to round out my academic profile with ECs? I’m still trying to recover from my last job loss and find a new job, so I’m not sure how to find things to do to contribute to my apps.
Any advice that anyone could give would be wonderful. I’m also not sure if this should be discussed in Home Schooling or Non-Trad, so hopefully this gets moved to the right place.
Thank you for taking the time to read all this. I appreciate you listening to my story.