@ucbalumnus idea of starting at a community college for Nursing may work with your situation. Sounds like you will need to deal with your Mother in baby steps. Attending a local CC will give you more independence both financially and socially than your current situation, but by remaining at home for 2 years, your Mother has time to get used to the idea of you going away to finish your degree. If you need financial aid to attend any University, you will need your Mother’s cooperation. Remember, 2 years is not forever in the scheme of things.
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Frankly, you need to do things with others outside of academics to socialize…and this very well could mean outside of your home. There are lots of ways that you could do this…you need to find these.
The problem is the parental limitations on such.
Perhaps the parent does not realize that nursing (or many other health care jobs) does require interaction with people.
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It may sound drastic and it’s certainly not for everybody, but check out the military and see if they can get you started towards a medical career. One of the reasons I went into the military was to get away from parents trying to control my life, and some of the best friends you’ll ever make are people you serve with. Even if you don’t enlist, just the idea of it may shock your mother into relenting.
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Another possibility is your state’s national guard. https://nationalguard.csac.ca.gov/
This would cover 100% of tuition and fees at any public college in CA. You’d get paid something, too, which would help with room and board. Surely you’d be able to work as a nurse in the National Guard as your payback work after having obtained your BSN. And future employers would look very favorably upon this work experience.
It’s unfortunate that someone who’d qualify for full fin aid, as you would if your mom is low income, should have to choose this route instead, but it is most definitely an option for you. I suggest that you look into it and contact a recruiter. Make options for yourself, and then have a serious discussion with your mother, explaining to her that you want to live at college, would prefer to do it without having to go into the National Guard, and would appreciate her cooperation with it, but that you have a very respectable option of going National Guard to achieve this goal.
Your mom doesn’t sound like the sort of person who would suddenly throw you out for bringing this up, but you should also be aware that if you were to go into the foster care system, you are considered emancipated for purposes of fin aid, and hence would qualify for full aid. Also, there may be some assistance from the California foster care system for college, and you’d be a good candidate for lots of scholarships geared towards poor kids going into nursing. In fact, you should start searching for those scholarships now.
Are there any other extended family in your area? Where I live, students removed from the home and placed into foster care are often placed with extended family if that is an option.
I also believe that the state would need to find firm evidence need that you need to be in foster care.
While this might help you with college costs, in my opinion, it’s a last choice option.
I was only giving this information in the fear that the OP’s mother might kick her out for revealing to her mother that she had options to attend a 4 yr college and live in the dorms, whether her mom agrees or not. If her mother, heaven forbid, were to do that, OP would be eligible to go into the foster care system (and yes, placement with relatives would be considered first, but OP reports that Mom has moved away from and cut them off from family, and if the OP wants to attend a public CA college, being moved in the middle of senior year to live with family out of state may not be her best option). Honestly, in my quite significant experience of matters like this from my professional life, parents, especially single parents, who are so extremely controlling as this, tend to react very badly when the teen challenges this control. It is actually very common that the parent kicks them out and writes them off, if the teen challenges any aspect of the extraordinary control and isolation that the parent imposes.
This feels very similar to the poster about a month ago whose mother talked her into withdrawing from a 4 year college and enrolling in a local CC because the mother wanted her to remain at home. Not sure if they both are the same cultural issue, part of a larger pathology trend or just a coincidence. I do wonder how common it is that families, for reasons other than financial, are sometimes disruptive to their kids educational opportunities.