I Wasn’t Ready for College at 18: Finding My Way Took Years
Not everyone is meant to go to college right out of high school. I had a very complicated senior year of high school.
My parents got divorced when I was a sophomore and I was going to a private Catholic school at the time. Because they split up, my mom no longer had the money to send me to that school, so I transferred to a public school. I loved the school, but I had never been a good student and I was experiencing a lot of mental health issues, so going to this public school didn’t change that. It was an arts school, so I mainly went to school to be in the plays and sing, not for academics.
Because of that, my grades were awful. If it wasn’t for a theater teacher who agreed to give me English credit for my theater class, I would not have graduated. College was never expected of me. My dad didn’t really think I was college material and my mom was just trying to wrap her brain around not being married after 25 years. My school counselor said with my grades my only chance to get into college was to go to my local university because they basically took anyone. So, to prove to myself that I could be a college student, I applied and got in.
We will talk about the transition from high school to college, and the challenges we faced in college, on Ep. 57 of Shining Light on Shadows: A Candid Conversation About Mental Health, Thursday, September 24 at 6pm CT / 7pm ET. Paige Goble, who joined us as a high school senior last year, will be our guest. She is now a Freshman at William & Mary. Please make sure to read the blog post she wrote for this episode.
Neil Parekh is my co-host. You can watch the live show or recording on Facebook*, Twitter**, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram** or on Neil's website.
*Facebook will delete the video in 30 days.
**We won't know the exact links for Twitter or Instagram until we go live. For now these links go to the main pages of Neil's accounts.
We couldn’t afford college and my parents never had the money to save for me to go, so I had to take out a lot of student loans. I had to live at home because living in a dorm was too expensive.
I was a commuter student. That right there was a deterrent. I didn’t fit in right from the start, although I am not sure I gave it my best effort. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in and my math skills were so poor that I only qualified for a 90-level math course that didn’t even count as credit for my first two years of college.
My head just wasn’t in the game. I had terrible self-esteem and self-worth and I didn’t really think I would be successful. That was the main problem. I couldn’t get myself to think that I was smart enough to do school. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in and I felt like I was wasting my time. As you can imagine, that didn’t work out so well for me. After the first semester I stopped going. I took a semester off and after working at Blockbuster Video for three months I decided to go back. But I just didn’t want to go to class. I was very depressed and sleeping felt like a much better alternative. I stayed in school but either got D’s or F’s for the next two semesters.
Then I got raped. After that school wasn’t even an option for me. I couldn’t function, let alone walk to class by myself.
It wasn’t until I was 25 years old that I started to pick up the pieces of my very shattered life and to try to take a college course. I promised myself that if I at least got a C in the course I would try to go back for a semester. I didn’t tell anyone that I was taking a course. I was way too afraid I would fail, and I already felt worthless. I will never forget the course I took: “Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.” I got an A.
I had to beg my way back into school. I wrote a letter to the Dean of Students. I had to explain why I thought I was capable of succeeding this time around. I really didn’t know if I would make it, but what I did know was that I needed to find a way to be a functioning member of society, and going to school so I could get a good job seemed like the right thing to do. I had to retake every class I failed because I had to maintain a minimum 2.0 in order to not get kicked out again. I was on academic probation all four years. Every course I took that I had failed felt like a rebirth for me. I passed all my classes in that first semester and decided I wanted to continue.
I never looked back after that. I knew that sociology was the right major for me. I needed to study people’s patterns of behavior. I needed to try to understand why people acted the way they did and how I could help the world see things more clearly. How I could see things more clearly.
So I never stopped. I ended up graduating with a 3.0 GPA. I retook all the classes in which I had earned D’s and F’s. I also applied to grad school before I graduated so that I wouldn’t take any time off. I knew if I was going to get my master’s degree I needed to do it right away. I was already 29 years old. I ended up graduating with my master’s degree in sociology on the dean’s list with a 4.0 at the age of 31.
My whole point is that mental health really affected my schooling. I wasn’t ready for college when I graduated high school. No one told me that it was OK to wait. No one told me that I would not be a lesser person if I took my time deciding what I wanted to do with my life. Going to school at 18 was just not healthy for me and it cost me. It cost me a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of heartache.
I am pretty successful at the age of 54. I have had a good, long career. I have a good job and a consulting business. I am a professor, I wrote a book, I do public speaking and I volunteer on different boards to make a difference. I may not have really started my life until a bit later, but it has been a meaningful one. I think it is important for people to understand that there are all kinds of approaches to life and education, and that not everyone’s path is the same.
At the end of the day no one can take away my master’s degree. I earned it and I get to have that for life, but it never would have happened had I not taken my time to decide when things were right for me. I am glad I waited.
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