 

Hi all! I haven't posted on Reddit much, so apologies for my ignorance of protocol, or any errors in this post.

I am graduating with my Bachelor's degree this semester, and I wanted to share my complicated educational journey, and how I have navigated it with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. 

TL;DR: If you are scared of taking a risk out of fear of failure, give yourself permission to try, and prepare to forgive yourself if you fail.

I was homeschooled from grades 2-12 for religious and political reasons. I did not have the best secondary education. Neither of my parents graduated high school, so I was pretty much on my own to figure out assignments and to teach myself more complex concepts in high school. To give my parents a little credit, my dad was actually really good with numbers (though algebra was beyond his scope) and my mom was huge on reading, spelling, and proper grammar.

I’ve always sucked at math (much to my late father’s chagrin), but I was all about books! I didn’t enjoy writing until much later (thanks to an AWESOME Comp I instructor) Ultimately, I had a decent foundation for education established in early childhood. I learned about American history and English from a very young age. For example, at the age of three, I could read basic children’s books (thanks Mom!) and I could recite all the presidents back to Lincoln at age four (thanks Dad!). I am not saying this to brag, I just want to set the stage for what I feel like was my “potential”.

After my parents went down the religious conspiracy theory rabbit hole when I was 7-8, I was pulled from school and signed up for the Christian Liberty Academy curriculum. Unlike a lot of home-school setups, completion of this program (which cost around $350 per year), would award me an actual legit diploma from Illinois. It was the perfect solution for my parents. Much of their work involved travel, so they could be mobile, and I would get a Christian-centric education, devoid of any pesky talk of stuff like evolution, and plenty of Jesus sprinkled in. A win-win for them! (But seriously folks, religious-based education, from my experience, is pretty lacking in rigor and can be damaging and toxic, especially for people who aren't straight, white, gender-normative people who are all Jesus all the time. Be careful - these types of programs in homeschooling and private school can put people at a disadvantage in the real world.)

Fast forward to high school. Given that my parents never graduated, they hit a wall with teaching me, so I was pretty much left to my own devices. I was able to muddle through with several hiccups and became a very self-motivated learner (which is likely why I prefer online-only classes now). I managed to graduate and entered the workforce at 19 – the same year I moved out of my parents' house and in with my significant other (which I would NOT recommend at that age - I was just a baby! However, there were a lot of issues which I will not go into in this post).

I always wanted to go to college. It seemed like a dream from the books I had read and the shows I had watched, and I was envious of my peers around me who had either already graduated or were in the midst of their college careers. However, I was absolutely petrified to try college, even my tiny local community college. I was fully convinced that because I did not get a formal, traditional education in school, I was too far behind to ever be able to succeed beyond that. However, with some urging of those around me, I took the entrance exam just to see if it was even feasible. To my shock, I aced the English portion of the exam, only missing one question on the test. My math scores were abysmal, but that did not surprise me at all. I enrolled in one class for the upcoming semester (beginning algebra) and hoped for the best.

To my surprise, I passed the course with an A! In subsequent semesters, I took the usual gen-ed courses, such as Public Speaking, Sociology, and College Writing (Comp I). In each class, I realized that I have a great capacity to learn, and if I listen, pay attention, and use criticism and feedback to improve (and I needed a lot of improvement), I could not only pass these classes but excel in my areas of strength. Each semester, I gained more confidence, which made the experience more and more enjoyable. I think my biggest realization was that I didn't have to go into a lot of these classes with any working knowledge or skills - I was there to learn HOW to do it. Once I wrapped my head around the fact that each class was an opportunity to get better, some of my anxiety melted away. SOME, not all. I still have a little anxiety at the beginning of each semester, as I delve into the expectations of each professor.

Granted, it wasn’t always a cakewalk. I had crazy professors, lazy professors, entitled professors who thought their advanced degrees gave them license to be cruel (that is WAY too common), and professors who were just dicks. I had classes that were like a scavenger hunt to figure out what the hell the assignments even were. I was accused of cheating once because I was able to format an Excel spreadsheet just like the textbook example (that was a rough day). That guy can take a flying leap - once I reported him to administration I still walked away with an A because he could in no way back up his claim that I cheated. I nearly failed one class the year my father and sister died within a month of one another, while I was also going through a divorce. Also a rough time. Ultimately though, I did not fail. I got a C in the class (the professor was not compassionate or flexible about my situation at all, but I managed to pull out a C in the class).

Despite what my asshole brain told me for years, I could DO THIS. I was damned good at school.

This has been a very long haul. I’ve been taking classes off and on since 2006, and at times it has been exhausting and frustrating. It’s not an easy road when you must work full-time, take care of your family, pets, all the other adult responsibilities, and keep up with assignments. However, I have not failed. My brain and anxiety were dead wrong. I was way better than my idiot neurochemicals kept trying to convince me that I was.

I’m nearing the end of my undergraduate journey, and my next step is grad school next fall. Am I nervous about it? Absolutely. Is my brain telling me I am not smart enough to do it? Every damned day. However, I am still going to enroll in the classes, dig in, and prove to my grey matter that I am more than the limitations my anxiety tried to impose. If it works, great! If not, I have given myself permission to forgive my shortcomings if it does not work out and find a different opportunity that my skills are better suited for. I don’t think I am going to fail though. I might feel like I am going to, but my feelings are dirty rotten liars that can’t be trusted.

If you are scared of something in your life because you think you might fail, just do it anyway. The only person you must prove something to is yourself, and you absolutely can give yourself a break if something goes awry. It's not a race, it is not a competition, it is just a journey. Make it your own.