College & Progress

I have been thinking about college and going back to school since January. When I'm thinking about something, anything really, be it a big decision or minor one, I tend to keep it to myself until the decision is made, then I tell people close to me. It's something I'm not supposed to do. I'm supposed to be working on that in therapy. I'm not exactly fully on board with it. I don't understand why my way isn't as good as the 'discussion' way. It's worked for years. I told Dr R once "You're big into this 'discussion' thing aren't you?" and he said, "Yes, because you aren't." But I digress.

So beginning of June, after talking myself out of it multiple times in the past 6 months and going back and forth on it in my head, I convinced myself it was ok and I could do it. I researched it, what school, how I would get there, what I would take to start, how it would work with J, how I would afford it on my meager income, etc. And once I had it mostly ok 99.8% figured out I told a few people, and they had good responses. So I figured it was still ok. And I got pretty excited. I'm only going to take 1 class to start, to get my feet wet so to say. It'll either be Calc II, Calc III or Linear Algebra. I'm good at math, I like math, I can get myself back up to speed for any of those courses I think by the time Sept rolls around. I'm going to commute from my home. The school is very open to guide dogs and service dogs. I thought- ok I can do this!

Then I started getting ahead of myself and freaking myself out and getting stressed about it. The current mental state is of course not helping and I know that.

I started looking into, in the spring if I apply as a transfer student and matriculate (or what ever that word is) what I would have do to get a degree. It's a state university so they require general ed credits. Last time I went to a private university, there were no general ed credits other than freshman english and I placed out of that. The general ed credits look like it's a LOT of reading. Like books. I haven't been able to read a book well since I had the ECT 4 years ago. It toasted a lot of my concentration and ability to read. An unfortunate side effect of a treatment that shouldn't have been done and didn't work! Bah. Alas, that's in the past and I deal with the after effects still 4 years later. So I started to get stressed. Going, what the hell am I trying to do. What am I getting myself into. This is crazy. You're going to fail again. Last time you ended up so sick and you're going to do that to yourself again. Why on earth are you doing this, what's the point!? You're nuts for thinking you can do this.

But then yesterday I had a moment of sanity and back to reality and reminded myself. It's ONE class in the fall. If that doesn't work you have absolutely NO obligation to go further. You're not transferring you're just going to be a non-degree student. That's one of the reasons you are going to this university, they give you that option. And I said, oh yeah, so knock it off.

See that's progress. A year ago, I couldn't have done that. Even if I had managed that stroke of sanity, I would have worked myself back up to anxiety hell about 5 seconds later about the same topic. Sometimes it's really hard to see the progress. Sometimes this stuff is so damn cyclical that I get stuck in the cycle and get to some level of functioning and less stress only to have stress pile up again and my mental health tank. I don't handle stress well at all. But life is stressful. Have to learn to deal with it. It's just part of life.

So just have to remember- it's ONE class. There is NO pressure to do more. It's up to me what I do next spring. If I like it, I can do more. If I don't, I have other options. I am not closing my dog training school as of yet, my students are still really supportive of my work choices and schedule, if I decide school isn't for me, I have options with training still and can find other avenues to pursue if I want.

Hell I could try to find backers and open a school training guide dogs for autistic adults. No one else is doing it. They're all doing incredibly unsafe tether dogs for autistic kids. No one seems to remember that autistic kids become autistic adults and there are a lot of us high functioning ones out there who would love a dog and could use a dog that was actually trained to help mitigate the disability. I'll tell you from personal experience, walking into walls and telephone poles and nearly getting hit by cars is not a fun experience! So see, lots of options.