From Struggle to High Honors: Reflections on My Journey to an Associate’s Degree with CPTSD

It has been a long year of finishing my associates degree, but I am finally done with the last of my classes and just waiting for my diploma to be mailed. Since my college has one graduation ceremony a year in May, I already walked for graduation. I do plan on donning my cap and gown again to take more pictures now that the flowers are blooming, and also because it is important to me that I have some photos from when I actually graduated rather than just the ceremony.

The Graduation Ceremony After Online College: Graduating with High Honors

The graduation ceremony was chaotic to me because I had attended college entirely online, and there were so many people there since they have only one graduation ceremony a year. I also could have used a warning to wear comfortable shoes because we were standing in line waiting to do the processional into the gym for so long, I might have lost circulation in a few toes (just kidding really). There was also no one I knew there aside from the people who came to watch me graduate and it felt really awkward. I hate crowds, and having no friends in a crowd makes it so much worse.

However, when I picked up my two gold cords because I was graduating with high honors it all began to seem like a small inconvenience. Sitting in a room of strangers, even with how awkward I felt, was all worth it when I heard my name announced as graduating with high honors. I’m not saying this because I want everyone to know how smart I am, but because I find it so hard to believe that I could go from an entire school thinking I was stupid, and two past failed attempts at getting my associates, to working so hard that I raised my GPA from a low ‘c’ to a high ‘a’ in one semester of college. Two semesters of grades have been added since I walked for graduation, and I still qualify for high honors.

Online College Worked for me with CPTSD

Graduating from online college with CPTSD was easier than going in person because of my struggles with CPTSD. Driving is difficult because of anxiety, and one of the reasons I failed in the past was because I was too nervous about driving to class. Another issue is that I seem to have trouble keeping up with taking notes when someone is speaking so it is easier for me to be able to rewind something that is pre-recorded or written down.

Of course, the top benefit of going to college online was that with CPTSD, as with many chronic illnesses, a person has ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’. Going to college online afforded me the benefit of not having a set class time so that if I was having a bad day, I could simply do something that worked for me that day. Sometimes I would give myself some self care like a big breakfast, sleeping in, maybe an hour of video games and then I would be able to focus on some class work.

I would not say that going online was able to accommodate all of my troubles though, because some classes were simply hard to follow. I had a few classes where the due dates or guidelines were said differently in different places, or the due dates were on various days of the week with no pattern to them. I don’t think all of my problems are because of CPTSD, but I think about things very deeply and when I see things that are unclear it throws me off balance. With one of my professors this somehow caused an email conflict because she took offense when I was generally expressing confusion. Another professor loved to put the due dates and guidelines inside of videos, and not write them down anywhere. I had to watch the weekly videos so many time to make sure I had everything correct, and I was lucky they were short.

Working Full Time and Studying: How I managed College With Anxiety

Living with CPTSD has a large impact on my education. There were a lot of late nights, lots of crying, and I missed so many social engagements. The housework piled up, and I struggled to work full time and complete the three classes I had during the winter semester. Finally, this last semester I chose to live off of savings so that I could finish my short, seven week semester and finally be done with my associates. The struggle to get my degree has always come down to trying to focus while I feel like I am being pulled in so many different directions. I know I am not the only person who finds even the idea of going to school and working to be mortifying, forget actually doing it and I wonder why we can’t do better as a society to make education attainable.

I pushed through because I had a good support system, and I developed a lot of coping strategies to help me. My biggest struggle was feeling exhausted and unable to focus after a long day and sometimes I just had to submit not perfect work. Sometimes I would submit work that I thought was terrible, only to be surprised when I got an A or a B, and it reminded me that I am a perfectionist, and the rest of the world is not like that. I know I am not the only person who is hard on themselves when it comes to the quality of their work, and a lot of that comes from being punished for learning differently in the early years of school.

In Conclusion

Regardless of what you have working against you, you can find a way to achieve your goals. I am glad that I did not give up on college and finally earned my associates degree. I’m even thinking about going for a Bachelors someday. I cannot say enough how much I would not be here today without my close friends and family who have helped me as they could along the way. However, for now I am here for writing this blog. Join me on my journey to advocate for better solutions for mental health, resources to end domestic violence, and to the quiet becoming loud.

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