10 inconvenient, clumsy, stark, and significant truths and lessons I learned while getting my college degree

December, 2024

First, some background:

I decided to go to college 3,000 miles away. This was genuinely as far as I could get from my hometown and family while staying in the same country. It was part of a calculated effort to escape their controlling and conservative values in favor of the supposedly liberal nirvana that is California. However, the four years I’ve spent getting my degree in Santa Barbara were, without a doubt, some of the hardest of my life. It was a rocky, unpaved, and arduous road – filled with lumps and bumps that would send me off my path entirely, leaving me constantly clawing my back back on track.

I can’t even say I’m looking back on it yet. Living at home with my family is far from a sustainable or safe situation for me, so I’ve decided to return to SB for a few months to finish out my apartment’s lease and work part time. But the “college” part is over for me, and it looked and felt incredibly different from what I thought and expected. I want to shed light on the messiness of that experience – what I learned even when I wanted to quit and felt there was no worthwhile end to the road I was trudging down. Sure, I’m proud of the student I became, what I learned, what I’ll take with me. But I’m most proud of surviving.

My college experience – frankly, my life so far – doesn’t look like that of many people I know, but that doesn’t make it less valid or valuable. It’s in that sentiment that I want to share the truths and lessons I learned and how I came to learn them. I know I’m young, and I know close to nothing, but I think even half-baked insights are worth throwing into the void. This is not self-help, not a guide – just a being sharing their experience and hoping someone might feel seen by it or inspired to share their own.

pen and water color drawing by me about the underwhelming and numb feeling that comes with graduation. [ image description: Myself standing in a black graduation cap and gown with a blue and yellow stole. Underneath I am wearing a white jumpsuit and brown boots. My hands are at my sides and I look out saying, “I guess, that’s it?” The background is a washed out gray with vertical pen strokes all over. ]

1) No matter how far I run or try to forget, my body will remember

In all honesty, there was no specific program or professor that drew me towards UCSB – it was simply the farthest I could get from my family and hometown. But even 3,000 miles away, the sanitized, beige walls of my dorm room had me waking up gasping for air, eyes searching for some semblance of safety. It took me 3 months to realize the hospital-like corridors reminded me of the institution I found myself forced into at age 12.

Even in my first joyful, queer relationship, I found myself panicked and frenzied, reacting to my partner’s behavior. I spent many restless nights wrestling with how their behavior reminded me of my dysfunctional family. When I began to experience my worst bouts of depression, dread, and fear in my college apartment, I wasn’t just living through that current period of depression — but reliving every episode I had suffered before. After that, every time I returned to my apartment after a break or even a class, stepping inside felt like stepping into a cloud of those terrifying emotions.

Living with C-PTSD has felt like a dark blob that mirrors my every step, encompassing moments and movements until I am entirely shrouded in its sinister darkness. I’m not quite sure where relief lies yet, but I know it doesn’t lie in distance. I know the value of compassion and of a wonderful therapist. I know how to lean into and listen to what my body and mind are trying to tell me — to warn me of. I know that instead of spiraling into anger and fear, I can (or try to) say thank you to my body and mind, for trying to keep me safe.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I lay reclined on a big blue chair in a corner. A dark gray blob surrounds myself and the chair. Above me reads: THE BLOB. ]

2) Many things can exist at once

My autistic ass loves black and white thinking. The notion that something or someone might have been both helpful and hurtful, both caring and not caring, both exhilarating and exhausting makes my mind spin in confused circles. But remarkably, most things, experiences, and people cannot be singularly summed up; they are paradoxical, confusing, nuanced, and human.

I think of my first real relationship – or the first one not rooted in compulsory heterosexuality. My partner was loving and smart, joyful and grounded. Through being with them, I learned invaluable lessons about extending the love and care I deserve towards myself and trying to live a life rooted in pleasure and empowerment. But they didn’t always make me feel smart; they often pushed me away, and they ultimately broke my heart. It took a long time to realize that it’s ok for all of those truths to exist at once.

I think of attending the countless classes it took to complete my degree. How much I learned, how many rabbit-holes I had the privilege of going down, the possibilities they unlocked, the truths they unveiled. How much I enjoyed listening to a passionate professor geek out about their field of interest. But attending class also felt like an insurmountable wall. Constantly inaccessible no matter how many emails I sent, complaints I filed, and letters from my therapist I forwarded. I constantly felt like the entire institution, which was giving me so much, also blatantly didn’t care about me or other disabled students. I’m still struggling to understand that.

3) My physical disability saved my life

Quite a stark statement, I know. One that society would never condition us to say in a million years. And yet, it’s true for me and feels like one of the defining truths of my experience while at college.

I moved across the country in, unknowingly, some of the worst mental shape of my life. I was clumsily emerging out from the closet, but I didn’t love myself – not yet. I had been harming and punishing my body for years, and at that point, it took the form of over-exercising. My body was not equipped to be running miles upon miles every day, and yet there I was, willing myself to do it anyways. But on my second night sleeping in my dorm room, I sprained my ankle – badly. I tried to run through it, started going to the dreaded college gym filled with stinky, homophobic frat boys, but my ankle continued to give way.

The injury seemed to travel through my body – to my knees, shoulder, back, hips, and wrists. It would be years until I got an answer for why these injuries kept occurring. But as painful as they were, they forced me to stop pushing my body beyond its limits, to find value and coping skills in other areas of my life, to actually sit with the pain, the grief, the loathing, and the trauma for once. That was an ugly time. But if the symptoms of my physical disability hadn’t cropped up then, maybe I would have continued harming and hating myself. I’m not saying I magically stopped struggling – far from it – but I can finally say that I’m grateful to be alive today and fundamentally loving myself, and my physical disability played a significant part in that journey.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am running on a path with my hair pulled back and eyes looking forward. I am wearing a blue tank top, blue shoes, and short shorts. A speech bubble reads, “DON’T MIND ME! JUST RUNNING BECAUSE I HATE MYSELF <3” ]

4) Friendships will end, and that’s ok

Before college, I never really had any large-scale friendship breakups – or at least none that left scars. They usually happened over boys I convinced myself I was in love with, or we just drifted apart by going to different schools or moving into new neighborhoods. Friendships felt, I guess, simple – you become friends, you stay that way.

The past four years though, have not felt that way.

Apparently I’m not the best at spotting yellow, red, or even crimson flags in a person as we are developing a friendship, and it’s hard for me to notice if the dynamic is taking a turn. For example, I’ve often accidentally become the “therapist” or “mentor” friend, something I don’t realizing is happening until I’m deeply entrenched in the distress of this dynamic, thinking, “Holy shit!! How did I get here?? How do I get out??”

This has unfortunately happened a few times, and it’s caused a lot of pain — both at the person for helping engineer that type of situation and at myself for being oblivious to it! I can’t say I didn’t blame myself at first, but I’m learning to give myself grace. I’m also learning that I feel better without those people in my life. To put it simply, I’m learning that no friend should be stealing my sparkle and that doesn’t make me a bad person or friend.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I stare directly at the viewer with my hands gripping my head in anguish. Above me reads: HOLY SHIT!! HOW DID I GET HERE?? HOW DO I GET OUT?? ]

5) I am not broken, I was never broken

My whole life I’ve either been in a state of hiding or being taught to hide. I felt – and the world reinforced – that there must be something very wrong and broken about me that I must keep to myself. But sequestering my most vulnerable and true thoughts and feelings left me in a state of perpetual isolation. I felt like there was a glass pane separating me from the rest of the world – I was condemned to look through it for eternity, to watch others’ easy laughing, smiling, and conversation. I became very good at pretending, at mirroring the dance I saw playing out behind the glass.

But pretending is exhausting, and that struggle and isolation seemed to climax when I moved across the country for school. I was navigating an institution of 25,000 people that made me feel deeply invaluable and alone. My friends seemed to be having the times of their lives while I was breaking down into panic attacks everyday, and everyone around me was physically adept while my body was breaking over and over again. There were a lot of factors at play during that time, but it was fundamentally the deep pain of a disabled person who didn’t have the words for it yet.

However, there was some teeny-tiny part of me, deep inside, that knew I wasn’t broken, that knew I needed tools to live and celebrate the way my brain and body are wired, instead of railing against them. I followed that intuition down a pretty gnarly path, but it eventually led to slivers of help, healing, and truth. Diagnoses aren’t important for everyone, but for me, they saved my life and gave me permission to exist as I am, as I’ve always been.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I sit with my knees drawn towards my chest. I’m looking away from the viewer and into a pane of glass. Within the pane two individuals are laughing together in front of a building. Below me is the phrase, “THROUGH THE GLASS…” ]

6) Objectivity is porous

Oddly enough, one of the main constants in my life from above 4th grade and beyond is that I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. (Maybe it’s a queer thing?) But within a month of college, it became increasingly clear that my neurodivergent brain could not intuit general chemistry and biology in a massive lecture hall. (I’m still convinced the only reason I passed Chem 1A was because I cried visible tears onto my final.) Even so, I found ways to continue down that path without taking those classes: I switched my major, started working in labs on campus, earned a science fellowship, and even got a job taking surveys while scuba diving (that truly wrecked my body).

The deeper I got into the world of doing “good science,” I couldn't shake feeling that it was a futile attempt to grasp and control a force we should instead be learning to coexist with – nature. Don’t get me wrong, science is important; but at what cost? I can only watch my boss crack open so many “invasive” purple sea urchins before I start to wonder if it was really necessary, or how one could go about asking for the urchin’s consent.

I tried to pivot to science communication after growing wearing of laboratory work, but I was told that each article I wrote wasn’t “objective” enough. It was mind-boggling to me. How are we expected to get people to care about science without humanizing it, without appealing to our shared experiences? That’s when I made the leap for myself. I decided that the real learning lives in the gray areas – the words, the conversations, the questions, the subjectivity – and I would do whatever it takes to immerse myself in that type of education.

A pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: Two hands hold a purple sea urchin. A speech bubble from the urchin reads, “I DO NOT CONSENT.” ]

7) Rest.

In a way, college felt like one big saga of trying, failing, and trying again to emerge from burnout. For years I was literally running on empty, a shell of myself. There were many scary times when I couldn’t differentiate the shell from who I was beyond it. I vividly remember the first weekend night I chose to stay in my dorm room instead of seeing friends. I started a painting that still hangs on my wall today. I remember thinking, I am so much happier right now – alone on my dorm room floor – then I would ever be at a party or in a friend’s room.

Naturally, that night turned into another, which turned into dedicating myself to the art of saying no, which turned into literally centering my entire life around the rest I need. It wasn’t a magical flip of a proverbial switch – I didn’t really have that much agency in the choice. At some point my body and mind simply couldn’t function in a lifestyle where I was constantly spreading myself thin, getting overstimulated, and burnt out.

Today, I barely function as it is, but the little functioning I can manage is due to the rest I prioritize. I still say yes to things I most definitely should have said no to, then I get drained or I get a migraine. I’m still learning not to blame myself for that and to instead give myself grace. 18-year-old shell-of-myself would likely scoff at the lifestyle I lead today, but I don’t really care! I love my quiet life, and I’m so proud of the journey it took to cultivate it and find rest that nourishes and restores me.

8) The value of words

As a little kid, my nose was constantly in a book. But from the beginning of middle school to the beginning of college, I mostly lost touch with reading – my mind was probably too full of mental distress and the performance of “normalcy” (presenting neurotypical, cis, heterosexual). But during my first big breakup, though, I found myself in an English course where books seemed to find me when I needed them most. Slowly, books started to hold me when I felt alone; they became my teachers when my professors weren’t, and my company on many sleepless nights.

Not just books per-se, but narratives, storytelling, words – they are a mirror, a portal, a bridge, and a warm embrace. This scaled-up consumption of words led to writing my own – a hunger to connect through them, to throw them out into the void. Not just pretty strings of words that tie into beautiful knots and bows, but the ugly, gnarled, shameful and no-good words that sometimes seem even more valuable to me.

And also not just using words in a specific, controlling, “objective” manner – as taught by many of my professors – but breaking away from that structure so my thoughts find their home. It’s through this writing — the kind that my professors would likely scoff at — that I make sense of myself and the world. Or I get more confused, and that’s part of the journey too.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am kneeling on the ground in front of a book that is almost twice my size. As I open it, it looks like there is a light coming from within it. ]

9) I am a seasonal being

The fact that Southern California has a mild climate is something I honestly didn’t give much thought to before moving there. I simply wanted to escape, and secondary aspects like weather just seemed like an added novelty. I know now that yes, there are seasons in Southern California, but not the sudden, roaring, and magnificent transitions I had grown up with in the Northeast.

Without the familiar, undeniable markers of winter, spring, summer and fall, I feel unmoored, confused, stuck in some string liminal space, waiting for something to give way. The monotony of the sun often drives me mad – day after day I imagine her continual mockery of my sullen, exhausted demeanor. I know the sun is not committing a personal affront to me, but it often feels that way. I sometimes cry tears of joy on a rare day of rain or clouds.

When I go home – something I usually dread – I feel this newfound ecstasy and appreciation for a cool gust of winter wind, a warm summer rain, and the spring robins that emerge as the trees start to bud. These seasonal shifts are the grounding of my existence. They guide me to hibernate, to awaken, to cycle, to mirror the world outside my window. It was something I had always taken for granted — until I didn’t have it anymore.

Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am facing the viewer, wearing a purple hat with cat ears, a blue scarf, and. cardigan. Behind me it is snowing and a speech bubble reads, “I AM COLD, BUT I AM HAPPY.” ]

10) I am just beginning

The lesson I am currently learning is a significant one, but it’s also a tough pill to swallow. Because of my neurodivergent/mental illness cocktail, I want to believe I have everything figured out. I crave routine. I want to know exactly what I’m doing, how I’ll be feeling, and what I’ll be needing tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. Unfortunately, I’m learning that’s not exactly how life works – especially with a dynamic disability – and that’s terrifying.

I find comfort in reminding myself that yes, obviously I don’t have it all figured out; I haven't even lived that long or learned that long. It’s only been two years trying to exist semi-authentically. I have yet to fully love in this form, deeply connect with other neurodivergent, disabled individuals, and create the art I truly want to create.

This boundless possibility is terrifying too — but it’s also breathtaking and empowering that my biggest excitement and superpower is simply waking up and showing up every day as my most authentic self. Pardon me for sounding like RuPaul, but it’s true. Being alive is something that fills me with joy – and lots of fear – but mostly joy and gratitude, and I haven’t always been able to say that.