u/MegaAscension

I've been saving this until I graduated. Never posted on this sub.

I had the worst college experience. Six years of hell, weaponized incompetence, poor communication, and a lack of support. I want to share my story because none of what happened to me should have happened to, and I’ve seen enough to give a bunch of advice on this sub through the years. 

Overall, I’m a good student. I graduated with about a 3.6 GPA from my school’s honors college. But when shit hit the fan, there was no help. And, my GPA would’ve been higher had I had proper help. But let’s start from the beginning. I started college in Fall of 2020 at a school that only had one student I knew in passing that was two years ahead of me. Due to Covid protocol, nobody could be close to anyone on campus, nor could they even go in each other’s rooms. I’m a pretty nerdy person who has certain hobbies, so I tried to find certain groups and clubs, only to find that no arrangements were made for any of these groups, and the clubs were given zero funding by the college. On top of that, all of my accommodations for documented ADHD and Autism were denied because accommodations would “put an undue hardship on professors” and that my “grades in high school (were) proof that I didn’t need accommodations”. My grades in high school were good in part because there were accommodations put in place to help me succeed. Every semester, I would have at least one assignment near the beginning of the semester that I would miss because I didn’t even know that it existed or that it was due. Everything around me, plus stuff in my personal life sunk me into an awful bout of depression, and it led to a lack of motivation and me not even wanting to get out of the bed in the morning. On top of that, I was betrayed by my therapist/psychiatrist right at the beginning of the semester, so I was left without professional help and medication.

Due to my state not accepting most IB credits, all but one of my classes my first semester were retreads of material I learned in high school. The one class that wasn’t, I got an F in. This led to me changing my major. My college was also the only school in my state to not allow students to retake classes and replace grades. I went through a late withdrawal process citing my mental state, submitted a write-up and documentation of my circumstances that was nearly ninety pages long. It was denied twice, I was never allowed to speak to the committee, and the reason for my denial was “confidential”. I had multiple advisors, a department head, the ombudsperson, and many others advocate on my behalf, before the denial was eventually overturned by the provost’s office. The whole situation took a year to resolve.

Yet again, in my final semester during student teaching, I was let down by my college. My partner teacher was explicitly told to “not directly answer any of my questions to allow (me) to find my own teaching style”. That’s now how it works for people on the spectrum! Yet again, no accommodations or help involving my autism. The education department was actually pretty surprised that that was the case with me. 

So, I ended up doing something else. Half of the classes I needed to take weren’t offered in semesters I needed to take them, and I didn’t have a choice in what classes I needed to take. This extended my stay in college by an additional year. Yes, I had to do an additional year in order to take three classes. 

On top of all of this, I had some really bad professors. One professor I had refused to accept emails for an online class during Covid. One professor’s class roster dropped from 33 to 12 after the withdrawal date because 21 students were failing the class. I had another professor play a prank on me involving my autism and tell me that autism just meant that I’m “smarter than everyone else”. Another professor would routinely insult me and other students for random things like things I was interested in and the clothes another student wore. I had another professor tell me to “drop his class” because “someone like (me) couldn’t pass his class” and asked me to change when certain scheduled college events were taking place. I got a B+. There’s way more I can share. I just graduated college. And I don’t feel happy about it. I just feel numb and exhausted.

Good fucking riddance.

TL; DR: I’m just numb after graduating due to being let down at every turn by my college in so many ways.