Wednesday, May 16, 2012

To a once again bright future

I am so far behind on blogging it is insane. Later this week I will be blogging about the rest of my trip to Colorado at the end of March. But for now, I have to brag about myself. Go figure, right? ha.
A little(lot) background first:

In high school, I played basketball. Due to this very physical sport(who knew right??), I suffered a few concussions/TBI's through my sophomore and junior years. I didn't play my senior year. My grades suffered - the last year especially. I had always taken pride in the fact that I was fairly smart and could get could get good grades without killing myself with nonstop studying. School had always come fairly naturally to me. But then it didn't. Life got difficult quickly, very quickly. I don't know how much people noticed it before college because I would like to think that other than the crazy headaches I would get constantly, I was pretty good at hiding how I was feeling about not playing basketball anymore, about failing in school (at least failing to meet my standards and expectations for myself), about losing my memory about so many things and having a now horrible short term memory. I think I was in denial enough about it that I was able to pretend that so many of these things did not matter or were not really happening. That all changed when I went to college. 

I moved to Logan, Utah at 18 years old. I lived with 5 other girls. I thought I was at the top of the world, that I was invincible and that college was going to be a breeze. HA! Talk about running in to a brick wall at full speed. By the end of my first semester, I had failed one class and was close enough to failing the rest of my classes in a 16 credit semester that when the semester ended, I received a letter of impending academic probation due to the scholarship I was receiving to attend school. Me and my denial though just brushed it off and the next semester I took 18 whopping credits, hard credits that nearly killed me. I had classes from human development to elementary education to international politics. Throughout this semester, even though I was finally getting a couple of A's, I still failed one class and came out with a very low GPA. What had happened to me??? I hated the fact that I was failing school. I hated that I wasn't the same "me" I used to me. And on top of not getting the grades I wanted, I had to go home to have surgery, and I was having more and more headaches that were really starting to get bad - being that I was getting them everyday and they were harder and harder to just get rid of. Life was spiraling out of control and I couldn't stop any of it. 

After spending the summer in Colorado, I moved back to Utah, but this time to Provo. I was transfering to Utah Valley University and living with Nana. Living here has proved to be one of the best decisions I have ever made though. As tough as an adjustment as it has been. Everything seemed to be working out - instead of having to pay the out of state tuition that I expected to pay, 10 days before school started I received an email saying I had been accepted for the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) scholarship, even though when I had looked at the list at the beginning of the summer I was number 272 on the WAITING LIST which meant waiting about 2 years. What a blessing that was. I took this as a sign that things were going to be completely different here than in Logan. At the end of fall 2010 semester, I had a 2.10 GPA and was still struggling to function and thrive. Keep in mind, in order to maintain the scholarship, a 2.0 GPA is required. Talk about cutting it close!!! Spring semester I failed another class but managed to bring my cumulative GPA up to 2.62. I was still having headaches and major memory problems and was still so frustrated with myself. More than once I considered just dropping out of college all together. Things got so hard for me to deal with that I just wanted to give up because it would be easier than trying and failing as much as I have. My brother convinced me to stay in school and tough it out though because it would be something I regretted if I quit. I knew he was right, so I stayed, as much as I dreaded it. It never is a good sign when you wake up every day dreading going to school. Summer came and I went home to Colorado again thoroughly unhappy with myself and where my life was going in what was supposed to be some of the best years of my life. 

Eventually I jumped back on the horse, headaches, memory issues and all, and headed back to school. Last Fall I was insane enough to take 18 credits again. Somehow I managed to come out with a 3.2 GPA and things were looking up! Then this last Spring, I pulled a crazy 3.6 GPA.Surprisingly enough, this includes both semesters I have taken math/statistics. Another upside to the past year? My headaches have decreased enormously, both in intensity and how often they occur. So maybe there is hope after all? I think yes. Absolutely. Maybe the effects of multiple TBI's are not as long lasting has I had imagined. Sure I will have to deal with headaches and memory issues I'm sure the rest of my life, but at least I now know that it will not always be as bad as it has been the past 4 years. Now going in to my senior year of college I have higher expectations of myself, similar to my pre-TBI days. So yes, I am bragging about my grades now, which is not something I have done in a long time. But, I am overly proud of myself right now and am once again looking brightly to my own future. :)

And a quote that I feel somewhat fits this topic as well as just makes me think.....
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"