I got an email yesterday that immediately made my heart sink. I have a significant academic scholarship (those years of slaving away in HS paid off, ha) and it’s renewed each year. The past 2 have been no problem at all. My GPA was wonderful, until last spring. It was the hardest semester of my entire life and an extremely low point. I was deep into the eating disorder and depression wasn’t well medicated either. I missed classes, had no motivation, worked my body too hard, never slept, ate very little, missed assignments and papers, etc. To be quite honest, the fact that I got through the semester and my team didn’t end it early is amazing. It was truly miserable. One of the only reasons I could stay in school was the contingency of a higher level of care afterwards. I left for residential before our final grades were even posted. In the first week or so there I was able to find out what my GPA was: not good but .1 above what’s needed to stay in nursing. I thanked God, rejoiced, and tried to forget how terrible I did. I mostly was able to accomplish that, until today.

I can no longer hide from the failures that happened last spring. It doesn’t matter that this past fall was a huge improvement and return to my normal GPA range. I still failed to make the quota, by just .05 this time. Small difference or not, it isn’t enough.q

I can’t change that spring semester, as much as I want to. There is still a chance to get my scholarship back, though. This is through an appeal process for “extenuating circumstances. ” I will need to explain the situation and provide documentation (whatever that means) I’m terrified that nothing will change their minds, but I emailed anyways to find out specifics. I know that R and Dr. C will be in my corner. I just hope that my eating disorder doesn’t take this from me too.

In this limbo period, I’m going to try to take care of myself. If I don’t do that, this semester could he a repeat of 2017 and even more would be at risk. Nursing is so important to me. I can see myself as a nurse in just a year and a half. The whole struggle has been worth it. I just don’t want my eating disorder to cost anymore than it already has.

I haven’t cried yet about this. Maybe I’m still in shock. It’s honestly hard to believe it’s real at this point… It feels like one minute I was a straight A high school student and the next barely scraping by. I’m going to try my best to be kind to myself and allow tears to come.

Now is the time to fight for myself. I can use my voice and be vulnerable here. In the meantime, I’ll try not to completely freak out (easier said than done). Worrying and overthinking won’t help. I have to put more effort into recovery because a repeat of last spring would only end up with me in treatment. I can’t have that happen ever again, so I’m going to fight: for my scholarship, schooling, overall wellbeing, and recovery.