It is 5 years since I first started at university now. I always had the grades and desire to do well but my anxiety made it impossible to do well at that time. When I dropped out, I felt a sense of relief more than anything else. That was the first time in my life that I had felt genuinely suicidal and I was glad to escape from the trapped feelings that I was experiencing.
Over the last few months though, my unemployment and seeing other acheive things with their lives reawoke the desire for me to get a degree. I think I’d be letting myself down and my parents too if I never gave it a proper go. I don’t want to be stuck in a dead end job, which I can’t even get at the moment, and I don’t have the people skills to do well in customer service like my sister. I don’t look down on people who did not choose an academic path in life but I know that it’s the right thing for me to do.
I was always gifted at school, in all top classes and got the best results for a long time before my anxiety made me start wanting to miss classes. Seeing people who were at my school and much less intelligent than me doing so well in life makes me feel horribly jealous and I know I’ll have messed my life up if I can’t get things back on track soon.
One of my best friends whom I know from the internet has helped me enormously by encouraging me to apply this year and helped me to realise that it is possible to get by alright even if you have SA. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to tell my parents, I was afraid that my mum would try and talk me out of it or undermine my confidence which is very fragile. Luckily they have been supportive though and despite some problems with the financial application because of their dubious marital status, I haven’t ran into too many problems with them.
I had my UCAS form all filled in and ready to submit (it’s all done online now which is a relief, I hated that stupid paper form) but I was waiting over a month for one of my old college tutors to send me a damn reference. That place is still as disorganised as ever. I finally got it this afternoon and sent my form off, so fingers crossed that I get accepted on one of the courses I’ve applied to 
