That Four Year B.S.–Taking Time Off Is Okay
The first time I went to college I lasted 21 days. Less than two weeks into my freshman year, I tore a bunch of cartilage in my hip and found myself 400 miles away from home, in a lot of pain, and an hour away from the nearest orthopedist with no way to get there. Less than a month after moving me into college, my mom and I packed up my dorm room and drove back to DC. It felt like the end of the world. I didn’t want to miss out on my first semester of college, and I felt like people would judge me if I had to graduate late. I remember actually considering the option of pushing surgery until winter break and trying to struggle through the semester.
Being home gave me some time to clear my head. I hadn’t realized how far away the college I had chosen was from major medical communities. I was still undiagnosed at the time and my symptoms were unpredictable. On top of the distance from doctors, the school’s disability support office took so long to get back to me about mobility issues that I was already home on medical leave by the time they did. I doubted their ability to provide the resources I would need to manage my condition, and I didn’t want to go back. Even still, deciding to start at a new college spring semester freshman year wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
I spent so much time during that year worried about what people would think. I was scared that my friends’ parents would see me at the grocery store and think that I dropped out. I was scared that people wouldn’t want to hire me in the future if I had to graduate late because I transferred. I was scared to not be doing what other people my age were doing. Similar fears have cropped up from time to time as the difficulty of being a college student with a chronic illness has reared its ugly head – having to drop classes, missing/rescheduling exams, taking a semester part-time – but each time everything has been alright.
I’ve realized throughout my time in college that everyone has their own journey. Plenty of people take longer than four years to complete their degrees, plenty of people transfer, and plenty of people don’t go to college. There’s a lot of stuff they don’t tell you about in high school. They make it seem like it’s going to be the end of the world if you don’t do everything exactly how everyone else is doing it, but that’s really not the case. It’s all about what’s right for you.
I’m currently taking another semester off for medical reasons. When I was weighing the pros and cons at the end of the summer, I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want to resign to not taking classes this semester, but that’s not what taking time off is. It’s taken a while for me to get here, but I’m finally comfortable with the fact that there are some things about my illness that I can’t control, and that doesn’t make me any less intelligent or capable.
I know this is corny, but I’ll close with a quote that has resonated a lot recently: “Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.” – Michael J. Fox
Allison is a 21-year old rare disease advocate and health policy student at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Her passion for rare disease advocacy is drawn from her personal experience as a patient with the triad of Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), as well as Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome (MALS). Allison is also Co-President of the GW student organization RARE GW (sharing the title with fellow advocate Taylor Kane!) and serves as one of the Policy Chairs for the Young Adult Representatives of RDLA (YARR). She is currently taking time off of school to have MALS release surgery and focus on her recovery.