I’m usually a lurker, but I saw your post and really wanted to leave something to say you’re not alone. I dropped out of university twice before working my way back to completing my undergraduate degree over the course of nearly 12 long years since I first entered college. I am assuming you are posting asking for advice rather than commiseration, so I will be trying to give advice rather than share my similar experience, especially since depression kind of ate up my memory of my worst years.
You are clearly capable of succeding academically, as indicated by your first year where you were doing very well. It was a similar situation for me, sometimes I could do things very well, and I felt fully capable, and other times nothing would really click in, and I’d feel like a complete failure, hide from my friends, lie to my family about how I’m doing, “just until I get my footing back”.
If I could go back and really shove advice down my own throat back at the start of my academic difficulties, the main thing I would reinforce is to take your mental health seriously. I spent years waffling on even trying counseling before going on to try medication for depression, and seriously trying behavioral treatment for depression. I was convinced I could muscle through by my own virtue, and “treating” my mental health was akin to admitting something was wrong with me, that I was inferior. In hindsight, all those years were just wasted time for me.
Your gut instinct is right when you title this post to be about academic anxiety. There is not something wrong with you. But there is something wrong happening to you. Maybe your biology has memorized how to be anxious, maybe your stressful environment is making you anxious, maybe your thoughts on the matter are leading you into anxiety circling over and over on itself, or maybe your biochemistry is affecting you differently now. I’m not sure which factors are causing it, or it could be some or all of those factors, but it sounds to me like you are dealing with a disease named anxiety.
Treat it seriously like you would any other physical disease. Go see a mental health professional to help diagnose and identify a treatment method that will work for your situation. You are describing a developing condition that has prevented you from achieving your usual capabilities, so you need to find how to mitigate and treat that condition, and prevent it from possibly getting worse (cause the brain is unfortunately good at learning repeated patterns). This is a healthy way to describe what you are feeling, and why you are asking for assistance. There is no shame or fault of character in needing to do any of this, just like there is no shame in a diabetic carefully managing their blood sugar, which is out of their body’s automatic control.
Don’t expect a magic bullet either, it took a combination of medication, years building my confidence back up behaviorally by committing to and completing smaller projects incrementally, a lot of practice learning to nonjudgementally manage my thoughts, and some lifestyle/diet changes as well. I recently found out I had sleep apnea, and I’m confident that was also compounding the symptoms of depression.
My experience with anxiety is that it comes with a lot of decision paralysis. Identify one small thing you need to do for recovery, like setting up an appointment with a mental health professional, and just do that one thing before you even try to consider anything else. once it’s been scheduled pick another small thing and work your way from there. Try to constrain your mental field of view, if that makes sense. Planning is your enemy, overplanning is literally anxiety, try to force yourself to pick an action item as step 1 and act without worrying about steps 2-10.
I acknowledge I am making assumptions about your immediate access to healthcare, and your access to a support network of friends or family. Identify someone you can trust to be a sounding board or hold you accountable in a supportive manner to what you want to achieve, and share with them what you’ve shared here, maybe with my advice too if you find it helpful. I suspect from your account that that person won’t be your mom initially, but if it is possible to convince her to be an ally on your side against our invisible foe, it is always good to have multiple points of support.
My last thought to leave is that I only had success coming back to school after earnestly focusing on just working on myself. You like learning, and that doesn’t have to be in the form of a class. Apply for and learn a new job, learn on the side, you can still be a growing individual outside of class-maybe it won’t come with the paper that everyone seems to hold stock in, but the progress you make for yourself is the most important thing. You have plenty of time, as long as you keep moving, tiny step by tiny step. Failure, despite everyone’s tendency for hasty assessment, can only be confirmed when you stop moving.
I hope this is the kind of response you needed or wanted, or that it just lets you know you’re not alone. Be safe, Be kind to yourself, and know I’m hoping for the best for you.
Sounds like you’ve got the right idea. I wouldn’t worry about the age thing, I went back to school when I was 29 after shelving it for 5 years, and there were plenty of students I met that were older than me. In a lot of ways the time you’ll have spent learning to work with yourself will give you an edge over the younger students.