In high school I had an unweighted GPA of 4.0/4.0 and a full resume. I got accepted to plenty of prestigious colleges (which shouldn’t matter, but I get really worried about graduate school). Everyone always told me not to work so hard. They all said how I’d succeed. The thing is, I went off to college and I was so stressed out I attended two classes and had to leave (the work was easy, but the pressure to be perfect gave me a breakdown in high school and, even though no one knew about the breakdown outside of my family, I’m even worse than before- I’ve been stressed out over school since I was 4 years old).

I can’t do this anymore. I’m studying for the SAT again (I want a perfect score so badly) and for the first time in my life I can’t even make myself study- I’ve studied for it for years and I’m burnt-out. Even when I was Anorexic I studied non-stop and maintained my straight 100s, so this has to mean I’m losing it now. I’m trying to find a college I can be happy at, but there isn’t one. I even looked into my safety schools from last year, and they’re too stressful as well. I’m trying to get my anxiety under control, but I can’t. I’m so upset over this upcoming test and so worried about which colleges to apply to (I applied to a ton last year, but now that I’ve experienced college I realize that none of those would work for me this year). Whether a college is grading me or writing an evaluation on me it’s too much pressure, school makes me suicidal- of course there’s more to it than school, but school is what I channel everything into (if it weren’t for my religion I would have killed myself years ago).

I’m so sorry for being incredibly selfish. Please forgive me for whining about school. I know everyone has much bigger things to worry about than my school issue, and I apologize. I guess I’m just really lost.

Also I know people recommend praying and volunteering, and I do both, it’s just something is wrong in my mind.

Do you have advice for me? How can I find a college that I could actually survive at when it doesn’t exist (I own numerous college guide books and know all about both the classic college education and about the alternative route, and neither works)? This is all my own fault, but I don’t know what to do.

Thank you very much!