university🙍🏻‍♀️.

As someone who has a masters degree in higher education administration and works directly as an academic advisor to first year students, I am so proud of you. College is hard and mental health makes it that much harder. I see so many students fail their first semester because of it. You are wise to be prioritizing your mental health. Plus you’ll actually be able to learn when your mental health is more manageable. One semester in college I had an awful bout of OCD, but I couldn’t take a leave, so I pushed through. But I barely remember anything. Your future self will thank you! Hang in there ❤️

In another world, I would have deferred college for a year to get aggressive treatment for my OCD and social anxiety disorder. Alas, I was not diagnosed at the time, but I'm sure my experience in college would have been loads better had I been able to focus on it properly rather than fighting these daily useless battles with my brain.

I think you’ve heard their opinion, and I think you’ll find that there are a lot of people on both sides, but they’re advising you based on past regrets. Things can go poorly either way and life is unpredictable. There are serious pros and cons to undergoing therapy while under real pressure, but messing up a semester at uni can be a really high cost financially and personally. I found that a lot of things I was managing really well blew up when I left home for school. Without a support system or help self-regulating, I started a really bad cycle that I’m still healing from 20 years later. I did attend one of the hardest schools far away from home though. When I have a really difficult decision like that, I usually look really closely at whether there’s a real opportunity cost. Mostly I find that there’s nothing worth making a decision before I’m ready.