Education Breaks Do Not Mean You're Broken

Education breaks—something so many people take but are so infrequently discussed. The ‘traditional’ path I often discuss dictates that you leave high school, immediately start college, exactly 4 years later graduate with a degree and start a career. This isn’t inherently a bad path, and for many people it works out well, however it does not take into account illness, injury, disability, financial, personal or familial issues. Lately I have seen more people taking a break in their education, and there is still a lot of stigma around taking time off from school.

I have personally had a of couple breaks in my education over the past 3 years and none of my education journey has gone how I expected. My original goal was to attend a good 4 year school and graduate in 3 years. In my senior year of high school I was unable to physically attend the first half of the year due to multiple severe anxiety disorders and instead did homebound learning, where I did assigned work and my teachers came to my house each week for tutoring in lieu of classes.

Vacation just 5 months after I started back at school in 2016

After this time of homebound learning I was unable to attend any of the colleges I was accepted to as I wasn’t in a place where I could leave home, so instead I attended the local community college. After a tumultuous year working towards my associates degree I graduated and took the next year off to train Huxley as my service dog. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to attend college without a service dog. Yet even then I felt like I needed more of an explanation than “I’m training my service dog, so I can actually attend college,” to justify the break in education. I convinced myself and everyone else that I was just taking the year off to figure out what I was interested in doing in the future, oh and just training my service dog on the side. I didn’t give people the opportunity to accept my choices as those that were right for me and my state of health.

Looking back I realize that I did this out of fear that people would underestimate me, or judge me based off of the fact that I wasn’t in college. Having truly defined myself by my academic success throughout most of my schooling years, not being in college at a time when I was “supposed” to be I felt like people would look down upon me or view me as not as intelligent. So I just told anyone who asked that I was taking time to figure out what exactly I wanted to do, and blowing it off that I didn’t want to waste the money in school without knowing where I wanted to go with anything. This was not a lie, small part of me was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, the majority of me was just trying to get my mental health to the point where I would be able to handle college, and a big part of that was training Huxley.

Huxley at one of our favorite places to train

Now I can proudly say that I took off a year of school to take care of my health and train my service dog, without feeling like it is something I need to hide. The stigma around mental health has greatly improved even over the past 5 years, but I think that once it is at the point of disability the majority of the population begins to no longer being able to relate and the stigma around psychiatric disabilities is still strong, making it so people who are already fighting mental illnesses feel as though their illness isn’t enough to justify a break in their learning.

There are benefits for anyone who is interested in taking a semester off of school, from saving up money to pay for school, gaining real world experience in your career field, to traveling and gaining a greater perspective on different cultures and growing in your personal life. For someone dealing with disabling mental illness the time can be spent doing the things listed above but just as and more importantly it gives a person the time to rest and recharge, stabilize on medication if need be, learn new skills to help better manage mental illness and how to balance taking care of your mental heath, school and possibly work. Taking time off is not a sign a weakness, no one should ever be penalized for making the mature decision to put their health first and knowing what is best for them.

I think the hardest part of taking time off is coming to terms with the fact that you may not graduate at the same time as your peers. Even though I took I year off I was still going to graduate 4 years after high school due to the opportunities I had to take college level courses throughout high school, but once I started back at college this year I quickly realized going to school full time was not going to be possible for me. This means that I honestly don’t know exactly when I will graduate but I know it is going to take me longer that my peers. This was the most difficult thing for me to accept, I knew the people I started with in my intro to therapeutic rec. courses would more than likely be graduating before me, but that does not reflect my intelligence level. I simply have a different situation than my peers, it’s difficult for me to have a busy schedule and be on campus for extended periods of time.

Huxley and I at orientation in July 2018, I had not yet realized how difficult this year would be for me.

The most frustrating part for me is that I can handle the work load of being full time, but my disabilities currently prevent that schedule. I have to continually remind myself of what I tell people all the time, that the traditional path is not for everyone, and diverging from it is not a sign of lack of intelligence, weakness or defeat. Instead it is the opposite, you are paving your own path, rather than giving up and giving into this societal timeline you are fighting and finding what works for you right now, and that may change in a semester or a year or two and that’s okay! And when friends graduate ahead of you, it’s okay to feel sad or even frustrated but never feel disappointed in yourself because you are still here fighting—you haven’t given up, your circumstances are different than so many others, and you will reach your goals. Something else that always really helps me is reminding myself that no one else really cares, just as you wouldn’t judge someone if they took an extra year or two, or four to finish their degree, neither does anyone else, they are more focused on their work and studies. So if you are frustrated or wondering if you should take time off remember all of this, and that you can push yourself but it’s always okay to take a break and breathe.