WAY too late to the party, but what the hell, might as well get it out. In college I was going through quite the rough patch. I had, at that time, undiagnosed aspergers (or autism spectrum disorder if you like, since officially aspergers no longer exists independently), and was being continually misdiagnosed from everything from severe anxiety to morbid depression to bipolar disorder to bpd. I was incredibly sick and mentally strained from the multitude of drugs from Lithium to Zoloft to Clonazepam they kept trying and then, embarrassingly, started to self medicating with alcohol at night to sleep and on the weekends to dull the ache in my brain.

Prior to this, I was always a 4.0+ student, but I began to struggle my sophomore year of a BS in Molecular Biology and fell into a deep deep depression. I went week long stretches of not sleeping and watched my grades suddenly plummet even though I studied for hours every day, and often through the night, until my contacts would dry out until I was unable to blink. I was extremely confused by the sudden disappearance of my constant and oftentimes only companion, the written word. I had always carried an open book out in front of me, encyclopedias, dictionaries, scientific journals, novels, religious texts, any book I Youcould get my hands on, in front of me as I ate, as I brushed my teeth, as I walked, and according to my parents, as soon as I could walk. Now, I suddenly had trouble remembering what subject I was even reading by the time I had gotten to the end of a paragraph or even the end of a sentence.

I was still somehow managing to be at the very top of all of my Chemistry and Biology Labs, and was doing outstandingly well in my nondegree courses, all things considered, but was failing miserably in the Chem and Bio lectures. I was attending a top 10 public university, the Biology department, in particular, treated me with extraordinary disdain after my grades began to plummet. Even one of my former professors who before, was seemingly nice and understanding, began to ignore my questions completely, or cut me off if I answered a question, when his son, who was also in several of my same classes that semester, and I began to study and have the occasional burger together in the cafeteria. After forming a congenial platonic professional friendship, he abruptly avoided me in the halls, and no longer responded to my emails offering to compare notes or copies of the lectures he missed, he apologetically disclosed that his father had warned him to stay away from me because I was a cheater and was only trying to use him to get answers.

But, this one instance in particular, I will always remember. We had to do a research paper in a mammalian biology course. I spent days and days in the library, trying to concentrate on finding a topic but could just not retain any of the words I had read by the end of the page. The night before it was due, I spent 12 hours writing, shaking, screaming silently, rocking, and rewriting one of the best damned scientific research papers I had ever written. I was so fucking proud of myself I didn't even feel like I hadn't slept in two days, I felt goddamned amazing. I walked in, smiling and handed it in. The next day, he came over to my table, in front of the entire class, and said, "I've run this though Turnitin multiple times, and searched it myself, and I can't yet prove it, but I know for a fact that YOU did NOT write this paper. I know it is 100% plagiarized because we ALL know that you are definitely not capable of writing a paper of this caliber. This is doctoral level work and you couldn't even flip burgers if you tried. There's technically nothing at this point that I can do because I can't officially prove it, but you know and I know that THIS ISN'T your work and it's people like you who keep other DESERVING people from sitting in your seat. I'm positive that you've gotten by on your looks alone before, but this is a University and now everyone can see that you're just NOT smart enough to be here." I was caught completely off guard and utterly confused, all I could do was, blank faced, quietly say, "I don't know what to tell you, but I wrote every single word of that paper."

I wish I could say that I ultimately beat him by succeeding, but instead I continued on my now completely isolated way, struggling along until I finally went and took a bottle of Tylenol and sent my liver and kidneys into complete failure. I was in the hospital for a while and should have, by all accounts, died. They said the chances of it were infinitesimal, but while waiting for a mytransplant, and during the time they were telling my parents to make arrangements, I fully recovered. The human body is amazing in that it can be so frail yet unbelievably resilient simultaneously. Regrettably, I didn't ever graduate, or tell this professor to go to hell, and am honestly afraid of going back, this time author the benefit of in-state residency, and failing again and racking up even more student debt that will add to my $500 a month student loan payments for a degree that was not even completed. I want nothing more than to go back, get my PhD, and prove to myself that I am intelligent and worthwhile. But everyday is a struggle, and somedays it's just about impossible to not replay this moment and see his point.