Several circumstances greatly impacted my academics and GPA at the beginning of my college career, which led me to withdraw from two courses and ultimately, fail one. Without these experiences, I feel that my GPA would have been significantly higher, as I would have initially devoted more focus to my grades. First, I came to the University of Arizona as a 16-year-old student with unexplored emotional trauma. Due to my father’s drug addiction, my parents were in the midst of a legal separation during my first two years of college, in which they both separately and inappropriately confided their emotions to me while I tried to focus on school. Consequently, this separation affected me emotionally, sending me into a depression that made it difficult to focus on coursework. Furthermore, this depression lead me into abusive and violent relationships during my time in college, and I wound up being sexually assaulted after my first semester at the university.
