Looking for a way to patch myself together

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After ten weeks of my first semester at my university (I am a junior who graduated from community college last spring), I am absolutely exhausted, to the point where it is very difficult to get any work done. Being at school absolutely wears me out. I am already taking the absolute minimum nuber of credit hours that is considered full-time, which means I have four more semesters to get through after this one. I lov emy courses and am excited about the ones I will get to take in the future. I just hope I can make it that far.

The problem is, I am so overwhelmed and overstimulated when I am on campus that by the time I get back to my apt., I am unable to do anything but collapse into bed. I am sleeping about 11 hours a day and I am still tired. I've already dropped a class, which means I only go one hour per day on Mon., Wed., and Fri. Today was a classic example of how things go. When I get in my car to head to school, I can feel the adrenaline overload start. I get to my only class (10-10:50 a.m.), and about 1/3 of the way through, the instructor says he left out a bunch of stuff on the review sheet (we have an exam on Monday), and we can pick up a revised copy in his office around 11:30 a.m. I am required to leave the school and head home (3+ hour drive) immediately after class, so this was not an option for me, and I told the instructor that. He is a very nice man, and he said to send him a reminder via email and he would try to send me a copy via email. Not very reassuring. The person next to me, who had this same instructor for a different class last semester, nudged me and told me to write a reminder and have it put in the instructor's inbox.

So, after class, I navigated from the classroom to the office (which is very stressful as well, given my very poor navigation skills), gave the receptionist the note, and explained what was going on. I had to backtrack past the classroom to go out the right door, and I ran into the instructor, who flagged me down and said he had decided to just email the revised review sheet to the entire class. So I did all that work and worrying for nothing. At that point, I had a headache and felt like all my arteries and veins were going to explode. By the time I got back to the apt. to load up for home, I was completely exhausted and just wanted to rest. ALL of my days are a variation on this same basic theme, and it's even worse on Tues. and Thurs. when I have to be on campus from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. I start out okay in the morning, and by the end of the day, I feel like someone has beaten me with a ball bat, even if I've had a halfway decent day (the campus is huge and I get lost all the time).

I am beginning to wonder if I truly am unable to handle life away from home at a university. It might help if I could go part-time, but that is not an option; I am required to either to finish by Dec. 2011 or just come home and forget it. Neither is taking a semester or two off, for the same reason. I also wonder if I will be able to finally hold down a job if I do get my degree, and if I don't think I can do that, I am to stop now before getting any further into debt with student loans. I can barely function well enough to live on my own and get my coursework done; how am I supposed to network and do all those other "professional development" things on top of that? Plus, being an Aspie, I have to go above and beyond the regular things that make a college student employment-ready because there is so much that is assumed that everyone already understands that I don't. When am I supposed to find time for that?

I just need to find a way to patch myself together so that I can get through this. It's really a shame because it was my dream to finally get my bachelor's degree and a real job and all the stuff that comes with being an adult. I WANT TO SUCCEED HERE and I need to find a way past all this overload and the resulting exhaustion. Eating right, exercising, and taking vitamins isn't doing the trick. I want to make this dream come true. Any advice?

i have a lot of similar overload issues. tho no longer a student myself.

i try to find inner silence and peace. i ty to do things in a way as to promote that inner calm. i protect myself fiercely against sensory and emotional overload. ever more feeling that that is my main obstacle (being overwhelmed). Pretty much asking myself the question: is this helping inner calm? before anything i do. then try to do it in a way that will promote inner calm, silence.

it seems thinkable to me that it is asking too much of yourself to go to university the way you do. is there no way to do it through the web or some such thing? not being there in person except on rare occasions. and then later aiming for work that is also remote like that .. ?

i feel it is really boring protecting myself the way i do. but i also feel it's such a relief to remain in one piece

I really like your ideas about "protecting yourself fiercely" and asking yourself "is this helping inner calm"? I have a feeling I am going to have to learn to do that, at the expense of the networking and social exposure, if I am to stay afloat here.

Last Wed., I made the mistake of agreeing via email to meet a lady on campus and get some event flyers from her to put up. After getting to the building, trying for 20 min. to find her, asking building employees who tried to be helpful but didn't know anything about the table she was supposed to be manning, I felt the panic rising. I had forgotten to bring her cell number with me (I forget a lot of things lately), but I realized that it was in my campus email. I left the building and found a computer (I had left my notebook at home because I had no reason to bring it that day, or so I thought). The internet, of course, would not come up. At this point, I was about two seconds from a meltdown and HAD to get back to my apt. Once there, I got the phone number, called the lady, and offered to still put up the flyers if she could drop them off, and she said that was fine. She never dropped off the flyers, and I never heard from her again. As for me, my whole day was shot at 1:30 p.m., and once again I went to sleep instead of doing my homework.

If I had simply asked myself before I agreed to distribute flyers, "Is this helping inner calm?" I could have politely declined the whole endeavor. I knew I would potentially be putting myself into an overload situation, and that is exactly what happened. I guess I just keep thinking that if I act enough like an NT and do enough NT things, I will eventually be able to do all the things they do. "Fierce protection" does seem to be the best way to go!

As for university, my choices are to do it this way or not at all. That's not Aspie black-and-white thinking here; those are external rules being imposed on me. While I am in a major that will eventually give me a job alone in remote areas, the training also requires hands-on labs, so web training is not an option. Like I said, I just need to find a way to get through this. Your advice is very helpful, and I will definitely practice it--thank you so much!