Learning to Go Back to School While My Body Is Still Catching Up

Going back to school is often framed as a fresh start. New term, new notebooks, new motivation. But when you return to school with ongoing symptoms — migraines, nausea, fatigue, brain fog — the experience is very different. It’s not a reset. It’s a negotiation.

This term, I didn’t come back feeling “better.” I came back still healing.

One of the hardest adjustments has been accepting that my body and my schedule no longer move at the same speed as the academic calendar. Mornings are unpredictable. Some days I wake up clear-headed, and other days I wake up with a migraine before I’ve even opened my eyes. Nausea can linger without warning. Concentration comes in waves, not blocks.

What I’ve learned quickly is that pushing through symptoms doesn’t make me stronger — it makes everything worse. The version of productivity I used to rely on no longer works. Instead, I’ve had to build a different definition of success.

Success now looks like:

• Getting out of bed even when my body resists

• Eating something small when nausea says “don’t”

• Choosing rest before symptoms spiral

• Attending class when I can — and giving myself permission not to when I can’t

• Protecting sleep as if it were an assignment with a hard deadline

There’s a quiet grief that comes with this adjustment. I miss the ease of showing up without calculating energy, light, noise, or recovery time. I miss trusting my body to cooperate. At the same time, there’s been a surprising amount of growth in learning how to listen more closely to myself.

Returning to school with symptoms has taught me patience — not the passive kind, but the active kind that involves making constant micro-decisions: Do I walk today or rest? Do I attend in person or watch later? Do I push for one more task, or stop while things are still manageable?

I’m also learning that accommodations aren’t a failure. They’re tools. They don’t mean I care less or am capable of less — they mean I’m choosing sustainability over burnout.

Some days still feel discouraging. There are moments when I wonder how long this adjustment period will last, or whether I’m “doing enough.” But then I remind myself: healing is not linear, and neither is learning.

Going back to school while symptomatic isn’t about returning to who I was before. It’s about learning how to move forward as I am right now — with compassion, flexibility, and trust that this version of effort still counts.

And it does.

-Chloe Kim

Founder

MABS Network BC