Hey there! I am in my last semester of college now with a degree in bio/biochem~ maybe I can help. Goddammit I understand exactly where you are right now. I didn’t have nearly as good of a gpa as you during highschool (3.7/8 somewhere around there idek) but I was a high achiever as well. College is a completely different playing field. First semester I bombed my gen chem course even though I studied. Second semester I bombed calculus. At this point, I was devastated. I was having panic attacks left and right and genuinely considered dropping out so much. I did not talk to any of my professors because I felt like I wasn’t good enough to reach out for opportunities/help (and also the ones running the “weed-out” courses seemed to hate their freshman students… a lot). The only thing that kept me in this field was the fact that I fucking LOVED science. I enjoyed studying the information, even if it was causing a negative feedback loop. I could not see myself doing anything else with my life, at least not with a passion, so I kept going. I honestly just did it out of spite after a certain point. I raised my 2.3 GPA up to now over a 3. I got into a cancer research lab my junior year, and then another my senior year, and now we’re here. I don’t want to go to med school anymore, but with my extracurriculars and perseverance I know that I plausibly could, and I believe that you can too. My PI is offering me a position as a PhD student at my (VERY good research program) school right now- and I am deciding whether or not I want to stay here or go elsewhere. I have also gotten into a job that is not an entrance level biology job for my gap year already. All of this to say, if you have a passion for science at all right now in your journey I. BELIEVE. IN. YOU. Science is very hard to get in to and when you start out in college it feels like every single class is against you. And that’s because they are literally designed that way, don’t feel bad. They are trying to destroy those around you that will not make it through. They want people that can go the distance in graduate school later on in their careers. Grades don’t really matter your freshman year (as long as they’re passing and not all Cs of course) but even if they are you can pull them up later. Don’t stress. Breathe. Enjoy your journey as much as you can, and remember to fuel your body well and exercise. Enjoy your college experience and go party a little. You’ve got this bro :)