> Those are good suggestions, but I'd mention that it's much easier for me now to analyze my situation in retrospect, understand what happened and the mistakes I made, and turn it into a cohesive narrative. At the time I didn't really understand why I was doing poorly or what the root causes were, so while I did seek "support" on a number of occasions, it didn't help.

Sadly, this is likely to have been true no matter where you were (e.g., college or workplace). In my experience, in an academic environment simply expressing that there is something wrong and seeking a little bit of help will frequently lead to help. I had several bouts of debilitating depression in the military (way suckier than in an academic environment ;-) ). During one of these, I found out some very powerful information about one leader in our unit (i.e., I learned about something that could have led to him being discharged dishonorably). Thankfully, he recognized my depression, so we made a deal. As a result I was able to get off-the-record therapy from a local, civilian counselor, but there were no concessions at work. While I was in school I dealt with several more bouts of depression. In most cases, simply telling the professor that I wasn't up my normal speed (i.e. never saying I was depressed; in several cases, I wasn't aware that it was happening again) led to delayed deadlines or other concessions. I happened to be in university during a particularly bad bout of depression and a classmate took me to the university clinic. My classmate had a conversation with the doctor before I saw the doctor (I can only imagine what was said). That was the first time I was formally diagnosed, and it was the first time I was prescribed anti-depressants. As I mentioned previously, I have a lot of academic family ties, and I hear about situations like this very frequently. I've never heard about similar support in a non-academic workplace.

> I simply assumed I wasn't smart enough to graduate, much less do physics. In retrospect I see this obviously wasn't true, since I'm happily reading a quantum field theory book in my spare time now and, as I said before, ended up being one of the better students in some of my classes. But if you'd asked me at the time I'd have probably just rambled a bunch of guesses and speculation. I suppose my point is that, even following those suggestions, some people will still fall through the cracks. And also that most of these institutions are just bureaucratic monoliths that aren't built to be flexible with every students particular needs and such.

Remember that institutions, even bureaucratic monolithic institutions, are made of people. In my experience, the people in academic institutions are particularly helpful if they know, or even just suspect, that a student needs help. The biggest single success factor I've seen is having a mentor (hence my last tip). This is not to say that you can succeed without a lot of hard work, but having a mentor helps you find the help that you need, when you need it (e.g., taking you to the doctor to be diagnosed with depression; getting an interlibrary loan ASAP; giving you career advice; letting you know where you rank in your program).

> The bias there tends to be heavily towards the institutions, too, since students who do poorly are just deemed slackers or unfit for college, instead of considering it a systemic or structural aspect of the system that favors certain people and situations over others. Even the stereotypical "partiers" who drink their way through college could be viewed as a systemic result of a toxic social environment. I believe there was another comment here to the effect of "this is college and you're done with baby hand-holding," which is true in one sense, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse to disregard anyone doing badly in the system or a particular school as acceptable attrition for a just-good-enough educational system.

This is extremely institution-specific. I have seen and heard about institutions, or departments, like this, but I've experienced and heard about many more that are vested in their students' success, both in and out of the classroom. If you can complete your bachelors degree at a small, private institution, I'd highly recommend it! (I've never heard of a small, private institution that wasn't extremely vested in their students' success in and out of class.) I wish I had known when I was an undergrad that there were "free" options (they aren't actually free, but are extremely low-cost). The only free college that I can vouch for (i.e. I know a successful alumnus who speaks highly of the experience) is http://www.deepsprings.edu/home and it only awards associate degrees. The friend I know who is an alumnus is now a professor in the sciences at a top university. He credits much of his academic success to his experiences at and friendships from Deep Springs.