Hi Ronin47,
I had been in your shoes. I was a model student, Straight A+s, Stellar extracurricular activities until 8th grade.
I was accepted to and attended college prep school for gifted kids, and oh dear I struggled hard. Everything I did was a failure. That, is also the 4 years when my rage was completely out of control, the smallest things could send my temper up to the outer space and took days for it to come back to the earth level. I was crying, yelling, then crying all the time, everywhere. And I nearly failed almost all of my classes. At the end of every semester, I was on the verge of getting expelled from the school for under achieving. People thought I was not going to get in to any 4 year institution.
Thanks to the school's reputation, While everyone else from my graduating class was at an internationally recognized schools, I was merely able to get into a 4 year university. I was an angry person with low self-esteem to begin with, and this certainly did not help. I felt like I was good for nothing. I felt like a failure (as I had always been told growing up), felt useless, powerless, and too dumb for academics. Miraculously after going on a chocolate binge, I decided that I am not going to sit around and be angry at myself and complain.
So. I only looked forward and worked day and night and nothing else. Not only did I make it through the semesters, but I also made honor standing and managed to get myself admitted for a degree at the nation's top ranked university.
If I can do it, you can do it too ronin.:)
If it feels like (or, felt like) you couldn't go down anymore, great, now you can only go up!
Best Wishes:)