You gotta try to not let failure keep you down. Just throw yourself back in and tell yourself you won't make the same mistakes again, and make sure you actually don't fug up like before. I remember when I absolutely bombed my first semester, the only class I passed was a lab and it was with just barely a C, had failed everything else. I felt like dieing. The following semester I just tried harder and I ended up passing everything just fine. You can come back from it my dude.

More background info would help.
>did you drink too much
>were you depressed
>did you flunk out of a major
I guess general advice would be dont overwhelm yourself. Take 12 credits to make sure you can handle it. Remind yourself of why you're doing this. And use your failures as knowledge. Stuff like oh yeah I failed last time because I waited last minute to study kind of stuff.

Also, dont compare yourself to others. You'll always come up short. Dont look around and see younger people in your class and think "damn i shouldve graduated by now".

Best of luck m8

>>17356304
I guess you could call me depressed, though I don't think I have the clinical disorder since I've achieved a much higher level of baseline functioning since then (in spite of having a family history of it).

I did above average in high school (probably because I had clear long term career goals), but when I got to college it all kinda fell apart.

Towards the end of high school I started to let people talk me out of having/reaching for my dreams. They told me "trying to become a physicist is just unrealistic, just go into programming and use money as your sole motivator in life."

I made all kinds of stupid decisions. I became increasingly emotionally invested in the wrong things (this girl from back home who didn't give a rat's ass about me, politics, etc.) I had a crappy roommate who would enable this kind of behavior too.

In my first semester I failed two classes: Calc II and English Composition (supposed to be an easy A). The only one I passed was the first semester of Calc Based Physics, which was supposed to be the hardest class I was in. I got As on the tests but bombed the homework because I was too depressed to care.

I did slightly better in my second semester, but failed Calc II again and got a D in Music Appreciation (again, a supposed easy A).

I didn't really make any close friends in my first year.

I went home that summer and thought over things. I realized I needed a long term goal, and continuing on my path as a physics major still seemed right, but I added that I wanted to do a PhD in my school's Atmospheric Science department, so I registered for a course in that.

My fall grades were much better. I even got into a paid research position in the Atmo department. However, the only close friend I made turned out to be the worst mistake I'd ever made.

I'll continue in another comment.

>>17356349
I guess you could say she and I were in this abusive psuedo relationship (I was the one who was abused). I was pretty oblivious to how badly she was treating me because I had the loneliness goggles on the whole time. Whenever we'd have meals together, she'd just pull out her phone and play some stupid japanese games the whole time.

At one point she tried to manipulate me into sexual relations with her (keep in mind, she self identified as asexual). She just wanted to "see what it was like." I felt kinda uneasy about that whole thing, but when she changed her mind (which I was welcome to learn), she got all passive aggresive and implied I was trying to manipulate her.

Over christmas break I wanted to keep in touch and would try to reach out every few days, but she was generally completely silent. After a while I got really suspicious and directly asked what was going on. She sent me this essay about how I'm a terrible person (the gist of it was basically "you want to talk every few days, therefore it's ruining my life"). Then I tried to explain I'm generally willing to compromise with other people if I'm bothering them. Her response? She cut me off altogether.

Over the course of maybe 1 or 2 months, she broke down self confidence which had taken me a year to build.

When I went back to school, I figured I might reach out to her after a few weeks to let things cool down (again, I was stupid, she managed to make me emotionally reliant on her).

I also started going into therapy to get better, which seemed to be working at first.

My roommate used to be a major part of my life, but he became increasingly absent because of his new boyfriend (who was/is violent and abusive, but he continues to try to justify this, they're engaged now). He also just began to treat me like his personal maid/chef.

I tried sending a sincere apology message to that friend. Her response was "You're being creepy and manipulative. Bye."

Still more.

>>17356371
In the space a few minutes, I realized she was just an awful person, and my feelings shifted from sadness to anger. I was mad at myself for letting such a shitty person become such a part of my life.

As the semester progressed, I began to realize I was in severe academic trouble again. I was getting awful grades on my tests and couldn't bring myself to do much of my homework. I was constantly pulling allnighters because I was putting everything off until the end.

My therapist became more and more unhelpful. She started to encourage me to just give up on my career goals, give up on having friends, and embrace mediocrity. I fired her by April of that semester.

I ended up failing more classes that semester, and I began questioning if I was even intelligent enough for my major or cut out for higher education at all.

I decided to throw myself into two extremely difficult classes that summer to try to get my act together again: Differential Equations and Linear Algebra. Looking back, I really needed a break but I thought I didn't "deserve" one.

I failed both classes, I reached a point where I couldn't bring myself to go to class anymore. I had this constant feeling of anger, anxiety, and depression.

I tried to go back just taking a light course load that fall. I was in electronics and modern physics. I started to do really well. I was even the top student in my modern physics class for a while. I began to realize I did have the intelligence for my goals.

But at some point around October, I just came to a grinding halt. I couldn't bring myself to do anything again. I guess it was this big moment where I asked myself "what the hell am I doing?" I was overcome by a crippling fear that I'd constantly be unstable in that school. I realized I was going to be fighting an awful GPA as long as I was there. It was mathematically impossible for me to raise it above 3.0.

More.

>>17356403
I came home i n December, and in January of 2016 I started at community college. I've been doing better, not amazing, but better. I managed to find a job at my favorite store (pretty awesome for retail).

I've still dealt with a bit of frustration because my favorite hobbies are completely unavailable where I live (climbing, mountaineering, skiing, etc.), but I'm kinda starting to find other things. My high school friends turned pretty lame, all they care about now is just sitting in the basement and getting drunk/high, so I've sorta begun reaching out to people from work.

In spite of this all, I have a really deep sense of fear. What if it all goes to shit again when I transfer back into a 4 year school? What if no PhD program accepts me because of my bad grades in the first try? What if no employer highers me because I didn't go to a top 20 grad school? What if I wake up when I'm 30 living in some McMansion in a Florida or Midwest subdivision stuck in a job designing air conditioning units for the rest of my life?

>>17356423
Forgot to add a tl;dr: was on high trajectory out of high school, had no long term goals and fucked up college at first, had long term goals and started doing better, but got fucked up again because of emotional abuse.

>>17356279
>How do I fully regain my confidence after fucking up college the first time I tried it?
By not fucking up the second time. I'm sorry, but you asked for a full solution, and nothing else will fully work. Your second try will have to be done without the benefit of full confidence.

You could try for partial gains, by taking some classes at a community college and not fucking them up. This is not a complete solution, but it may help. You may even be able to transfer the credits to your college later, ensuring that the time is not wasted.