Not Emo,

At your age, your body is still settling into adulthood. Your hormones still need to get settled. The stress of college, especially freshman year could easily be triggering your symptoms. Add to that the hecticness of college life and you are ripe for relapse.

My empathy is with you as I hit college head on with a 4.2 gpa from high school, survived my first semester and crashed miserably the second. It took me another 3 or 4 years to start to understand my need to modulate stress in my life.

You should read the TBI Guide before the semester starts. It will be a great benefit to have it available for others to understand your situation.

When you get stuck, be straight forward about it. Say," I suffered a brain injury as a child and sometimes my brain just loses track of my thoughts or words." Most people are very understanding when you are up front about it.
You can add that "Stress just makes this problem worse so I try to ignore it and go on."

If you find an explanation in the TBI Guide that works, it can help to use medical terms. People believe medical terms even when they do not understand them.

Often, I get lost or stuck. I will say, "I have an auditory processing disorder from a brain injury." Or, "I have very limited short term memory function due to a brain injury." Either one works very well.

Now, go read the TBI Guide and memorize your explanations for when you stumble.

My best to you.