Feeling Pressure to Enroll, Advice Needed!

[dfrecore]

The problem with academic renewal is that the school takes the grades out of the GPA calculation - but I'm not 100% certain the schools you transfer to would do the same, since they're left on the transcript.

Also, you have to remove the entire semester, rather than specific courses - so if you got some decent/good grades in a semester mixed with bad grades, you lose EVERYTHING for the semester.  So you need to weight if it's worth doing at all.

Repeating a course would be the actual course you took at that school - but that normally does a better job of "erasing" particular courses.

More research is definitely needed for the master's program, since that will be the thing you have an issue with.  Last time I looked, the MSW program a friend was interested in did not require a high GPA, and was not competitive.  You will want to see what the status is at the school you're considering, figure out if you need a Psych degree or if you can just get a BALS, and ask about how the academic renewal program at the original school would work at their school because usually, master's programs calculate the GPA themselves.

Thank you so much dfrecore, these are all great points for me to consider. I'll start researching MSW programs. 
I also could enter a Marriage and Family Therapy or a Masters Mental Health Counseling Program. A Masters in any of these will allow me to eventually be licensed as a private practice therapist. To be continued...

And I still say a degree in Psych is not necessary for any of these.  Psych courses might be helpful, but not necessary.  Just something to think about.