Wherever you go, be sure to look into financial aid (scholarships, grants, etc.). Don’t assume the “sticker price” is the amount you’d have to pay, especially if, as you say, you come from a very poor family.
FWIW, I looked up Washington University (in St. Louis, if that’s the one you mean) and found this on their website:
Another anecdote in support of this:
In my last job, I was often requested to send (or at least compose) messages that were very important. “Get MLS to write that, she’ll know how to say it.” Also I was the default proofreader, as a few of the other employees were woefully lacking in writing skills. It’s one of the several ways to make yourself useful and appreciated.
I’ll second this. You clearly are interested in biology, so here’s what I would do if I were you:
Don’t discount anything right now: it’s too early to really know what you’re good at, especially if you’ve been able to mostly coast so far. Don’t worry about not being the smartest person in class – focus on learning the material. Don’t quit just because it doesn’t come easily/instantly: go to office hours, work with other students, give yourself time to learn something that’s actually hard. You might be surprised by how different you feel about what you can and can’t do in a couple of years.
Hi everyone, I’m in college right now between classes, so I’m going to try to make this brief.
First of all, thanks for all of the replies. It means a lot that people actually want to contribute advice. 
I feel like the counselors at my community college and transfer advisers from other schools aren’t really interested in hearing my entire story and advising me on what to do. I guess that’s not really their job. And I don’t really know anyone who has been through college, so I’m not sure where to get advice. Researching on the internet can only take you so far if you don’t know how to apply the information you find to your life.
I see the point you guys are making about writing. What I’ll do for now is continue to try to better my writing. My community college offers many resources to help people improve their writing, so I’ll try to take full advantage of those during my last semester here.
Being a laboratory technician definitely seems like one thing I might want to do involving microbiology. From what I understand, there are 2+2 programs for people like me. Basically it means that since I’ve already completed two years of general education, I can go directly in to studying for my CLS degree. I will look into this. It definitely seems like a better idea than just getting my BS in microbiology and hoping for the best.
On teaching, I agree that teaching biology or chemistry would be amazing. I’m not really sure who I would teach, though. Manda JO has a point: perhaps I could handle the rudeness of teenagers. But every teacher I talk to says that it’s terrible. The main things I know I’d hate are “teaching to the test” and difficult school administration. I actually dropped out of high school because I couldn’t handle the crappy American education system. So I’m not sure I necessarily want to plunge right back into that environment. Still, I’ll keep it in mind.
About grants and loans: Unfortunately, my mom is getting married to a rich guy soon. He doesn’t intend to help me pay for school or anything like that (not that I expect him to). So I essentially have the downfalls of having a rich parent without any of the advantages. Still, I don’t expect them to hold off their marriage just because it’s inconvenient to me, so I’ll deal with it.
[edit] I’ll keep an open mind about CS. I have to admit, I’ve tried studying Python before and didn’t have much success. I guess now that I’m older, though, it might be a good idea to give it another chance.
Actually, my future stepfather isn’t exactly rich.
I think he makes about $60,000 per year.
Not sure if anyone cares about that but I didn’t want to give an unrealistic view of the situation.
It’s still going to make a huge-ass difference on the FAFSA compared to my mom’s $12,000 a year earnings.
Still a good idea to talk with the Admissions people of any schools you’re interested in about how that will affect your chances for grants, loans and university jobs. For many students, working for the university is a good way to get both a source of income and lower tuition. There’s usually lots of office and tutoring jobs (and also service ones, and research scholarships, and whatnot); with your writing skills and since you have an interest in teaching and previous tutoring experience, you could probably get one of either kind.
I would recommend something in health sciences. People are getting older and more medical stuff is needed. Maybe something like nurse-practitioner ought to be a growing field. I’m not sure what academic background is needed, but that ought to be readily available.
Let me tell you about my children (although they came of age in the 90s) since my career path is pretty much blocked–I was born in the demographic trough of 1937 and all doors were open when I came of age.
My daughter did a double major in English and Biology and then got a master’s in Biochem. At this point she decided that lab work was not for her and got a job with an academic publishing house. She is now the chief copy editor (and essentially office manager since she hires and occasionally fires) for a major publisher of academic journals. She loves her job. Her first job was real scut work as an editorial assistant, but she persisted.
My first son studied computer science and got in early enough to do very well with Microsoft options. He is still there and reasonably happy. But he was good at it.
My second son studied transportation engineering and is especially interested in public transit. He has worked for NYC-DOT and is now working for a private consulting company. He was the primary author of the transportation segment of the recent study by NYC about hardening their infrastructure against more Sandys. He loves it.
All three are doing what they loved. Good luck.
Do you even have to include your stepfather-to-be on the financial aid forms?
FASFA looks at household income, not parental income. So a step-parent’s income is taken into account. This really does screw some kids badly.
Some thoughts from my perspective…overall you are asking all the right questions 
My background: Physics/Astronomy, working as an engineer
Re: foreign language. If you are only interested in the skill and fluency of the language, don’t waste your time with it as a degree path. You can easily learn language(s) with electives, clubs, community centers, and your own free time. It would be an incredible supplement to the “real” major you select when you get out in the working world.
Biology/Micro is a huge field with a lot of opportunities. Right now, though, realize the US is in a stagnant economy so everything looks bleak. Everything can change in two more years, and microbiology is a huge growth industry.
Whatever you select as a major, apply your ass off to every internship or student job related to your major. When you graduate and apply to jobs, I can’t overstate how good this looks (having interviewed and hired hundreds over the years). It doesn’t matter how mundane. Guidance counselors do not push these enough and have an inflated sense of the employment value of a degree just on its own.
Unless you are committed to graduate school, GPA doesn’t matter. Finishing matters.
If you sent me your resume with only a link to this thread, I’d hire you in a heartbeat. You communicate clearly, and care about self-improvement. Everything else is just on-the-job training.
This isn’t necessarily true. A knowledgeable non-native speaker is often better at explaining the grammatical structure of a language to others trying to learn it.
Yes, of course. But I mean a native speaker will know more about all of the little nuances of how certain words or phrases are used to convey different meanings. Truly knowing a language goes so much further than understanding the grammar or even knowing a lot of words, in my opinion.
I admit, I’m not extremely knowledgeable about linguistics, but this is what I’ve gathered from my side interest in language acquisition.
I don’t think there’s really a job that requires you to explain the grammatical structure of a certain language (besides being a teacher). Being a translator or interpreter seems to be about understanding what someone is trying to convey and communicating it to someone else, which I think a native speaker will always be better at than I am.
Thanks for your advice, it is much appreciated.
I agree that I shouldn’t study language in college. In fact, I strongly disagree with how languages are taught in most college courses, so I’m going to avoid that. Overall, I doubt language will play a big role in my future career.
I definitely will start applying for student jobs and internships that are more relevant to my major, once I decide what that should be.
About GPA: It makes me sad that it doesn’t matter. I’ve finished classes with an A+ and still felt like I didn’t get learn everything I could have. I can’t really imagine what the point of going to a class and only getting a C or so would be. I feel like it would have been a waste of time.
I guess it depends on the class.
With solid writing skills and a science background, you could go into technical writing. Additional languages are always a plus. There’s a big range of pay and difficulty levels there.
They do and they don’t long term. School teaches you to think in terms of achieving a pre-defined set of goals or achievements. Once you accomplish them, then you advance to the next level. That works in school, but the working world doesn’t always work that way. Yes, if you want to have a long term middle-management career in a big corporation, that sort of thinking applies. Graduate from a good school, get into a good training program, complete 2 years at Level 1with good performance reviews, 2 years at Level 2, Manager 1, Manager 2, Director 1, so on and so forth. Other career paths are more achievement or results oriented. Like designing a creative web solution for a client who doesn’t have a clear idea of what they need. Or starting your own business.
It’s like the difference between getting an A in Spanish class and actually being able to speak and understand Spanish.
If by “hot shot consulting” you mean working 100 hours a week, travelling to Bumblefuck, MN Sunday night through Thursday, pouring through tedious Powerpoint decks, using stupid buzzwords, meeting the constant demands of unreasonable clients, managers and senior partners then getting “counseled out” in 2 years because your practice head can’t sell enough work…yeah, it’s pretty awesome.
Although going back to the point on grades. I actually had fairly mediocre grades in undergrad. Which is one of the reasons I spent my first 2 years out of college working various odd crappy jobs and learning various skillsets until I could network my way into a decent consulting firm while some of my friends were already taking jobs at Accenture and Deloitte.