Take the long view. It's really hard when you're 17-18, and a year looks big. But it'll work through. You'll love college and soon be able to go mad with tanks.
We don't have so much of that going away to study and living in a dorm thing here. I got a cheap apartment and a part time job, and did my University part time in the evenings. Through a good run of rough flats and rooms, I kept my 20 gallon running, carting it from place to place. Once you've gotten your degree and hopefully gotten a decent job, you can start up properly. All though those lean years for fishkeeping, I always found a little time to read what the library had about fish (I was studying history and education). I even found a sub library halfway between my two part time jobs that had decades of aquarium magazines to read. One job finished at 4 and the other started at 7, and I was downtown anyway...
The idea of aquariums was really on the back burner, because I was into what I was learning both in and out of school. But by the time I was 28, I was back up to 3 tanks, and enjoying aquariums as one of many good things going on.
I don't think you're memorializing the tank. You're reflecting a stage. It's like an annual killifish egg - temporarily still and buried in a dried up waterhole, but set to hatch and thrive when the rains come again. High School can be awful, and you don't seem to like where you live, so I guess part of moving on to what you want needs a temporary sacrifice.
