I am a rising senior at a D3 school. Today I was diagnosed with a potentially serious injury that will require at least several weeks of recovery. In the best-case scenario, I could run a full XC season and potentially be fit by championships. However I'm worried about coming back too quickly and making things a lot worse, but I have big goals, and can't really bear the thought of running my last cross season at such a significant handicap. It seems like it might make more sense to take all the recovery I need now and focus on track season.
With that in mind, do any compliance experts here know all the rules of 5th year eligibility? I'm on track to graduate this spring, would I have to be enrolled as a student? Or could I just wrangle some research position with a professor or something and run as long as I have some affiliation with my college? Deferring graduation and paying thousands of extra dollars just to run for another semester doesn't seem like much of an option. Thanks in advance!