Unpaid tuition sent to collections

This is gonna sound really stupid and I know I made a really dumb mistake. 18m went to a semester of my State school, decided it wasn't for me and dropped after the fall semester. If you're wondering how I attended a semester without paying, I don't know and I'm very stupid and have learned my lesson. Fast forward to the summer I start getting calls from an unknown number I assumed was scam. I kept getting one call from this once a week and decided to look up the number and figured out it was a collections company (I had no idea what a company collection was at the time). I figure out it's because of unpaid tuition from the fall semester. I call the school and heres what they told me:

It's assigned debt. So the school still technically owns it but send it to the collections company because it defaulted.

They won't report to the credit bureau (But they could). My credit report will be clean if I pay it off in full.

The amount was around $5000 for the semester but after it defaulted it hit $7000 and it has a FLAT interest rate of $67. It's currently at around $7777 I'm pretty sure.

I did some more research on what a collections company was and I've been having so much anxiety. I keep worrying about my credit score and how if I have a bad credit score I might be screwed for life. I'm constantly thinking I'm gonna get sued and I can't afford an attorney or anything like that. It's honestly been affecting me a bit mentally. In August I enrolled into my community college and got a part time job at Walmart with a plan to pay $70 monthly to keep the debt at the same place while I save up enough money to pay it off. I'm lucky to have my parents support me right now. $7000 is a lot for me as I'm still in school. It almost feels impossible. Any advice helps. I've been just really scared.

I injured my leg at work a month in and I've been basically crippled and can't work. I just do school and go to physical therapy to help heal my leg. The thing is the collection company hasn't called me in about 2 months. Is this something I could possibly just ignore? What should be my course of actions? Is it possible I can get my paychecks garnished once I heal my leg and get a part-time job?