Can't access email associated with account

@kaitlin_6424 coming from an educational institution, your files are gone because your university-provided email and associated cloud storage are a part of a student account that has since been deactivated. This deactivation is standard procedure for many educational institutions once a student is no longer enrolled.  

Educational institutions typically offer students access to software and cloud storage through institutional agreements with companies like Adobe and Google. These agreements are tied to the student's active enrollment status. When you are no longer a student, the university revokes your access to these services. Once your university email account was closed, any associated services, including your Adobe and Google accounts, would have been automatically suspended or terminated. To save on costs and manage resources, they typically delete all data associated with the account after a certain period. The fact that it has been a few years since you were a student makes it highly likely that the data has been permanently deleted.