Ok so I guess I should post an update in case anyone was curious. I completely removed and reinstalled KSP and then started adding mods back in a couple at a time to see which one was causing my issues. The results were........ NOTHING. I installed all my previous mods (minus Station Science, just wasnt thrilled with it) and everything is (or appears to be) working fine. It could be that I didnt install something right the first time or there was other corruption in my old KSP install or maybe Station Science was the problem child and its just not there anymore.
In any case, short story shorter, everything is fine and idk why it wasnt working before. Anticlimactic I know, sorry.