Idiotically Got My Nys Car Registration Suspended

Location: New York

To set the scene, I'm a college student in upstate NY originally from California. My drivers license, voting registration, and permanent address remain in CA.

When I began college, I purchased a car from a dealer in NY and had it registered with NY plates at my NY college apartment.

This past summer, I worked at an internship in CA and as I wasn't using my car (left it in the driveway of a friend's house), I cancelled the insurance on it over the summer. This was a stupid idea, I know, but at the time I was saving a couple hundred bucks and didn't think it would matter since the car literally wasn't going to move for three months.

Importantly, nobody was at the apartment over the summer so the mail never got collected. I've since returned to NY to find two letters: one (dated May 20th) warning me that I am delinquent on my insurance and have one month to rectify the issue and another letter (dated June 20th) informing me that my registration has been suspended effective July 4th for failure to maintain insurance.

That was a shock, feels like maybe there should've been a phone call or an email or something other than one piece of paper to inform me about this, but oh well. That's my fault.

I immediately signed up for insurance when I read the letter and have insurance as of August 30th. That's a total of 116 days without insurance, 57 days since my registration was suspended.

The letters I received say that below 90 days I can pay a fine, but beyond that my license will be suspended and I will have to serve a suspension on both the license and the registration equal to the number of days of my delinquency. There is also wording about serving these sentences sequentially, so maybe I can drive someone else's car, but that's unclear.

My questions are:

- Is there any way to talk to a human about this? An appeals process or a judge or something? I feel that my situation (while stupid) is understandable and any human could see that I made a genuine mistake. There should be a punishment, but losing my license for four months seems a bit drastic.

- Can NYS even suspend my California license? Will it be suspended only in NY or in every state?

- Can I turn in my NYS plates and then register the car under my California address?

- Can I sell the car and buy a different one to erase the suspension?

- Should I get a lawyer?

Thanks all! Hopefully my stupidity brings some laughs :)