I spent my entire school career struggling with no clear reason. At the time, all I knew was that, unlike most of my classmates, I had a hard time staying focused even when I intended to. What came naturally to my counterparts was a silent, ongoing battle for me, showing up in so many ways.
Focus never came easily. I would have to read materials two or three times, depending on the rigor, just to get the overall gist. I wrote down tasks and deadlines to stay organized, but none of it helped or stuck. One way or another, I was always disorganized. I would find myself looking for notes and to-do lists, knowing I had written detailed descriptions of what needed to get done but somehow being unable to find them. If I wasn’t losing something, I was forgetting something else. I tried to counter my forgetfulness by setting reminders and making more notes, only to forget to actually open the reminder or the notes app.
By the time I got to college, I still hadn’t fully figured out how to make myself do better. All I knew was that the stakes were higher. For the most part, everything is a blur. Somehow, I managed to get passing grades and maintain an acceptable grade point average.
I thought graduation would change everything. According to studies, 18 percent of adults with ADHD graduated from college compared to 26 percent of adults without ADHD.
I assumed the structure and stress of academic settings made me so scatterbrained. Surely, once I entered the throes of full-time adulthood, things would come to me naturally. Still, responsibilities like work, deadlines, routines and making good financial decisions proved to be just as difficult as every other task. Reaching a certain age didn’t mean I was a thriving, functional adult.
Instead, I started to flail in my professional life in many of the same ways I had in school. My intention was always to do well and show up prepared, but it didn’t always land the way I intended. The difference was that there were no professors to explain an assignment, syllabi to remind me what was due or semesters that naturally reset the clock. Adulthood was less predictable, and I was still trying to figure out how to manage myself within it.
Then I started hearing about ADHD in passing. Within the last few years, I began learning more about what ADHD is and how it can present in day-to-day life. When I saw a psychiatrist for the first time, I explained that my struggling feelings didn’t feel like ordinary depression. It was more so because I was having such a hard time completing everyday tasks; it stressed me out to the point of sadness.
I didn’t want to go the medicated route, so I made it a point to connect with others who have ADHD and research different methods to increase my productivity. I’ve leaned into productivity hacks to offset my working abilities and streamline how I get things done: body doubling, task chunking, micro steps and the parking lot method.
Even managing ADHD has become another responsibility to manage. It requires taking different approaches to nearly everything you do. It requires the kind of commitment that has to be mostly unwavering. And perhaps most importantly, it requires letting go of the idea that struggling to do something the way everyone else does means you aren’t capable of doing it at all.
For years, I thought adulthood would eventually teach me how to function. Instead, I’ve had to learn how to function in a way that works for me. Maybe graduation wasn’t supposed to be the point where everything finally clicked. Maybe it was simply the beginning of figuring out what I needed all along.