Re: If ADHD describes the symptoms, are we all suffering from the same thing?

[Anonymous]

I only have a couple of primary school reports and they are good, but I remember my mum helping me with big written projects. She would write out the info and I would copy it, then she would take over the writing (trying to make it look like mine!) when I gave up. I would then decorate the project, doing borders and sticking in magazine pictures (that my mum had found and cut out for me). I always struggled with written work – one high school teacher wrote that I just needed more confidence in my writing ability! Planning and writing essays was an executive function area that did eventually mature for me, when I was in my twenties, and I “got it” at long last – in time for my second attempt at uni. Grammar and spelling were never an issue for me though. I had a good feel for that side of English, maybe because of my extensive reading (another thing that was rarely an issue for me – reading was my escape, and still is, though I have always had times when I just cannot read due to distraction, or tiredness, or something else on my mind).

I also remember stressing about my times tables – we had a daily test on them in the morning, which is probably the only reason they eventually sank in to some degree (though I still have trouble with them to this day). Memorising has always been hard, though I have been taught some pretty neat tricks that have helped over the years. Mnemonics and stuff were used by many of my teachers, and that helped, as did visual imagery and diagrams (if I could visualise something, then I would remember it better). We were allowed to have formulae on hand for tests, so we didn’t have to memorise them, which saved my butt many times. Our science classes involved lots of hands on stuff, which was great, and so did our geography. We watched lots of movies for history. English was good because my love of reading made up for my poor writing. I just feel I got lucky much of the time, or I would have done much worse than I did. I am like you, billd, in that lab work and frequent breaks worked well for me when I was at uni. If uni had been set out like high school, then I would have failed more subjects than I did. The subjects I failed were the ones without lab work and that involved more memorising, and more assessed written work throughout the year.

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