Dr. Umesh Jain is now exclusively responsible for TotallyADD.com and its content

kept failing the same class over and over

kept failing the same class over and over2010-11-29T05:10:39+00:00

The Forums Forums Emotional Journey My Story kept failing the same class over and over

Viewing 0 posts
Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #88648

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    I was diagnosed in 1993. I was 34 years old and still going to college. I had taken the same class for the 3rd time. My professor took me aside and said, ” You have ADD, you need to go to the special ed office and get tested. When you get your results come and see me.” That’s what I did. I knew from a young age that i had some kind of learning problem. I was told by my family, “you’re scatterbrained”, or “why do you waste so much time studying for hours and you still dont know what you have read”. It took a professor to tell me to go and get checked, eventhough i had had my son tested when he was three, because his preschool teacher said he may have ADHD. I didnt know you could have ADD as an adult. ok…so now i am here…

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96557

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    A lot of people get diagnosed after their children are diagnosed, and they look at the test results and think, “I bet I could score higher than that.”

    Until very recently, it was believed that you outgrew ADD. We now know that you don’t outgrow it; you just become better at hiding the symptoms. Unfortunately, many doctors and specialists don’t keep abreast of the latest information. This results in many patients having to shop around for one who won’t dismiss them with, “You don’t have ADD. It’s a children’s condition.”

    As one specialist says in the “ADD and Loving It” documentary, “The things that I learned about it in medical school, would be considered malpractice today.” And, judging by how old he looked, he was in medical school about 15 years ago.

    Makes you think, doesn’t it?

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96558

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    I have not been formally diagnosed with ADD but I know I have it. I had the same problem with a simple algebra class. I kept dropping the class for fear of failing it. I finally passed it because I got a professor who gave partial credit for incorrect answers. If it was obvious that a student made a simple addition mistake in a complicated equation but clearly understood the correct process for obtaining the answer he would take a few points off. This partial credit helped me actually pass the damn class. Previously professors would mark the entire answer incorrect.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96559

    ellamama
    Member
    Post count: 58

    Welcome to our “club”. I was diagnosed with the LD dyscalcuia in 1979 when I was a young teen. I always wanted to be a pediatrician, so in college I took pre-med courses which included a year of inorganic chemistry. The first time I took it I got a D. I took it again in summer school and got a C. After college (I went from college to a graduate program in public health) I took inorganic chemistry for a 3rd time and got a B.

    What’s my point? Well, I’ve two: (1) ADD often is associated with a learning disability. Perhaps that’s an issue for you, too. and (2) here’s some unsolicited advice: don’t spend too long fretting over what could have been. Move on.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96560

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    For me, the class was Chemistry–I barely passed with a D in high school. I was so scared of the periodic table and that wierd science/math stuff that I put off Physical Science to my very last class of college and, again, I barely passed. I thought it was all my fault. No one understood, least of all, myself.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96561

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    Math was awful for me! I still owe my middle school math teacher for telling my mom I would always be a B or C student in math.

    I kept trying all three times for Algebra 1. The third time I had a teacher in summer school who would hand out white boards and markers at the beginning of the class. We would read about how to do it. She would show us step by step and then make us practice them and walk around checking each persons work and work with each person until it all made sense. It was exactly what I needed to have things click in my head and since I had something to do (my practice problems) and she was making sure to teach things to everybody I actually had a really great grade. (I had a high A, 97% if I remember correctly) I didn’t have to struggle to pay attention in her class since she made it very interactive plus allowed basic calculations to be done on a calculator. I wish she had been at my high school instead of the neighboring one.

    High school and college may have gone differently if I had known about ADHD instead of starting out every school year saying I am not going to get distracted, I am going to take notes, I will not doodle all over my pages, and I will stay organized enough not to lose a lot of my home work.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96562

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    I have ADHD and actually skipped Grade 3 because public school subjects seemed logical and easy to me, however, when I was in high school it was a totally different story when I was left to my own devices to study, write my own notes, and pay attention at a deeper level. I never failed any of my high school courses, however, I never really learned a lot either because I couldn’t stay focussed on the subjects that I wasn’t interested in. I managed to get 50+ on those subjects by memorizing the work the night before I wrote an exam and was really hard pressed to recall the questions or the answers I gave once I walked out of the examination room. I always felt stupid compared to my peers and friends who were high achievers. I couldn’t understand how I could skip a grade in public school and be so incompetent in high school. If I’d known at the time I had ADHD, at least it would have given me some peace of mind that I wasn’t wired the same way as most people were. I learned to be a good faker in order to stay within my circle of successful high achiever friends.

    Aside from this, I have a teenage son who was finally diagnosed with ADHD when he was in Grade 8. My husband and I suspected he had ADHD from the time he was little, as early as 2. His older siblings used to call him ‘rippy tear tear’ as he used to rip around, seemingly out of control most of the time and appeared to be unaware of what was going on in the rest of the household. In any case, his learning problems showed up even before he started school. We had him tutored right from the get-go and he now has an Individual Learning Program in high school which modifies his course and gives him credit for the way he learns. The Guidance Councillor has a sympathetic ear and nowadays, is probably more aware of the symptoms and issues of an ADHD student with the information that has come out in the last few years.

    One thing we noticed that really stood out from the time our son started school was that he couldn’t tell time on a regular numbered clock. Each year, there would be comments on his report card that he kept failing in this regard which would have an overall affect with other equations needed to pass math class. His teachers were always baffled that he didn’t seem to grasp the workings of a clock when his peers had no problems with it.

    Finally, after being very discouraged, we pulled him out of the regular school system, used all of our hard-earned saved college education funds, and sent him to a small private school where the teacher could give him one-on-one assistance. Within 3 weeks of going to the private school, the teacher made a revalation as to how he was reading the clock. All she had to do was ask him what time it was when she put the first and secondary hands in different positions and he would explain how he came up with an answer. It was obvious to the teacher that he had the short hand and the long hand of the clock completely reversed from how they were supposed to be read which would affect all of the answers he would give for the time questions asked in his previous math classes. If his previous teachers had taken the ‘time’ to ask him how he was coming up with his answers, this would have been completely resolved in Grade 1 instead of Grade 5 when he started private school. His past teachers were so insistent at pounding their teachings into him that they didn’t take the time to understand the student. The result was that our son had no self-confidence, thought he was stupid compared to his peers, and would easily give up in trying to master any of his subjects, as well as math. One thing I can say for sure, is that I have the upmost respect for his private school teacher because she was an ‘out-of-the-box’ thinker and didn’t try to make all of her students fit a specific mold because she knew they wouldn’t. Every day I’m thankful that ‘someone’ believed in our son as much as we did. Today, he has much more confidence and has developed his wonderful personality which is enjoyed by many great friends.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96563

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 31

    I can relate to a bit of each of your stories. For me, it was grade ten math – basic to boot. Over and over and over. I gave up on it after failing it for the second or third time (I honestly can’t recall how many times I took that frickin’ class). No, I can. Once in regular day class, failed, so I had to take it at night school. Failed it there, so I enrolled one last time in summer school to take it. You might not believe me, but all three times I was taught by a foreign teacher. First it was a thick accented Chinese man. The second was a thick accented East Indian man, and the third of them (the loveliest of them all), was a very thick accented Polish woman I loved to listen to but couldn’t get her to teach me parabolas to save my life. I had a friend who sat beside the side wall blackboard who had a running “days of hell” 5-sticks cross off calendar thingy going behind the big map. I ended up tuning out of the class half way and counting down with him every day instead (since I paid for it, I felt it was an extra bit of hell).

    You might find this pathetic, or you might find this silly (I’m on the fence myself), but I never finished high school. I’m one credit short. It’s an elective, so I can technically take anything I want, but it kinda bugs me that that one class keeps eluding me and I would only get my diploma credit if I could redo that one class with an ADD-friendly teacher. I have five years of college under me and many years in the workforce, but I keep thinking about that one class and why I couldn’t grasp that basic level of geometry when every other level in the previous grades were easy enough for me. Other than that one class, I couldn’t care less about finishing my high school credits. It doesn’t eat away at me like that stoopid math class I keep failing. It’s the failure, not the accomplishment, I keep dwelling on so obsessively.

    And don’t get me started on scientific calculators. I think they were pretty much designed by the wickedest person who ever lived just to torture me. :-D Having said all of this, I have to say, I found college sciences (save for pulleys and the math calcs for them) brilliant and a real delight for me. They were creative and interesting, and I had the best science teacher ever to teach me chem as well as reflective physics. It’s because of her I love physics as much as I do (again, save for those blasted pulleys I hate so much). It’s like she taught me how to see molecules and objects moving at angles as I talk about them, write about them or do their calculations. She was the math teacher I needed but never got. :-( I’m deeply sad and feel cheated about that. I told her so, too. She just smiled and told me to watch my back when I get into the real world because there was always some asshole behind me waiting to take my job after making me look bad since I don’t think my other people. I only half understood what she was saying then, but it’s lately I’m fully grasping what she said and why, to me of all her students.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96564

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    I consider myself lucky to have made it in a special high school, in math, they did not evaluate us by the answer, but how we got to the answer… at my university it’s the same thing, without this way of correcting I would have failed a lot of math class… As I do often mistake of inverting numbers, shifting the decimal point, forgeting an operation sign,… Often I just go by my way of demonstrating something, I LOVE difficult problem, but I’m ADD overfocused type…

    Did also a lot of mistake in high school with my french class, I knew most of the error I made, simple mistake of forgetting plurial and gender, I went from 50 mistake per text to 5 mistake per text just by having this simple tip : Read my text backward, from front to beginning… This made me read every word and see how they needed to be written. Because of that tip I was able to pass my high school… I wish every ADDer would have the same good school I went to, as the normal public school is just not made for people with ADD, and they don’t even seem to care

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96565

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 31

    You’re right, they don’t have the time, the attention or the resources to care about individuals – just the masses. And let’s be honest. Public school is for the masses. I did fine, but I could have done way better. However, I was the youngest of seven and we were dirt poor. Beggars can’t be whiners, now can they?

    I used to work in closed captioning till the reading part was too painful to bear. But, I would read text backwards to ensure as few mistakes went to air as possible. It was the only way next to a buddy system that our small office couldn’t afford.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #96566

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    man…. I had straight A’s in my music courses, and couldn’t pass Pre-Algebra 090.. took me 3 times…. I did finish that degree and 2 others, now working on my dma…. only diagnosed 2 years ago…. just grateful I somehow made it through til today…. totally resonate with your story.. thanks for sharing

    REPORT ABUSE
Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)