Procrastination!

[felicityc]

Procrastination is one of my biggest problems apart from getting uni work done. I’m 23 and I have been at University for 6 years (one problem with not having to pay fees up front) and have maybe passed enough subjects to make up half of a 3 year degree, I changed university about 3.5 years ago to do something different (the whole not what I thought it would be) and still here now. My HECS-debt is going to be huge by the time I graduate.

Is it still called procrastination if you start the day before an assignment is due and don’t finish it?

What I find hard is when other students are like ‘I started it the week before it was due but I still got 80%)’ when I say I failed because I procrastinated. Also when I’m trying to gauge if I am making progress everyone plays down their work (that might also be an Australian thing).

 

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[Patte Rosebank]

@Felicityc, a lot of us ADDers crash & burn at university, because, after the highly structured world of elementary & high school, we’re suddenly plunged headfirst into the highly UN-structured world of university.

Add to that, the “30% factor” (ADDers are generally 30% younger socio-emotionally than they are physically), and you’ve essentially got a 13-year-old who happens to be in the body of an 18-year-old.  Nobody in their right mind would think a 13-year-old was ready to go out into the world on their own.  But that’s what they’re doing when they send an 18-year-old ADDer off to university.

With ADHD now listed as a Disability in many countries, most universities have special supports available to help ADHD students with structure, time-management, follow-through, note-taking, etc.  All the things that I struggled with in my university days.  If only I’d known then what I know now!  But I only found out I had ADHD, three and a half years ago.

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The main things to remember are:

1). Most people’s brains are driven by what’s Important, but the ADHD brain is driven by what’s INTERESTING.  I think of it like being left-handed in this right-handed world.  If something isn’t genuinely interesting to us, or we can’t see the point in it, we may only be able to do it in 10-minute chunks before we lose interest.

2) There are many different ways of processing information (i.e., learning).  Once you figure out which ways work best for you, then you can use them to make your learning more efficient.

For $10, you can take the VOCKATIV/ACKTIVV test (http://acktivv.com/en/), which is a multiple-choice self-assessment test, that helps you to determine your ideal processing methods.  It’s one of several tests available to do this.

In my case, I determined that I am primarily a Tactile (need to touch and explore), Verbal (need to talk my way through it), Kinesthetic (need to move around), and Intuitive (know the right answer, but don’t know how I got it) processor.  No wonder those classes where I sat in a lecture hall with hundreds of other students, all frantically scribbling notes as the prof. talked AT us, were so hard for me that I cut more of them than I attended…but I thrived in the small, discussion-based classes, even if the subject itself wasn’t super-interesting!

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As for procrastination, there are many possible reasons for it, and each one requires a different solution.  It’s like, if the view from your window is blurry because you forgot to put on your eyeglasses, it’s not going to become any clearer if you clean the window.

This video may help you:  http://totallyadd.com/procrastination-and-overwhelm/  And there are some archived webinars called “Start Now!”, dealing with procrastination (http://totallyadd.com/webinars).

At least something good came of my chronic procrastination at university.  I wrote, directed, and performed this song parody, “The Last Night ‘Til It’s Due”:  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UUKIaQUyPFI .  And my fellow students & alumni loved it, because it was so true!

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[felicityc]

Thanks @Larynxa I will definitely look into learning styles.

I think the hardest thing as well is the fact that I have a high IQ and a lot during primary school I was ahead of everyone, even wanted to put me up a grade or two (thank God my parents didn’t do it). So I was seen as the smart one, most likely to be successful, etc.  Then my little sister was diagnosed with ADD, then Dad, and lastly me. My sister had more severe (obvious) symptoms and so her class knew she ADD and she was bullied severely, to the point they used to call me the normal one. So when I was diagnosed I asked my parents not to tell the school or at least not my classmates.

So 14 years down the track I still have the ‘if I just apply myself harder” thought pattern, because I am a smart girl (my mum and nearly everyone elses words) and if I just put as much effort into my uni work as I did my tv shows and fandoms I wouldn’t be on my last warning (I was conditional last year after failing over 50% of units and then probation this year). When I tell her I have literally sat down in the library turned my phone off blocked off access to all sites that aren’t uni related with lockout apps and nothing came of it (except stressing myself out to the point after 4 hours of nothing except headings I just broke down) she wouldn’t believe me. And I heard it all again not 12 hours ago.

So this semester I decided I was going to stop putting my head in the sand and get some help that isn’t just extra exam time.  It is only week 1 here so I am making use of the spare time to find some ways I can get help.

Example this week I was going to take a picture of the lecture theatre before the start of the lecture and send it to her to prove I am attending, which would make sure I didn’t skip lectures, she pulls the ‘if you just applied yourself to uni like your tv shows and your choir’. I wasn’t asking her to do anything, it was for me not for her, I was trying to find something to force me to pay attention. I felt so hurt and frustrated that I had come up with this idea that was mostly foolproof, that I could do this and it just felt like her saying why can’t you just be normal.

My focus for next week was improving on listening to lectures and note taking not just writing what is on the slides, and when I told her all the things I was looking into she says yep, “if you just dedicated yourself  as much as you do your tv shows and choir” I  just yelled at her today that I can’t, I have ADD my brain won’t let me. I think it was the first time I have said ‘I have/am ADD’ to my mum, also that I can’t do it, normally I would say it is so difficult or even worse lie that I did it and claim I failed because I must have not got enough on the exam. It was such a relief to say that, unlike normally I would blame myself for I guess having ADD, instead of blaming the working of my brain that won’t let me do what I want to. Anyway I am planning to send an email to one of the disability officers to see what we can do to make sure I meet all my deadlines and understand what I am learning.

Wow I so did not intend to vent that much, sorry for the long post…

Can I just say I love this place, I have been reading a lot of the forums today and it is so nice to be able to say ‘me too’.

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