Yeah.. I wanna know whether I have it too

[thilina]

I am a graduate student at university. I’ve always had trouble studying for longer than 10 or 15 minutes at a time even if I have an exam the next day. No matter how much I want to, I just seem unable to keep at it. Same goes for attending lectures, a one hour lecture is an eternity of boredom. It came to the point that I haven’t attended a lecture since the second year of my undergraduate degree. Combined with missing quizzes due to a lack of attendance, never doing assignments or tutorials, and the inability to study properly, I graduated with a GPA of 2.7 out of 4.0. While I do have a good understanding and knowledge of the subject matter, I am unable to commit to memory the specific details that are often tested in exams. Consequently, I perform very well in open books exams and practical exams, while performing quite poorly in closed book, theory exams.

While I find it very difficult to sit in a one hour lecture as a student, I greatly enjoy teaching lectures myself. I would barely even notice 3 hours go by when I am doing the teaching. Almost all my colleagues in the department have much higher GPAs compared to mine, TA’s generally have 3.5 or higher, however, they would often seek my help when they come across difficult problems or material. I am generally good at coming up with new ideas and solutions, which is another thing that colleagues come to me for. Although I enjoy the teaching aspect of my job, my inability to focus becomes quite a hindrance when it comes to repetitive tasks such as grading. Like with studying, I find that I am unable to do it for any extended period of time. Grading a single paper feels like it takes an exhaustive amount of energy to do.

Everyone, from teachers and colleagues to my friends and my parents, have always said that I am a brilliant but lazy student. Coming from a country with poor mental healthcare, I’ve never been tested for any learning disability. I’m wondering whether the problems I’m having are related to ADHD or whether I am just trying to find excuses for my laziness(which was the response I got from my mom when I tried to talk to her about it. She’s never even heard of ADHD).

I’m at a loss about what to do. I want to get a proper diagnosis but my country has shit mental healthcare which means that it’s hard to find a doctor with experience in adult ADHD(a google search gives absolutely 0 relevant results). It also means that most friends and family have never even heard of ADHD. If I try to explain, I get the “we all have it. Stop making excuses.” kind of response which is painful to hear from loved ones.

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[eashline92]

I would definitely go get tested. I’m a college student and after remembering all the issues I had in high school with concentrating, being organized and getting things done, I decided to get tested. Sure enough I got diagnosed which was a huge relief for me because I realized there were ways I could teach myself to cope.

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[thilina]

Thanks for the reply. Problem is, I’m not sure there’s even a place I could go to get tested for ADHD in my country. I’ll try to find something.

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