I don't know what ADD is life for anyone else. For me, I have a very difficult time sitting through a lecture at all, even if I am interested, because my brain goes off in tangents. So say we start talking about nerves, my mind will skip through the first time I ever really learned about nerves (7th grade bio), then the first time I traced cadaver nerves (12th grade human anatomy), then through the diseases that affect nerves (medical microbio, college) and the nerve studies we did (neurobio, college) and the research my friend is doing (cephlapod pigmentation.) But it isn't even the need to course through those...in my mind I can actually feel myself in each situation again, and it is crucial the details be correct..meaning if something is 'off' it nags at me. Now, in one way this is really good...what information I do take in tends to be very solidly embedded in my mind...however, the process means that I don't catch all the information in a class because my mind is elsewhere.
As for other things, I constantly lose things.... things I use every day. I can lose paychecks, even when I am living paycheck to paycheck. I did well in college because I maintained a very strict schedule and was incredibly organized. Keys, phone, coat, wallet all went in the exact same place every time every day. I needed that level of organization to function. Throw a husband in the mix and my life became disasterous, because even if I have a routine and a place for everything, he can completly unsettled it (honey, I put your keys in your purse when I saw them on the foyer table...ARGH they were on the foyer table because that is where I always put them.)
I also show it emotionally. Give me an actual emergency, and I perform exceptionally well. Give me little stupid things going wrong all day long, and I will eventually explode (you moved my keys?! why on earth would you do that!) I tend to multitask even when I shouldn't, and I tend to constantly be in motion (tapping feet, pencil, doodling, etc) and I HATE chairs. I will perch on chairs, sit on my knees and with legs tucked under, stand if possible. In lines or while on the phone I pace, do toe touches and calf raises, etc.
I have been known to wake up from a dead sleep to work on something. Especially if I am doing research. My pattern is sleep two hours, wake up and fly to work for half an hour, sleep another hours, get up and work again. Not intentionally, just how my brain processes info. That will also happen when I am awake. I could be in class, and have a sudden brain flash and feel the desperate need to get info down for another class (not conducive to lectures!) I do exceptionally well in lab, and when working with animals I am incredibly patient. I am also accused of 'jumping topics' alot....in a conversation about, say how NASA's rovers are doing (hubby is an aeronautical engineer by education) I will end up talking about how we need to put DE on the ants near the front gate of our home. It isn't because I don't care about NASA or what hubby is interested in, but rather that the extreme conditions the rovers are going through combined with the duration they have served beyond expectations reminds me of how well biological modeling works for machines and how AI advancements are making more possible (close friend is an AI engineer) and how a great system for integrating multiple models would be ant colonies, and then I think of how there tend to be ant colonies in most environments, and how those adaptation would work for machines, which reminds me, we need to find a way to deal with the adaptions of the fire ants that are on my gate. All of that happens pretty quickly, but none-the less, I have moved through several topics, and if my husband didn't know me well, he might think I was just changing topics on him or that I wasn't interested in what he was talking about.
I actually LIKE how my brain works, especially in emergencies (I seem to process a lot of data quickly and come to conclussions pretty well) and in research (where i think my brain just tests a lot of ideas before latching onto what it needs.) However, as a student attending lectures, it isn't very helpful. Reading can be just as problematic, but for me, lectures are the worst.
Scheduling an appointment with my doctor.
