I've been wanting to post in this thread for a while, but a few people at my school know my screen name, and there's such a huge stigma against ADHD that I held off. I finally realized I could just get a new screen name.
My story:
I've always been a daydreamer (my nickname as a kid was space cadet), and am frequently "lost in my head". It just seemed more interesting in there - although for the life of me, I usually can't tell you afterwards what I was thinking about. As a kid it took me 1.5 to 2 hours to fall asleep most nights, because I couldn't stop thinking. There were too many interesting trains of thought that kept skipping all over the place.
I went to a Montessori school through 3rd grade, where we had contracts. The contracts had lists of lessons we had to check off by the end of the week, but we could do them in whatever order we liked, at whatever pace we liked. This was absolutely ideal for me. I finished everything really quickly, was never bored, and got through most of the 6th grade material by the end of 3rd grade. So I loved school. Then I went to public school, and hated it. I hated sitting in a desk, I zoned out while the teacher talked, and I wasn't learning anything. I'd learned it on my own at Montessori already. In high school I took all the AP/Honors classes I could, but still zoned out a bunch, and ditched more than one day a week on average. I still got straight A's, but I had to have friends remind me to turn in homework whenever they turned in theirs.
College was way easier, because it was just tests. I went to class and then goofed off the rest of the time. At most I spent 1-2 hours a day studying (aka reading) in 20-30 minute spurts, maybe 3 hours right before a test. I usually tried to do the required reading, but as soon I read a sentence I would think of something I had to do, look up, or just think about. It took me like 4 hours off and on over days to read 20 pages, and I still wouldn't usually be able to tell you much about what I'd read right afterwards. (I LOVE fiction reading, however, and can get sucked into that for hours on end if the book is interesting) On tests I could usually reason out the answers by thinking them through, so I did okay even though I didn't know the subject very well. Oh, I had my IQ tested at that time, too, and was around 140.
Then I hit med school, and I couldn't think my way through tests (for the most part) - I actually had to know stuff. I HAD to read, understand, and remember. I had to pay attention in class, and sit for hours outside of class studying. I tried really hard. I repeated "pay attention" over and over in my head during lectures, but I'd still zone out (sometimes coming to to the words "and know that, because it will be on the test"). I made strict schedules for myself, but couldn't keep them. It was awful. I considered dropping out of school for a bit, because I just didn't think I could cut it. I went to a psychologist at school, and after a few sessions he suggested Adderall might help, so I started that after our first block ended. It has helped immensely, but I've still felt like a drug abuser, that it was a cop out, that I'm "cheating", and other negatives ever since. The main reason for all of those thoughts is I figure that if I got this far without needing treatment, there's no way I could actually have ADHD. (My brother has ADHD and he's your classic case, btw - he got Ds and Fs, then dropped out of high school, and is now doing pretty much nothing with his life)
Outside of school, I struggled to keep appointments (I had a calendar that I wrote everything on, but sometimes I just forgot). I often walk to some part of my apartment to do something, get distracted by something else, and then go back to where I was, completely forgetting that I intended to do something. I lose lecture handouts, and the ones I have are spread all over my apartment - in little piles on my floor, shoved into free spaces on my bookshelf, buried under other crap on my desk.
I love starting projects - paintings, stories, personal research, etc - but
every time I lose interest partway through, and don't finish. If it's a required project I do finish, but the final steps are like pulling teeth, and I procrastinate doing them for as long as possible even though they're typically really easy and would take me less than an hour to do. I am so non-detail-oriented about some things that it's shocking. I can easily not notice something right in front of my face until someone points it out. But for other things I notice every detail - for instance, every single little typo in books irks me to no end. I worked for several years, and going to the same place, at the same time, to do the same thing made me want to shoot myself. I changed jobs at least every year, but the next one still sucked.
On Adderall, most of that has changed. If a phone rings in class, or someone near me talks, I'm still gone for the next 5 minutes, but at least now I can pay attention MOST of the time. I can focus on reading, and understand what I read MOST of the time. It's not perfect, of course - I'm still terribly disorganized - but I remember things better now, and am not struggling as much.
I know I probably sound like I'm going to make a terrible doctor from all of the above, but I know my strengths and weaknesses pretty well. I would rather quit med school than do EM, because I can't handle that many things and distractions at once and I know I'd wind up killing someone. I love puzzles and analyzing/thinking things through, however, and am pretty sure I'd do well in most of the specialties where I don't have to make a split-second decision. If I am allowed to take my time (minutes, rather than seconds) to think, I am really pretty exceptional (if I do say so myself
).
Sorry this is so long. There's so much more to say, too, but I left it out because I'm not sure most people are going to make it through what I've already written.
