I was diagnosed with ADD earlier this year. Currently I’m a rising junior at a really good college, but I can say that I’ve never really worked consistently at anything. I save all my work for the last minute, and struggle to finish papers on time (I usually hand things in literally a minute or two before or after the deadline). Thankfully I’ve been blessed with natural intelligence and intuitiveness, so I’ve been able to get away with my bad habits, but as I start to get into the working world, I realize that sitting in an office is something I will have difficulty dealing with my whole life.
I’ve often struggled with the idea of taking medications for ADD. It’s such a difficult condition to wrap one’s mind around, because it affects the way we think, the way we act, and our interests. There is such a stigma surrounding it; I think a large number of people think it’s something parents with hyperactive kids throw around in order to get compensate for bad parenting.
My whole life I’ve often thought I was lazy, that I couldn’t get any work done. I thought there was something wrong with me. But I look at it like this: I have something incredibly unique. It’s like having superpowers. I have a natural inclination to think differently than other people, and a lot of times I’d like to think my ideas are creative and brilliant. My difficulty lies simply in implementation. An incredible idea one day is gone the next, replaced with something maybe equally as amazing. I think a lot of my indecisiveness comes from not wanting to make the wrong decision, to strive for perfection. But the stalling that arises from excessive thinking leads to procrastination, which leads to accomplishing nothing. So maybe a way we can deal with this is to just act. Don’t think, don’t stall, just go with it. Consistency has always been my biggest enemy, but I hope that someday we’ll get along, and I know that I can achieve the world if I just apply myself.