For the past 7 or so years I have been struggling to get my associates degree. I have had one road block after another but ended up keeping me from getting past a second semester at every college I tried going to. Then I started going to an online college when I lived out in Arizona. I had road block after road block try to keep me from school. I moved 4 times in seven and a half months from one shelter to the other (different blog). No matter how hard I studied for tests I just couldn't get my grades to stay up. I had to repeat three of my classes multiple times because I could not pass them. I didn't know why I could take a class three times and still have no clue what they were talking about. It was frustrating. After just over 2 years with this school, the lost I have EVER been with a school I get an email telling me they were flunking me out of the college. I was devastated.
I refused to give up though. I enrolled for a local college and got the ball rolling on that. Then I got to thinking. My son has ADHD and when he was diagnosed they told me it was hereditary. Hmm.. I started thinking about when I was in grade school and all my struggles with college. Maybe when everyone told me that I had a reading comprehension problem it was actually more than that. I have always said my mind felt like it was constantly on shuffle. I could never concentrate on anything, my mind wandered, when I would be reading for school I'm reading but thinking about other things at the same time. I was never able to fully concentrate in class. The only way I could study was if I had music on, LOUD, while I was studying. If it was quiet I was always somewhere else in my mind. So I decided to get myself tested for ADHD. Sure enough, I have it and there is a very good chance I have had it my entire life.
I couldn't start medication for it right away though. My Dr wanted to clear some things with a Cardiologist I saw when I lived in AZ first. So after giving him a month to get things squared away I was given the prescription for my medication. That first day I noticed a different. I could sit still and focus. However, I was focusing too hard. It felt like I was stuck on what I was doing and couldn't move on. I was talking to a friend of mine and what he told me made a lot of sense. For 28 years my mind was used to thinking one way and the medication was making it think a different way. I had to retrain my brain.
I start school again in two days and I feel confident that I am going to be able to concentrate in class and on my homework now. Nothing is going to stop me. I am going to use every tool that is offered to me for having ADHD. I know what is going on with me and knowing that is such an amazing feeling. Its not that I will never be able to do what I need to do, it was I was mentally unable to do it before, and now I know I CAN do it. I am so excited to start this new chapter of my life the right way. I will never look at my struggles with school before this as something negative. Those years of struggles are what I needed to go through to get to this point in my life. Maybe I wasn't meant to be successful in school until now. I know for a fact that with the degree I want I would not have been able to use it effectively if I had gotten it 2 years ago, 5 years ago, or 7 years ago. I am now at a point where my struggles and my degree, when I get it, are going to make it to where I can do so much and go so far. For the first time in my life I feel confident that I can go for a Masters degree and not just an Associates degree.
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