Posted by jealibeanz on November 13, 2006, at 21:26:06
Hi, I'm a 23 yr old intelligent grad student. However, I am struggling a great deal in school. I have difficulty listening to lectures, retaining information, studying notes, or reading for more than a few minutes without getting up and moving on to a new task or getting sleepy. This is honestly not even a conscious decision. It's almost as if I forget I was trying to study.
I have very high reading comprehension skills and language skills. This is not the problem. I know it is my ADHD (inattentive). I'm about to fail out of school because of this. I need to speak to my director about the fact that they may be asking me to leave, and will obviously have to give an explaination.
I don't know whether to mention ADHD directly or just describe the symptoms. She should pick up on it, as she's in the medical field, but may not. I think she tends to think that I'm either lazy, unmotivated, depressed, or anxious, leading to poor performance.
I never went through formal 6 hour testing like most kids because I only because aware of the problem a few years ago. Structural defects in my prefrontal cortex were measured using special instruments. I underwent biofeedback therapy for a while, but then seemed to max out it's benefits.
My primary care physician has prescibed me Adderall (horrrrible... caused major depression). My PA prescibed Straterra (mildly effective at first, lost it's zest, and sliiiightly depressing). None of these were done under formal testing, so my prof may not believe me because I don't have a certificate or whatever you get!
Right now I take Provigil for fatigue. Some people with ADHD are helped by this, for me, it simply keeps me awake.
I don't know if I want to just throw out the ADHD label or not. I'm not medicated right now. Possibly if I were things would improve. Right now I'm the classical underachiever (although not tooo bad, I have much much more potential than I'm able to access). She may just thinks it's a load of crap and that I need counseling, not medication, since I'm intelligent and a lot of people don't believe intelligent people who graduate from college could possibly have ADHD.
It's such a sensitive subject for me. I don't want to bring it up. But I also don't want to throw away the chance of being successful with proper treatment.
poster:jealibeanz
thread:703272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061110/msgs/703272.html