Tag: ADHD

Mistakes Were Made: My Experience of Adult ADHD by Brian Spurlock

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In late 2011, I was woken from a deep sleep by a call letting me know the lab where I was doing undergraduate research in organic chemistry had flooded. I rushed to campus along with two or three graduate students and through our combined efforts, the mess was cleaned up and the damage mitigated. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t the whole truth. 

To be specific: One night during my junior year at Ole Miss, my mentor called me to let me know that I flooded his lab, and, still half asleep and in pajama bottoms, I ran to campus and helped three exhausted people who hadn’t flooded the lab fix my colossal fuckup.

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You Can’t Outwork Your ADHD by Anonymous

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When in doubt, just work harder – until you no longer can. 

I always thought that work ethic is one thing nobody could take away from me. In graduate school, I admired people – especially women, particularly mothers – who could work reasonable hours and somehow finish their bench work, keep up with current literature, and submit grant applications on time. Meanwhile, I never stopped working, yet everything would be done at the very last minute. Yes, I was bad at time management, constantly making mistakes that forced me to second-guess experimental results. I could, nonetheless, work anyone under the table with my ability to keep going at all hours, all days, with no vacations, no weekends. Academia certainly encouraged it. Senior academics would praise my hard work, marvel at my multitasking skills, at my cheerful spirit. However, those very efficient women whom I admired would frequently ask, “How are you not burned out? How are you holding up?” I would deflect, laugh it off, make a self-deprecating joke. In my own mind, I knew that it was not a sustainable work style. However, the discovery of new data – that moment when you turn on the microscope at the end of a long experiment and see the confirmation of your hypothesis in glorious multicolor – got me through many periods of disinterest and boredom caused by the relentless tedium of everyday bench work.

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Uncovering ADHD During Perimenopause and the Insidious Impacts on Academic Work by Kaylene Ascough

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Undertaking a PhD is an arduous task for anyone and has unique challenges for different demographics. For a mature-aged woman going through perimenopause and menopause, though, a whole range of additional challenges can enter the mix. In my case, the associated hormonal changes exacerbated lifelong conditions that went undiagnosed in the past. 

Most people think and talk about the physical symptoms of perimenopause and menopause; hot flushes, difficulty sleeping, aching joints, etc.  What is less often discussed are the mental symptoms; and when they are, it’s usually quite vague and nonspecific such as ‘mood changes’ and ‘brain fog’.  There are many, many symptoms associated with menopause. In fact, I wrote to my friends once about how every symptom that was occurring in my life at the time was attributable to menopause.  What I was not prepared for was just how insidious perimenopause would be. I have since learned that the period where these changes start, and the length of time it can carry on for, is highly variable. Even when you have “officially” reached menopause (i.e., when you have stopped having a period for over 12 months), this does not always mean the end of symptoms.

This means that, particularly with the mental symptoms, you don’t always realise that what is happening to you is a part of the menopause and you can really start to doubt your sanity. Going through this change of life and not knowing, while trying to participate in academic pursuits like a PhD, can leave you feeling truly inadequate, irrelevant and incapable of contributing to your academic field. 

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Rediscovering Me: My Journey to Adult ADHD Diagnosis by Zoë Ayres

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TW suicide

I don’t think I have ever written from a place of genuine anger before. But I am full of rage. Not the sort of anger that causes you to lash out, that strikes a blow, but the type that quietly simmers and boils until you can no longer ignore it, because if you do, it’ll bubble over and hurt you and everyone else in close proximity. But this is where being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at the age of 31 leaves me. An angry person: angry at society, angry at medical misogyny, but mostly angry that it took me so long to get here.

But here I am, nonetheless.

For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Zoë. I have lived with ADHD for 32 years. I have lived with ADHD, knowingly, for just six months. Suspected? Around 2 years. Externally, I am “highly successful” (someone else’s words, not mine). Internally I’ve gone through periods of self-loathing so intense I wanted to die. I didn’t believe I belonged in academia (or the world for that matter) and struggled to understand why. This is perhaps why I am so very angry: if things had panned out slightly differently, would I be here writing this blog at all?  

But here I am, nonetheless.

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The perfect researcher (and why I am not it) by Zoë Ayres

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Just another typical PhD day for me. Highlighting another research paper, trying desperately to retain the salient bits. Mixing it up with different coloured highlighters. Grabbing a cup of coffee, hoping that the information might go in if I let the caffeine sink in. And yet it never quite does. I beat myself up, telling myself I am too stupid to do a PhD. Walking away from a meeting, I feel ashamed, as I know I read the paper that was being discussed, I just can’t quite recall the details. Rinse and repeat. This, combined with many other small things, which in isolation were hardly something to fret about, left my mental health in tatters.

It’s not just a bad day, or a bad week. It’s all the time. I am struggling to engage in reading papers. As soon as I pick them up, I glaze over or I get distracted. My reading list grows forever longer – the weight of it playing on the back of my mind. My inner voice constantly telling me I am not doing enough to succeed.

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I Don’t Want to Dance in the Dark: Disclosing Mental Illness and Neurodiversity in the Ableist Academy by Marco Miguel Valero Sanchez

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When I saw the call from Voices of Academia on Twitter actively seeking contributors to share their stories on mental health and well-being in academia, I thought: Wouldn’t a blog be a great way to share your own experiences with depression and ADHD in academia? Wouldn’t it also be an excellent opportunity to raise awareness about mental illness and neurodiversity in general? Why shouldn’t you give it a try? As usual, I was very tired that day. I had a sleepless and restless night, an unexpected panic attack in the morning, and a stronger depressive phase overall – perhaps because I already had a few days of holiday. I find such days off always give you the ‘opportunity’ to think intensively and continuously about yourself, your body, and your mind – whether you like it or not.

Perhaps my mental state was also the reason why my initial enthusiasm was immediately overtaken by self-doubt and pessimism, asking myself: Why would anyone care what you, of all people, have to say about the challenges and difficulties of managing mental health and well-being in academia? Who exactly would care about your personal story? And above all: Why would it make any difference and to whom? In fact, I cannot say whether anyone will read my personal story, care about it, or whether it will make any difference at all. But maybe these are the wrong questions and expectations to begin with. What I can say with absolute certainty, however, is that every voice matters with regard to mental health and well-being – in academia and beyond – and that every voice helps to shed light on a still taboo and mostly invisible topic. And in this respect, I am confident that my voice matters as well.

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When it all Falls Down: PhDing with Learning Disabilities and ADHD, in a Culturally Insensitive Society by Lara Bertholdo Jimenez (She/Ela)

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I have a distinct memory from when I was in first or second grade of my mother kindly erasing my homework because my handwriting needed to be bonitinho. Even as a child, homework was unacceptable if it was messy. Growing up in Brazil, her schooling was the opposite of mine, and her expectations sometimes felt unrealistic or too harsh. Although her always correcting me helped my success in the long run, I always felt defeated when I couldn’t explain how I loved school but could never get excellent grades – something had always felt off. How could my classmates seem to get straight A’s effortlessly, and my hard work could only pull off B’s and C’s? I always thought I had a learning disability, but my mother (through no fault of her own) didn’t entertain the possibility: you just have to try harder. After years of jumping through hoops of not being able to afford the services to be tested, at age 25 I was diagnosed with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and at 26, I was diagnosed with learning disabilities and slow processing speed. 

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Rediscovering Your Worth after Quitting Your PhD by Sophia Upshaw

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Graduate school orientation feels like you’re a freshman (first year student) all over again. You look to both sides, gathered in an auditorium, realizing that you all are collectively about to embark on a particularly challenging journey: obtaining your Ph.D. You sign forms to receive tuition waivers and your monthly stipend, scramble to interview with faculty members and settle within a lab, and fight to reserve your spot in the most intriguing lecture courses. With fresh eyes, you view your graduate education as an opportunity to extend beyond the bounds of what’s already been published. 

With a bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline I wasn’t quite fond of, and a few years of research experience on my belt, I hadn’t even considered pursuing a career in industry. Academia seemed to be the most obvious path to extend my learning capacity and switch to a new and intriguing field.

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