How do you live a busy life with ADHD?
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I've never been so busy, I made the life altering decision to go back to college at 30 to get an engineering degree. I generally like math and I love building things and messing with electronics, it should be the perfect fit. But after starting at calc 2 and now doing 5 or 6 classes full time, working, and planning a wedding. I feel like I'm stretched thin.
I'll get off of school and my brain feels like molasses. I'm medicated but I still feel like everyone is learning at twice the speed as me while I reread the question to make sure I actually understand the wording.
There's some of you out there who are engineers, scientists, doctors with ADHD, who go out and do community stuff, go to the gym, live life and even socialize.
How? How do you do it? How do you keep up with such a constant schedule and try to understand new concepts every day on top of that? How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself to stop being overwhelmed?
I feel like I'm doing life on hard mode and it sucks
You should absolutely positively not work and be doing anything time-intensive on the side while you are studying.
Unless you want to burn out and fail, of course. -
This is a period of time in your life where you just don't have any more time to pour into hobbies and community etc. That is okay. You are only human. I just had two years where I was stressed out of my fucking mind and couldn't do anything when I got home everyday. I didn't have energy for hobbies, interests, friendships, nothing. It's slowly come back to me this year, especially over the summer and I'm gradually filling up my life with past time activities now.
You are not weird or wrong or less than for not having the energy to be active all the time. School is intense. It just is. When you're also working and planning a wedding on top of that, no shit you're exhausted, my friend. I do hope you allow yourself to have moments in the evening where you're just relaxing and doing nothing. That stuff kinda helped me when I was stressed. It was frustrating when you're someone who wants to do things all the time, but for me it was necessary to avoid imploding. I think it would be good for you too to allow your head a break when you're done with the day and not harass yourself with all the things you could be doing but aren't. You're allowed to do nothing after a long day where you have given it your all.
Remember that all of this is temporary. The wedding will pass, you'll graduate eventually as well and maybe then you will slowly experience that you have a bit more energy for all the fun things in life.
Hugs! I wish you all the best!
Thanks, and yeah I'm allocating some time for myself, silksong has been all I've been doing in the afternoons
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Thanks, and yeah I'm allocating some time for myself, silksong has been all I've been doing in the afternoons
Good! I spent at least a year with my evenings going to brain dead mobile games. That was all I could do for awhile ad looking back, I'm not sad about it. I hope you give yourself all the grace in the world if for the next months or years (how ever long the whole period lasts) and just accept that you need to play Silksong or whatever other game tickles your fancy when your tired after a long day. It's okay to not be super duper productive all the time! It's a lesson I'm learning slowly too.
Hugs! -
You should absolutely positively not work and be doing anything time-intensive on the side while you are studying.
Unless you want to burn out and fail, of course.Yes - I had to work during Uni and it was hellish. By the end, I came very close to burnout (but not failure, although I did have to cut corners at times to keep my head above water).
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I've never been so busy, I made the life altering decision to go back to college at 30 to get an engineering degree. I generally like math and I love building things and messing with electronics, it should be the perfect fit. But after starting at calc 2 and now doing 5 or 6 classes full time, working, and planning a wedding. I feel like I'm stretched thin.
I'll get off of school and my brain feels like molasses. I'm medicated but I still feel like everyone is learning at twice the speed as me while I reread the question to make sure I actually understand the wording.
There's some of you out there who are engineers, scientists, doctors with ADHD, who go out and do community stuff, go to the gym, live life and even socialize.
How? How do you do it? How do you keep up with such a constant schedule and try to understand new concepts every day on top of that? How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself to stop being overwhelmed?
I feel like I'm doing life on hard mode and it sucks
I don't. It's a mess my brother.
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You should absolutely positively not work and be doing anything time-intensive on the side while you are studying.
Unless you want to burn out and fail, of course.I hope you don't mean my job, because I kinda need that to eat and pay rent
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I've never been so busy, I made the life altering decision to go back to college at 30 to get an engineering degree. I generally like math and I love building things and messing with electronics, it should be the perfect fit. But after starting at calc 2 and now doing 5 or 6 classes full time, working, and planning a wedding. I feel like I'm stretched thin.
I'll get off of school and my brain feels like molasses. I'm medicated but I still feel like everyone is learning at twice the speed as me while I reread the question to make sure I actually understand the wording.
There's some of you out there who are engineers, scientists, doctors with ADHD, who go out and do community stuff, go to the gym, live life and even socialize.
How? How do you do it? How do you keep up with such a constant schedule and try to understand new concepts every day on top of that? How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself to stop being overwhelmed?
I feel like I'm doing life on hard mode and it sucks
Ok, as someone who did well in engineering school, I cannot imagine juggling all of that. I didn’t get diagnosed until 30 so I was unmedicated in college, but I lived at home and quit my pizza job when classes became more demanding. It was still a shitload of coursework and I spent most of my time at school, including all day on the weekends.
How I managed it back then was that I would do all my homework at school with my classmates, so basically body doubling. Otherwise I’d get home and screw off.
Even without ADHD, your current lifestyle would be a tough row to hoe. You are living on hard mode.
Working full time, trying to run a household solo, and have hobbies is a mess even though I’ve been out of school for almost 10 years. Most meds have caused issues for me, but I’m back on the merry-go-round to find the right combo because I am very much not managing my life, lol.
So I guess my advice is the following: be gentle with yourself, try to work in groups when possible, and perhaps consider switching meds if you feel it’s a limiting factor. The last one could be dicey though since instability could make things harder for you.
One last point: the students who are failing and struggling aren’t exactly going to announce it. Don’t sell yourself short and assume everyone is doing better than you!
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I've never been so busy, I made the life altering decision to go back to college at 30 to get an engineering degree. I generally like math and I love building things and messing with electronics, it should be the perfect fit. But after starting at calc 2 and now doing 5 or 6 classes full time, working, and planning a wedding. I feel like I'm stretched thin.
I'll get off of school and my brain feels like molasses. I'm medicated but I still feel like everyone is learning at twice the speed as me while I reread the question to make sure I actually understand the wording.
There's some of you out there who are engineers, scientists, doctors with ADHD, who go out and do community stuff, go to the gym, live life and even socialize.
How? How do you do it? How do you keep up with such a constant schedule and try to understand new concepts every day on top of that? How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself to stop being overwhelmed?
I feel like I'm doing life on hard mode and it sucks
To know you can get medication for that
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I've never been so busy, I made the life altering decision to go back to college at 30 to get an engineering degree. I generally like math and I love building things and messing with electronics, it should be the perfect fit. But after starting at calc 2 and now doing 5 or 6 classes full time, working, and planning a wedding. I feel like I'm stretched thin.
I'll get off of school and my brain feels like molasses. I'm medicated but I still feel like everyone is learning at twice the speed as me while I reread the question to make sure I actually understand the wording.
There's some of you out there who are engineers, scientists, doctors with ADHD, who go out and do community stuff, go to the gym, live life and even socialize.
How? How do you do it? How do you keep up with such a constant schedule and try to understand new concepts every day on top of that? How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself to stop being overwhelmed?
I feel like I'm doing life on hard mode and it sucks
For every few days I manage to do all the things there's a day I have to take off work and cry in bed all day.
It isn't reasonable for society to expect people to work fulltime jobs and have any energy left to do anything.
This IS the normal way to feel.
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For every few days I manage to do all the things there's a day I have to take off work and cry in bed all day.
It isn't reasonable for society to expect people to work fulltime jobs and have any energy left to do anything.
This IS the normal way to feel.
I'm very sorry you have to do this, life is proper fucked
