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
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You’re doing about three times of what I am capable of. You’re not feeling overwhelmed, you are overwhelmed.
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
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
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).
Sorry, couldn’t resist. You’re doing a LOT. I hope you can get some assistance on one or more fronts. And I hope you can give yourself some grace.
Its definitely more than I’m used to, and there are some disability resources that help like giving me some more time on tests.
I’ll be honest the big thing is what it always is, money. If I didn’t have my fiancee I actually don’t know if I could feed myself
To know you can get medication for that
Read here you little smart fucker. And read well. I’ve been in those exact shoes as you not too long ago. The only difference was i did chemical engineering. It sucked ass.
1st most important thing is reduce your course load. Yeah it sucks that you are going to have to delay your graduation by about a year. But I can almost guarantee that you are going to fail classes and have to pay for them again and delay your graduation regardless. Cut one class minimum, 2 if you want to actually kill it in grades and compression of the material beyond what the classes offer. I learned this because well I did it by failing and being forced to reduce the corse load.
2nd don’t take the classes in the given order from the school. For example. When I was doing Chem the school I went to set it as semester 1, math, applied Chem, instrumental analysis, organic Chem, lab tech, elective. Semester 2, would be math 2, applied Chem 2, physics, biology, organic Chem 2. Elective.
In semester 2, I would just dump biology,physics, and pick up instrumental analysis 2 , lab tec 2. This way my head isn’t running back a related, unrelated subject when I’m trying to focus on something else.
- You have a choice. You can do subpar for everything and see how that goes or suck at something, but be great at others. And it’s not just school subjects. You can stretch yourself between school, wedding, work, and friends. But that’s just gonna be subpar all along the board. Cut the social life, if your friends are any fucking good they will understand. Delay the wedding. Do you love your spouse? Do they love you? Good enough you don’t need to prove it to anyone by having a wedding. If that’s not an option. Well then delay it because right now school is the most important and you would probably want to actually be able to invest your self fully into the wedding.
This too shall pass and before you know it you will be back into the swing of things with friends and family.
Work what kind of work is it? Before I comment on that.
Also can you ride your bike to school. I found that to be incredibly helpful for some reason.
Oh, and don’t worry about being slow. I was slow as hell, I was always the last to finish my labs, did all my tests with acomidations. Handed in all my work late or 2 minutes before dead line… that might be a lie I think all my work was late. By like a week or a month sometimes. But if you talk to your professors you would be amazed what kind of leniency they can give you. Hell I don’t think I ever even submitted a single Wilye? Wyly? How ever the fuck those con artists are called assigment. It was worth like 10% of my grade. But at the end of the term I could spend hours doing some bullshit online quiz or keep writing my lab report, or reading for my next morning labs.
If a dumb fuck like me can pull it off you can too.
Lmao thanks I can see this is written by a kindred spirit, yeah it might be smart to adjust my course load. I actually had differential equations this semester but I cut it immediately since my professor was a crotchety old fart who wanted everything submitted in handwritten paper, plus I should have failed the prerequisite, I was planning to so I could redo the course and get it right but I think my teacher liked me so she passed me with a C. But dropping that let me not worry about calculus and focus on the science I was doing with phys and chemistry.
As for the bike thing, it might just be related to exercise, which would be nice for me but I have no room in my apartment for my bike and it’s Illinois so half the year it’s useless. I actually do get a huge workout with my job though ( think roadie but only in a specific venue) so I sweat all day.
My entire reason of getting into school again I think was so I didn’t have to sweat all day, and hopefully make some money
You’re into an extremely rigorous degree taking a full course load, working, and planning a wedding?
I don’t even have ADHD. I can push myself and focus all day, I can memorise without struggling much - at uni, I could draw you any given amino acid from memory, and that was for an elective. And I’m telling you, what you’re describing sounds like too much for me.
I’m working 14 hours a week and I haven’t actually started getting rigorous with the wedding yet, but to be honest, college alone is nearly too much, It feels like these kids are running circles around me and my mind just goes blank when taking tests, stuff that I sat down and did some serious study time for, with “aha” moments and everything just disappearing when I need it
Have you looked into test taking accommodations? They should give you extra time in a distraction free environment for adhd.
Yeah they help a little, but when you just haven’t retained the info enough there’s really not much you can do unfortunately
Do you use flash cards? Anki got me through a lot of uni. Sorry I don’t have any stronger suggestions, lessening your overall work load and getting accommodations would have been my first suggestion. I guess the only other recommendation I could make is troubleshoot your sleep habits. My wife and my kid both have unmedicated ADHD and they really burn out fast on bad sleep.
Adhd meds have withdrawal effects, which you are probably experiencing at the end of the day. Try talking to your provider about it and see if there is something they suggest like extended release forms, smaller doses spread through the day, or different medications altogether. That said, engineering school is just incredibly stressful, i hope you do well.
Ehhh idk, maybe I was being too optimistic when I signed up for this, I used to do college as an art major but never finished. I could always switch majors but they I would still be poor but just with a degree.
I could talk to my psyche but I need to get a new one because the one I have is refusing to let me get back on the dosage I came to her with. I honestly can’t get a reason out of her
Can confirm. Am in withdrawals right now.
