Living with ADHD: Will's Experience

My name is William Flood. I am a second-year representative and part of the outreach team here at Happy Human Project. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 12 years old. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which means studying and paying attention in class etc., is extremely difficult specifically for me. ADHD shows itself differently for different people, and this bulletin only covers my experiences with ADHD. For as long as I can remember, I have always told myself that I only had issues with school and focusing in class, and I never learned that I was officially diagnosed with ADHD until my senior year of high school. My mom, in my opinion, didn’t want me to think that I was at a disadvantage compared to others at my school by telling me I had ADHD when I was too young to understand what it meant, so she told me I had issues focusing.

Some of my friends describe my kind of ADHD as "not too bad"; however, it still comes with challenges that I am honestly still working on overcoming. These challenges include becoming highly distracted by the slightest distraction; for example, if I wanted to focus on any academic task, I would require to be in a space where I had no distractions, which extend to any outdoor noises, even the sound of anything action could distract me to the points where I had been off the task for over an hour. I found that the easiest way for me not to be distracted by these elements is to listen to music extremely loud to the point where I cannot hear any distractions. Unfortunately, this trick tends to blur my memory, making it increasingly challenging to retain and recall information learned while listening to music. 

Therefore I also struggle with verbal learning; the famous “in one ear and out the other” line is very serious in my scenario. The best way for me to retain information, thankfully, is by writing notes in class. I was not the student who would take in-class notes throughout high school. Fortunately, I still performed very well in all my types. This ability to not take notes did not transfer to University as I had hoped because the amount of information was significantly more.    For the first term of University, I seriously struggled to find what worked for me to study, and it took me serval months to truly see the most efficient ways to research and get my assignments done. 

The benefit of ADHD is that it's straightforward to move on from a bad grade or missed assignment and focus on the next task because it's a healthy distraction to move on to the next project. Overall having ADHD is challenging in the education industry and trying to learn; however, there is always a way to find ways or tricks to help yourself succeed. Most importantly, no matter who you are and if you have any disabilities that make life more challenging, remember always to stay positive and be happy!

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