another one of those days where I wake up feeling horrible because I have to Do Things today and it's going to be a Struggle and I am going to Let Myself Down
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the thing is, I did my entire undergrad degree in physics undiagnosed and unmedicated and I STILL got a first.
even though a lot of the time I'd sit down to revise (something I wanted and needed to do) and would just end up crying. for eight hours at a time, sometimes. sitting there. barely doing anything. even though I desperately wanted to. even though I liked the subjects. it was absolute misery. my partner will occasionally remind me of how much I was clearly suffering.
but I kept doing it anyway. day after day. putting myself through that ordeal.
and I thought that was laziness.
if I'd had meds for my undergrad degree I probably would have gotten an overall module average of over 90%. it wouldn't have actually meant anything except maybe beating this one girl to the prize for best undergraduate (and she deserved it!), but... idk. it would have been nice to feel, for once, like I was living up to my bastard fucking potential.
@astronomerritt for what little consolation it is, there are lots of folks who "never lived up to their potential". Again, for whatever it's worth, this essay about the "Brilliant Failure" [https://www.marktarver.com/bipolar.html] -- the author might have been looking over my shoulder when he wrote it.
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it wasn't until I started taking ADHD meds that I realised what laziness actually was.
laziness is when you know you're perfectly capable of doing a task but you can't be bothered!!
laziness is NOT "my entire brain starts up an agonising struggle process that causes tremendous anxiety and unhappiness the moment I even think about doing something that doesn't maintain a steady feed of dopamine"
@astronomerritt when you're so used to the struggle process that both of those are identical
couldn't be me -
(a first-class degree is the best degree result you can get and you only need an average of over 70% for it, as the difficulty is tuned so that achieving this is quite hard.
my final average was 77%. by my fourth year my marks were high enough that I only had to pass my remaining modules (40%+) to still get a first, so that was all I did, because I was BURNED OUT.)
... May I offer you a hug? Because this, all of this.
Got diagnosed just before my 30s, well the first diagnosis really.
Education and I never got along and to this day I still revolt against it whenever I have to. If I follow my own schedule and such, I'll be fine. But brrr.... The traumatic experience of the education system haunts me still.
And yet I work at an university (in IT of course). Go figure
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(a first-class degree is the best degree result you can get and you only need an average of over 70% for it, as the difficulty is tuned so that achieving this is quite hard.
my final average was 77%. by my fourth year my marks were high enough that I only had to pass my remaining modules (40%+) to still get a first, so that was all I did, because I was BURNED OUT.)
@astronomerritt So much pain that could have been avoided.
It breaks my heart that you had to go through this.
I spent the first section of my library studies course crying in Bolton St cemetary, so I understand a bit. -
it wasn't until I started taking ADHD meds that I realised what laziness actually was.
laziness is when you know you're perfectly capable of doing a task but you can't be bothered!!
laziness is NOT "my entire brain starts up an agonising struggle process that causes tremendous anxiety and unhappiness the moment I even think about doing something that doesn't maintain a steady feed of dopamine"
@astronomerritt other kinds of executive function issue feel like "can't be bothered" when you literally can't start the task still though, especially if you've wound up with subconscious coping mechanisms for avoiding realising you have an actual problem
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There's wanting something and being *unable* to do it... And there's not wanting something. There's no lazy.
Lazy is "someone else wanted a thing but you didn't want to do it for them" that's what it means.
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