Adhd Reflection

“ADHD: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.” There are more than three million cases diagnosed each year in the United States. ADHD is something that I have lived with for my entire life, and until recently, I thought that it was a disorder.

For most of my childhood, I was curious about the world and how everything worked. Thus my attention was usually directed all over the place, making it hard to focus. One day in class while the teacher was giving us assignments, I was disassembling a pen and watching cars drive past, whisking up leaves on the side of the road. I wondered, “How are leaves whisked up by a car driving by?” This curiosity consumed my

attention and made it difficult for me to focus on my coursework, leading to bad grades. My parents brought me to a psychologist who diagnosed me with ADHD. She said it was a disorder and prescribed me medication (which was ineffective), so I associated ADHD with being negative.

At times, my inability to focus inhibited my performance at school, I couldn’t pay attention to the teacher, nor sit down and complete my classwork and homework assignments. Even though I wasn’t performing well in school, I was still learning in my spare time where I would learn the materials I needed on my own through books or articles that interest me. Because of this, I still performed well on tests. I realized that if I’m doing something that interests me or something that I’m passionate about, I am able to focus. When I realized my passion for learning, I was able to trick myself to focus on the teacher’s lessons and learn from them. I eventually realized that this was caused by ADHD.

Thanks to this realization, I was able to create a new mindset for myself, from thinking that school was boring to believing that learning in school is exciting.

Even though I still was unable to focus for long durations, I was able to learn more intensely during short durations. This led to another discovery of how I worked. By creating a schedule that revolved around working in short, but intense intervals, I was able to utilize my ADHD to complete my work.

I now realize that the negative traits of ADHD were actually advantages. For example, because of ADHD’s short attention span, I was able to discover many new interest and passions. My mind often jumps to the thought of tennis, My passion of tennis, one of the few activities that I can focus on for hours, fueled me to search on how I can improve on tennis, leading to a fascination with physics. Through physics, I discovered that when a ball hits my racket a specific way, I can improve my performance.

Till only a few months ago, ADHD was a struggle that I had to deal with throughout my life. However, by changing my mindset and turning what I thought were ADHD’s “weaknesses” into strengths, I was not only able succeed in school, but also better appreciate and build upon the passions that were discovered from my so called

disorder.