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currently under a lot of stress due to grad school exams and the general state of the world, obvs. I should be studying but I decided to take a break and put together a small thread with tips and tricks for students struggling w/ adult ADHD:
1. Take a shower. Being stuck at home due to COVID means you might find yourself prioritizing work/school and end up sitting for hours or even a couple of days in the same pair of sweats. If you find yourself feeling grimy, a good scrub and clean clothes will rectify things.
2. Clean your space. The more junk I accumulate on my desk, the less I can focus on work. Keep a small box where you can dump all the knick-knacks till you find the time to put everything away neatly. It's important to be able to spread out (or even cry! - jk) on the desk.
3. Hydrate. I've swapped glasses for mason jars, so that I get more water in me and I don't have to make the trip to the kitchen all time. Maybe prepare a hot drink to sip on simultaneously, e.g tea, chamomile, sage. Coffee is great too, but it dehydrates you!
4. Use the Pomodoro technique: https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/pomodoro-technique. It's a time management technique that has immensely helped me in my adult life. 25 minutes is low commitment, so it feels doable. Here's the tomato timer for your bookmarks bar: https://tomato-timer.com/
5a. Remember that testing SHOULDN'T be stressful. I know that most schools do not subscribe to this ideology, but having worked as a teacher for over a decade, I've come to realize that testing can be such a powerful tool IF you don't make it a contest. Testing should serve the >
5b. student and it shouldn't be a "gotcha!" opportunity for the professor. (People who use trick questions in exams as a way to "trap" students are, simply put, assholes. There's zero pedagogical value in this shit. Don't do it.) Students should take important info away from >
5c. testing, so they can monitor strengths and weaknesses. It should create the motivation to do better next time, not obsess about the grade (irrelevant to the actual level of understanding the curriculum) or even worse, discourage them from trying again.
6. Show yourself a little compassion. We're in the middle of a global pandemic. Everything is terrible. And yet, you're trying to learn something new. That's pretty cool and brave, if I do say so myself. Now go drink your water. Solidarity to all of y'all on the struggle bus.
