I coasted through elementary school and ran up against undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and GAD (it was the 80s and I wasn’t disruptive) once homework started getting real. Had no problem learning the material, aced the tests, struggled with homework and writing assignments. “Not working up to his potential” became “lazy.” I took myself out of the gifted classes in middle school and bailed on “college prep” classes in my sophomore year. By the time I graduated I had failed English three times and wanted nothing to do with college and its endless papers I’d never write. Went to tech school for IT/electronics and did field service work for a bit before getting burned out and laid off. Landed in corporate IT and got real intimate with depression. 25 years later I’m still trying to recover from a lifetime of fighting uphill on hard mode against AuDHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, and the resulting burnout, keenly aware of my shortcomings the entire time while simultaneously fostering a deep seated contempt for the orphan crushing machines that define modern life.
My life would have been a whole lot easier if I had only been sociopathic.
It’s rare, but you ain’t alone. Man, I feel your pain. This happened to me, too, in the 80s. I was undiagnosed ADHD, which was never suspected because at the time it was just “ADD” and I wasn’t hyperactive. I had a lot of difficulty focusing, which affected my ability to learn and got me labeled – yep, how’d you guess? – “lazy” unanimously by all the adults in my life. I still got excellent grades most of the time, which just reinforced the lazy theory.
But wait, it got worse! I hit a wall academically when we started learning more advanced stuff and I wasn’t able to brute-force my way into A’s and B’s, and so I immersed myself in art (as a way to cope, I’m now realizing in hindsight), graduated in the bottom quarter of a prestigious prep school, and graduated 5 yrs later from college with an art degree. And I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I went back! For a second art degree! And I nearly flunked out again and had to reapply and finally graduated again…jfc, this is exhausting having to recount, haha…anyway, fast forward a lot and guess what? Now I’m a programmer. Web developer, specifically.
Never went for the CS degree. I wanted to, but I honestly thought I was stupid and utterly incapable of handling the curriculum - especially the math - so I wrote off that career path entirely. Like, I never gave myself a chance. I’m finally where I feel like I should be, but it took so long to get here, ya know? I wish I knew when I was younger that I wasn’t stupid.
I coasted through elementary school and ran up against undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and GAD (it was the 80s and I wasn’t disruptive) once homework started getting real. Had no problem learning the material, aced the tests, struggled with homework and writing assignments. “Not working up to his potential” became “lazy.” I took myself out of the gifted classes in middle school and bailed on “college prep” classes in my sophomore year. By the time I graduated I had failed English three times and wanted nothing to do with college and its endless papers I’d never write. Went to tech school for IT/electronics and did field service work for a bit before getting burned out and laid off. Landed in corporate IT and got real intimate with depression. 25 years later I’m still trying to recover from a lifetime of fighting uphill on hard mode against AuDHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, and the resulting burnout, keenly aware of my shortcomings the entire time while simultaneously fostering a deep seated contempt for the orphan crushing machines that define modern life.
My life would have been a whole lot easier if I had only been sociopathic.
It’s rare, but you ain’t alone. Man, I feel your pain. This happened to me, too, in the 80s. I was undiagnosed ADHD, which was never suspected because at the time it was just “ADD” and I wasn’t hyperactive. I had a lot of difficulty focusing, which affected my ability to learn and got me labeled – yep, how’d you guess? – “lazy” unanimously by all the adults in my life. I still got excellent grades most of the time, which just reinforced the lazy theory.
But wait, it got worse! I hit a wall academically when we started learning more advanced stuff and I wasn’t able to brute-force my way into A’s and B’s, and so I immersed myself in art (as a way to cope, I’m now realizing in hindsight), graduated in the bottom quarter of a prestigious prep school, and graduated 5 yrs later from college with an art degree. And I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I went back! For a second art degree! And I nearly flunked out again and had to reapply and finally graduated again…jfc, this is exhausting having to recount, haha…anyway, fast forward a lot and guess what? Now I’m a programmer. Web developer, specifically.
Never went for the CS degree. I wanted to, but I honestly thought I was stupid and utterly incapable of handling the curriculum - especially the math - so I wrote off that career path entirely. Like, I never gave myself a chance. I’m finally where I feel like I should be, but it took so long to get here, ya know? I wish I knew when I was younger that I wasn’t stupid.