Title: Indian 2e student in a tier-1 college — ADHD has made me question myself a lot
Title: Indian 2e student in a tier-1 college — ADHD has made me question myself a lot
Hey everyone.
I’m an Indian college student at a tier-1 institution, and I finally decided to join an ADHD community instead of just lurking.
I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I’m also 2e. For most of my life, I was the kid people considered gifted or unusually capable. I’ve done very well academically, competed seriously in chess, performed well in competitive/debate environments, and have always been the kind of person who knows an absurd amount of random information.
I genuinely love learning. I can get obsessed with something and spend hours going down rabbit holes about science, history, geopolitics, finance, computers, or basically anything that catches my interest.
That's probably why college has been such a strange experience.
I’m in a highly competitive environment surrounded by extremely capable people, and my CGPA is significantly lower than what I expected from myself.
And the frustrating part is that I don't feel intellectually incapable.
There are subjects where I can understand things very quickly. Sometimes I look at something complicated and think, "That's it?"
But then I'll have something completely manageable that requires consistent effort and somehow fail to execute.
The difference between what I know I can do and what I actually manage to do consistently has become one of the biggest sources of frustration in my life.
Before college, being intelligent and being successful felt almost directly connected.
Now I've learned that intelligence doesn't automatically give you executive function.
And that has been a brutal realization.
My working memory has also become something I struggle with a lot. I can understand something perfectly and later feel like someone deleted the information from my brain. I sometimes forget words while speaking despite knowing exactly what I want to say. I can struggle with pronunciation or spelling of words that I have used and understood for years.
That one especially messes with my head because I know my vocabulary and general knowledge are good. So when I suddenly can't retrieve a basic word, I start questioning myself.
There have been times when I've genuinely wondered whether something is wrong with my intelligence, even though objectively I know that's not the problem.
Being Indian adds another layer to this.
Academic achievement has been a huge part of my identity. I grew up being seen as the "smart kid," so struggling academically now doesn't just feel like getting a bad grade. Sometimes it feels like I'm failing at something that was supposed to be one of the things I was good at.
My parents are actually supportive, which I'm very grateful for. They're not the kind of parents who just scream at me for getting bad grades.
The problem is that they don't really understand ADHD.
They know I have it, but I don't think they fully understand what executive dysfunction, working-memory problems, inconsistent attention, or 2e actually look like from the inside.
So sometimes I have to explain why something that looks ridiculously easy from the outside can feel disproportionately difficult to me.
And I don't blame them for that. Honestly, I didn't understand it myself for a long time.
I also think being 2e makes this harder because people see the ability first.
I've achieved enough in my life that it is easy for people to think, "He's clearly capable, he'll figure it out."
And I usually do figure things out eventually.
But the amount of unnecessary struggle behind that isn't visible.
I've had periods where I've felt isolated, frustrated with myself, and genuinely confused about why I can perform at a very high level in some situations but struggle with things that seem completely basic in others.
I'm trying to stop interpreting that inconsistency as a personal failure and actually understand how my brain works.
I'm hoping this community helps me do that.
Would love to hear from other 2e people, especially those from similar academic/competitive backgrounds. How did you deal with suddenly having your intelligence stop being enough to compensate for executive-function problems?
And for those whose families are supportive but don't really understand ADHD — how did you help them understand what you're actually dealing with?
Glad to finally be here.