Long-term Personal Struggles Sabotaging my Semester
Hi. I never uploaded anything to reddit before, only ever read reddit posts occasionally. I never thought of myself to ever reach the point of writing reddit posts and seek help from people who use reddit, but someone said here once that its usually unwell young adults who post in this subreddit, which is fitting enough for someone like me. (If I offended anyone with this paragraph, I'm sorry, I don't know anything better)
To start off; I am a 19F Y2Q2 Engg student with AuDHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have accommodations for my disabilities, including reduced course load (4 courses per semester right now), reduced-distraction environment for exams and midterms, permission to record lectures, x1.5 time multiplier for exams and midterms, and I'm currently meeting with a occupational therapist once a month. I did terrible in my Fall semester because I didn't know I needed accommodations until halfway through midterm season, and I did significantly better in the Winter semester.
But here's the problem. Now that I'm in my 2nd year, I don't even remember how I managed to lock in that Winter semester. I tried all of September to recall, only to find out that I needed to relearn my study habits. I tried several methods, tips, and academic resources to improve my academic performance: Pomodoro, study-crawl (switching locations on campus between study sessions), weekly schedules and to-do lists, timers, reminders, body doubling, the ESSC, Decima Robinson Center, asking for advice from my own therapist, the Faculty in Residence, and a time management coach. However, no matter what I do, and no matter how many times I attempt to reapply the study advice and strategies I know, nothing ever sticks or actually improves my study habits.
My studying sessions aren't even study sessions anymore. They're just doing the online assignments from all 4 of my courses, because it takes me the whole entire day just to complete one. I was told before that I shouldn't stress over them and focus on my bigger priorities, but that doesn't help me at all. What am I actually supposed to do, huh? Completely ignore the assignments and don't do them, time-limit myself to only 1-2 hours to work on them, or just do enough questions to barely pass those assignments (50), which was exactly one of the many reasons WHY I did so terribly in my fall semester? Spoiler alert, Mom, that doesn't work for me. I'm not your old lab boss who got a chemistry engineering degree + 2 more degrees with dyslexia; I DON'T even HAVE dyslexia. Of course, for me, giving up on just a few assignments is going to absolutely demolish my grades and work ethic.
And even That doesn't make any sense. I KNOW these assignments are meant to just be done in a couple hours; not in 24 hours. Unfortunately, I always struggled with this; I always take the double amount of time than I should to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. Doesn't matter if I reduce distractions, give myself an incentive, break down the problem into bite-sized steps, use an award system, or study with another person or a group of people; I physically can't rush anything. So, in reference to my assignment problem, if I tried getting myself to just complete half of an assignment in an hour, at the end of that hour I only have 1-3 questions done, when I have 10-14 questions total in that assignment. That's not enough when they're due weekly, and I started two days before the deadline, because I was busy trying to complete an report or prelab in the previous days I could've gotten a headstart on that same assignment.
Adding onto that list of self-sabotaging habits; I automatically reach for the hard method to solving anything, academic or not; I'm not even aware of it until someone else points it out and shows me the easier way. I don't know how to think outside the box for that easier method, unless someone else has shown me and I REMEMBER. Speaking of which, I have poor memory. I can't quote anything word-to-word people have told me or explain concepts in detail because I forget the details in the most inconvenient times I should remember. It's also why I can't remember what I did in my winter semester to succeed; its all some fuzzy, foggy, blur of a dream in my brain. And worst of all, I have a hard time communicating and listening to people. For instance, if someone gives me a very technical answer to an assignment question verbally, basically 100% of what they told me goes in and out of my ear, so they sound completely foreign to me even IF the concept is familiar to me. I tried asking people to repeat themselves before, but even that didn't work, so I gave up asking people to repeat what they say and try getting them to draw it on paper. And If I have a specific question? It takes me such much effort and strain to put it into the right question. I have a hard time trying to explain this issue, so I did draw it out in the panel below, because I know that I learned how to draw long before I could speak proper sentences around 3/4 years old.
I tried asking my parents so many times for help, but they have nothing but surface-level and phony motivational speeches. I can't even meet with my therapist about this until November, which is far too late for this. I'm also running out of sessions with her, so it won't be long until I have no mental support. I went to the Peer Support Center in the past and they don't have anything to offer but the resources I already tried. Each time I try to reach for campus support, its always not enough to help me, and I can't tell if its both my poor communication skills and their self-preservation tactics/lack of advice or either one. The more I try to reach out for help, the more I get reminded everyday that I am suffering alone and there's no-one who can "save" me from myself. The answer to that is that I have to save myself; but I tried, and obviously, I can't.
I have a best friend who has the same exact disabilities as me and she doesn't have accommodations. In fact, she is in a co-op Materials Engineering Program in her 2nd year, and she is way ahead of her own course materials. However, because I want to head into Electrical (because I hate myself?? I hear it only gets more intensive and more academic heavy in that path, which is disappointing because its the path I'm most interested in due to my interest in electronics and computers), there's only so much she can do to help me. She's my only comparison of someone who has similar problems or used to have the same as me, and yet we are so different. I don't know how she does it. It's painful to see her leagues ahead when I'm stuck here in second qualifying complaining over a measly 4 courses when, where I'm going, I'm expected to have 7 per semester.
My conclusion to this rant; I don't know what to do. I'm completely and utterly in despair. I'm grasping at straws, literally looking for anything from anyone who can help me, because I'm desperate to get my life back together. That's why I'm spilling my personal issues in my university's subreddit where anyone can read this and make me regret ever trying. But I don't even care about that possibility anymore. I just want a real, genuine chance in the engineering field, a chance to make my small town and family proud, a chance to prove that my disabilities and family history of university dropouts doesn't mean that I should give up on graduating and pursuing my dreams. I need a unwavering light at the end of my endlessly dark tunnel.