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It's interesting looking back on the
last two and a quarter-ish years of school and seeing how I've
changed since I got here. Without my parents - my mother in
particular - around to crack the whip, I've gotten steadily lazier.
Even modest amounts of homework have become difficult to finish.
Part of this is undoubtedly the lack of structure (“no goofing off
until your homework is finished!”), but I suspect it's also due to
the abundance of distractions that didn't exist when I was in high
school. The Internet has evolved over the years, and I find myself
wasting more and more time on web-sites like Facebook Wikipedia, and
Digg.com, which constantly provide fresh material for my to fritter
away my time with. I can't say this is entirely a bad thing – Digg
in particular has made me much more aware of what's going on in the
world. I have to say, without Web 2.0, I doubt I would have seen the
sharp increase in my computer literacy that the last few years have
born witness to.
But I digress. My self-discipline has
waned since I got to college...looking back at the days of high
school marching band and its insane time crunches, I have no idea how
I did it. The thought of going to school, then practice, then coming
home and taking a short dinner break before tackling all of my
homework in one shot seems impossible to me now. At best I can work
for 15-30 minutes before I have to
go see who's updated their Facebook profile and what breaking news
(or funny video) has hit the Digg front page. Even when I actually
sit down to work, it's hard to keep my thoughts from skipping off in
another direction. That last is nothing new – I am
attention deficit, after all.
More and more I realize how badly I need rigid structure to control
the disorder. It's reached a point that I'm experimenting with using
ritalin again, lest my GPA suffer.
If I can actually
motivate myself to do it, it might be worthwhile to document how my
personality differs on and off the ritalin. After being back on it
for only an hour, I can already see that my thoughts are more
structured and coherent. I still go off on random sidetracks, but
they're not as frequent. I feel like my sense of humor isn't there
as strongly, but that may be because I'm not in the mood or because
I'm not around other people at the moment. Time will tell more on
that one. I'm curious to see how that will be affected – I've
often wondered how much of my joking comes from the hyperactivity
aspect. It does seem like my more humorous side didn't really
surface until the last couple of years of high school, when I stopped
taking ADHD meds on a daily basis.
Those are only the
obvious things, however. What about some of the more subtle effects
of the disorder? ADD has been linked to increased
aggression...something I can see in myself, but most people probably
can't. I can mainly see it in situations where I don't anticipate
any consequences from letting that side of me run loose, which
usually means it typically only shows up in my thoughts and when I'm
playing a video game.
One of the most
obvious changes I can already see is in my writing – my Xanga posts
are usually an almost arbitrary smattering of whatever comes to mind,
written in the most awkward of styles as I throw in the first word to
pop into my head that says what I want to think, not bothering to
make sure it fits the style I've been writing in. Reading over past
posts makes me cringe as I switch from using a casual, almost Instant
Messenger style of writing to a more formal prose with higher
vocabulary and no contractions. The subject changes abruptly,
sometimes even in mid-sentence. Looking back over this post, I see a
detailed description of a single event in my life, with only one
side-track in the first paragraph. In terms of structure, it looks
almost like my tightly organized formal writing, but with more laid
back language. An improvement, I think. We've moved from the
absolute dregs of my writing to something that at least makes sense.
Still not something I'd care to show off as a fine example of my work
though.
In any case,
speaking of ADD, this has been a lovely distraction, but Thursday
brings a major test and the due date for my first dreaded exegesis.
Leave me some comments so I'll have yet another way to distract
myself.
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