Problems of the mind... effecting work

[KenWittlief]

one possible problem might be your ego. You come across as if you have a very high opinion of yourself (didnt need to study, got A's on tests, too busy to do homework...)

which might be true, you might be highly intelligent, and your ego is afraid of failing, so you dont really engage yourself in your work.

Its a form of rationalization - if you dont REALLY try hard (skip the homework, put it off, wait till the last minute) and you fail a test or a subject, then in a way your ego can stay intact "well yeah I failed but I wasnt really trying, so it doesnt mean anything".

I think that is the first thing you need to put behind you. Stop 'playing' college and start being a serious college student. Look at yourself in the mirror and face up to the fact that you are not the smartest person in the world - you might give this college stuff everything you have, and still fail at it.

Accept that! accept failure is a possibility - then resolve to put your self to the real test and let the cards fall where they will. Then at least if you do fail, you will know you gave it your best shot, instead of just dabbling at college.

If you do have ADD, then you should definately talk to your doctor and see if you can get a perscription for ridaline or some other appropraite type of medication. People with ADD are like hunters living in a world full of farmers. The farmers set the schedule, make the rules, design the courses, write the tests, for other other farmers. Its no problem for a farmer to put a small hole in the ground, drop a seed in it, pat dirt over it, and then do the next seed, and the next seed, 10,000 times over for a week straight

but a hunter cant stand to do one thing at a time, or to do the same repetative thing over and over. A hunter needs to be aware of everything at the same time, your field of view, sounds, scents, temperature, the ground beneight your feet, the wind direction, time of day, weather - when you are hunting these things are not distractions, they are essential. Being able to process multiple inputs simultainiously is not a disorder, its a gift.

But unfortunately, our educational system is not set up for people with these aptitudes, its setup for farmers.

But there is another aspect to ADD that can be a benefit. The ability to focus on one task of interest for long periods of time. Most people have an attention span of 40 minutes. People with ADD can hyperfocus on a task for hours or days at a time.

So one thing you can do to get over the problems you mentioned - get past the fact that you have to take courses that you dont find especially intereseting, and jump into them like they are the most important thing in the world to you. This is what you have been doing (in a way) up to now, except you put the course off until the day before the exam, then you study it all in one night.

Do the same thing, but do it up front. When you start a new class, sit down and read the whole text book in a day or two, make the course your obsession. Hyperfocus on it from the start, and then the rest of the class will spend the semester catching up to you.