I'm a 2e college student with quite intense ADHD, executive function challenges, 99.9th percentile verbal scores, a bunch of average scores, and then a few really low ones (math, working memory, etc.). I hope you don't mind if I ramble and intermittently ask questions. Particularly, I'm curious if anyone relates/has a kid who relates/if you have ideas for strategies or mindsets that could help me. Thanks so much!

Okay! So according to the aptitude tests I took in high school, my reading comprehension is somewhere between 158 and 170...they weren't sure because of the test ceiling. BUT here's the catch! I have such challenges with reading for school. It takes me aaaaages to read. Sometimes I'll read a sentence over and over and over again, but can't process any content. My best strategy so far is this: team up with a tutor at my school's writing centre and read the text aloud, then stop to explain it to the tutor. I'm grateful to have this strategy and the nice people who are willing to help me. But god is it slow! Like I'm 100 pages behind in my textbook, but today I spent 1 hour reading this way and got through 4 and a half pages. And this is my fastest, most effective strategy so far! 🤦‍♀️ Does anyone have any other reading suggestions/strategies which are 2e/ADHD specific? Or words of sympathy! I've tried reading aloud by myself, filming myself at work, using Speechify/NaturalReaders/setting timers/alternating laps up a climbing wall and then laps of reading. They all take forever.

I'm getting frustrated that my school work is taking so long to complete. I've recently been avoiding tasks because of how long they will take, so I end up falling far behind. But even when I do my work I end up falling behind too. So I guess I'm losing a bit of motivation at this point in the semester. I counted all of my overdue assignments yesterday, and I have TWENTY-EIGHT of them. Thankfully my professors have been really nice and flexible this semester, but I still feel overwhelmed by the fact that I'm so behind. I don't really know how I can force myself to get stuff done at this point in the semester when there is much more interesting stuff I can do, and I know that I can get extensions because of my accommodations anyway (this situation occurs almost every semester. Ultimately the adrenaline drives me to the finish line in the final week of the term. In fact, last year I managed to bring my grades up from Ds to straight As in the final week of school). But I don't want to live that way anymore. It's too stressful and I want to get my work done in the way that other people seem to be able to. I want to fix my work habits so that I can be more successful, have time to do more of what I love WITHOUT guilt, and I want to know that I could potentially survive and enjoy a more rigorous institution after undergrad.

When I take my medication it sometimes helps, but other times the medication makes me hyperfocus but on the wrong thing (normally writing and recording music). Does this happen to anyone else? Any ideas or solutions?

Is anyone else constantly frustrated by the gap between current performance and the knowledge of the much higher level you could be performing at?

Anyway, I suppose my ultimate, broad question is "how can I change my habits/learning/working processes so that I actually reach this level?

I'm not always like this, but at this particular hour I'm grumpy that my giftedness exceptionality is so weighed down by the LD exceptionality. Do you or your kids ever feel this way? Also, If I'm totally honest, I'm a little frustrated by the (often) non-gifted students at my school who are able to get more work done than me. And I'm also a little frustrated by my kind, amazing gifted friends who I met at the nearby Ivy League university. I hang out with them quite a bit, and I see how easy it is for them to sit down and just BE GIFTED. Only gifted! Imagine....without any other more challenging exceptionalities. I sort of feel like I belong with them. We're on the same intellectual/curiosity wavelength - a beautiful thing that is so unusual to find. And yet I feel like (because of my learning quirks) I am still an outlier - even among these kids who are outliers themselves. I don't know what to do about that.

Except try to become more like them, I suppose? I'd love if I could get work done like them. But how?

I mean, the brain is malleable. We're powerful beings. So how can I make it so that I can fit into an educational institution like them? Aren't there people who have ADHD who have figured out how to perform at extremely high levels where people would never guess that they have ADHD? How did they develop habits that overcome the ADHD? And how can I do the same? I'm willing to put in the work.

I want to be able to do the following:

1. Not fall behind in school due to my lack of discipline + attention span when I sit down to complete work.
2. Not be so avoidant of boring work that needs to get done at some point anyway.
3. Read more efficiently.
4. I wish I could get work done in anticipation of the deadlines so that I never have to feel stressed about catching up like this.
5. Go to bed between 10-11pm instead of 2am or 3am. I want to wake up early and have more time to work and exercise during the day, and then have the luxury of relaxing in the evening. But I enjoy being awake and find it hard to transition into bedtime mode.

Speaking of which....it's 2:42am now...and I should go to sleep!!

Sorry for the ramble, I hope some wise sages can help me solve all my problems in this universe. 😛

Thanks!

P.S: besides all this, I'm doing pretty great. I'm still a really happy person. I'm healthy and strong, I have an awesome family, lovely friends, and if you could see the work I'm doing, you would probably think I'm on a pretty good track. I'm making note of this in case some of you readers are the concerned parents of little 2e kids - concerned parents who want a sense of how their kid might do in college someday. Yep, these things I've outlined above are confusing challenges, so I wanted to rant for once. But just know, my life has gotten better and better, and I like to think that the same will be true for your kids.