You know, I was actually in many ways a terrible student. I was bright enough that I tested well on standardized tests, and engaged enough with literature that I aced essay writing classes, but even there, I usually wrote the papers the morning they were due, getting up at 4 a.m. to crank out a quick first draft and hand it in.
I didn’t learn how to actually study until my Ph.D. program in my 30s, and I remember looking sort of bewildered at my college roommates, how they would just sit on their beds and study. For hours. I didn’t get *how* they could make themselves do that. I mostly didn’t try.
I think I am slowly processing this diagnosis / understanding of how my brain works. I hadn’t really found my ADD upsetting before now, but last night, while talking to Kevin, I kind of lost it a little. Looking back at all those years of half-attention schooling, wondering what my education might have looked like if I’d been able to approach it fully equipped. Maybe I wouldn’t have flunked calculus freshman year. Maybe it wouldn’t have taken me three tries to get into grad school. (I really am stubborn. A reasonable person would probably have given up.)
I spent so many years in temp secretarial jobs, and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t doing better career-wise. Which, okay, maybe makes me a better teacher now, because I have a lot of empathy for my students who are struggling. But still — frustrating. Roads not taken. Lots of what-ifs.
Which are all kind of pointless to dwell on, I know, but maybe I need to sit with the frustration a little bit before I can manage to release it and move on. Going to start meditating again today, though, after a long hiatus. I think I need it.