Right now, I’m a 2nd year student in university doing Computer Science.
In my later years of high school and first few years in university, my parents (especially my dad), have been very much forcing me to study and getting yelling at me over a single bad mark. While it did give me good marks, it made me so stressed out that one day I just decided that I couldn’t handle it anymore and resisted. At the time I also thought that if my parents kept on managing me like that, then I’ll never really learn how to be truly independent and take control of myself.
After that, they did leave me alone. However, the next semester after that, I failed a course - something which has never happened before. I told myself that it was just a hard course at the time.
This semester, I have lowered my course load from 5 courses to 3. However, I’m always missing or being late to my classes (either it’s because of bad time management, having to rely on the bus, or I just don’t bother to show up, or I just woke up too late because of my sleep problems) and have a lot of missing quizzes/assignments. I also have never managed to pay attention during lectures and get myself to study as much as I need to and do my assignments on time (and no, I’ve found that rewarding myself doesn’t really work). I just got my 1st midterm mark back and it was a 50%. I fear that this semester may go the same as the last one.
Over the last few semesters, because my dad has stopped forcing me to wake up at 7 AM, my sleep schedule has gone terrible. For example, yesterday I got to bed at 5 AM and get up at 2 PM and if I need to be at school by 11 AM, I get to bed only at around 2 - 3 AM and wake up at 9 - 10 AM and am usually late. Despite my efforts to force myself to go to bed earlier, I’ve failed. I believe the only thing that can make me go to bed and wake up on time is if either someone else was forcing me to or I had a completely unavoidable and super important reason to which I’d even be willing to sacrifice sleep for (and most days I just don’t feel like that). I’ve tried melatonin and setting an alarm clock far away from my bed and it didn’t really help.
I just feel like I really suck and am ashamed of what I’ve become. Any advice?
There’s no shame in disabilities, and no shame on getting things to help you, for instance people don’t realize that glasses are a disability ad product for people who have bad eyesight which yes is a disability that society has helped people with and not shamed. Having ADHD is not a evil or bad thing it’s part of who someone is, it’s getting aid to help yourself, like glasses to bad eyesight, medication is to adhd and there’s absolutely no shame in having such disability. See a therapist and others who can help. There’s no shame in seeing a eye doctor so why be ashamed of seeing a therapist? Just different disabilities with different care needed.
Always remember you are worth who you are regardless of eye sight or brain chemistry.