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?
Again, I’m not a doctor. I’m not sure if your mom is. But IF ADHD is a factor, trying to simply “fix” yourself might be a bit like saying, “I’d rather not wear glasses and just work on my vision skills instead.” If relevant, the executive part of your brain would literally be functioning differently, it’s not that you’re lazy, a failure, etc. And taking medicine wouldn’t change who you are or lessen your worth any more than needing glasses would. You need what you need.