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?
Lol, your mom isn’t a doctor, and doctors aren’t supposed to diagnose that sort of thing in family.
So what’s your plan to fix your habits then? “I’m just going to do better” is not a plan. Either way, you need to learn how you function and where your personal shortcomings are, and plan around them rather than planning to somehow magically charge through them.
If you have a broken arm, you don’t plan to do pushups.
Do you have an answer to why you’re skipping classes if you know it’s a problem and want to pass? Or is it just a vague “somethings changed”?
If you don’t think you can pass, drop the course and try again next semester. If you still can, and this is a matter of “I don’t know how to force myself out of bed on time, I don’t know why I keep choosing to skip” then you need to see a doctor about this. Maybe it isn’t ADHD, but it is something.
My mother thought she knew better because she was a teacher. She was wrong, I definitively have ADHD and being medicated contributes massively to my quality of life. ADHD is an executive function disorder. Knowing what I need to do but not being able to consistently get myself to do it. The meds don’t make me not me, they make me better able to stay on task and follow through with plans.
Look, I’m not a professional, but this sounds very much like a lot of peoples’ stories of discovering they have it. Sounds similar to mine as well. When you had people around you assisting in imposing structure, you shined. You probably didn’t have much trouble in school to speak of, and now suddenly you’ve hit a wall now that it’s all on you.
That could be normal struggles to adjust to college and the massive leap in personal responsibility, but what you’ve posted sounds quite a bit deeper than that. If you can, go talk to a professional.
Edit: Also, holy fucking shit. I know you probably don’t know any better, but saying this with my full fucking chest:
GETTING DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD AND GETTING MEDICATION TO TREAT THE SYMPTOMS IS NOT A CHOICE TO AVOID FIXING YOUR OWN HABITS AND OFFLOAD PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ONTO MEDICATION. IT IS CORRECTION OF A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE IN THE BRAIN THAT DISRUPTS EXECUTIVE FUNCTION. CORRECTING THAT IMBALANCE ENABLES A PERSON TO BE ABLE TO TAKE THE STEPS TO CORRECT THEIR HABITS.