I had my appointment for Learning Disability screening today. It took quite a while and was mostly tedium. However, in the end, the counselor told me that I had no learning disability that he could discern. I was off the charts for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, however.
One of the Facebook quizzes they had me take was a CAARS test that apparently tests for just that type of disorder. I was way above a standard deviation for the first type of ADHD (A) and then I was in the top 99.9% for another (E). He put it this way…if we went to the quad and asked 1000 random people the same questions, maybe one of them would end up with results like that in the E category. I think it was ADHD-Inattentiveness.
Side note: Learning disabilities are apparently characterized by extreme discrepancies in standardized test scores between subjects. And yes, they look at your test scores. Real rigorous.
No, these labels were not terribly well thought out. Learning disabilities are characterized by your ability to absorb and regurgitate information in a school setting, which, in my opinion, is a small subset of what learning is really about. Furthermore, the counselor was trying to convince me that ADHD is a bad thing because it hinders performance. However, performance in this case is a measure of social expectations in certain settings. I think it’s much more important to find out what works for you, personally, rather than rely on psychiatric labels to blame for your so-called unproductivity.
For instance, this last summer was perhaps the most productive time in my life. I was exercising, working on skills, reading, sleeping regularly. Setting and meeting my own goals. It’s just that the environment I’m in right now is not conducive to what I would call productivity. There are lots of distractions.
The fact that I just spent ten minutes texting people and lost my train of thought is damning evidence. What the fuck was I saying?
Anyway, the upshot is…I don’t give a fuck about what society wants me to do. My friends and my family are what matters. As for my productivity, I could write a book a month that nobody ever read and I could be happy. To me, that would be productive. Productive, for me, is what I say it is in certain situations. It just so happens that schoolwork doesn’t happen to jive with my mission. School as a whole is beginning to slough off of me like a discarded lizard skin. Or, if one were to be less grotesque about it, a cocoon, from which I am emerging as a beautiful butterfly.
I think that was the most self-referentially emasculating statement I’ve made all day.
A day is coming in which it is no longer the individuals who must accommodate the system above them, but a day in which it is the system which accommodates to the individual. Today, we have a system where if you don’t fit in, if you are beyond a standard deviation in certain aspects, you are “abnormal,” (in itself a questionable label because who, in the end, is normal?) and must take medications to fix yourself, or be given special privileges in order to “catch up” with the rest of society.
If I can do anything about it, this day will partly be ushered in because of me. A day in which the special are celebrated and have their place, not just “in society,” but wherever they damn well please, and society can either wake up and realize that there’s more than one way to go about things, or society can go fuck itself.
Technology will play a major role – in fact, is playing a major role, and is rewriting the rules on society as we speak. No one needs to be alone if they don’t want to be – there are always people out there with the same problems and personality quirks. We were meant to be celebrated for our differences.
No more learning disabled. Learning is Enabled. And I want to help you enable it.
A few more thoughts on ADHD:
- Apparently, ADHD is one of the few mental health disorders that has a higher mortality rate than average. ADHD kiddies speed in their cars, don’t pay attention, and tend to have horrible things happen as a result. Also, they tend not to plan out meals, go grocery shopping, and just in general neglect their nutrition.
- The psychiatrist mentioned a neurological basis for ADHD. Something about dopamine. I will be looking into it.
- “Adults with ADHD,” by Russell Barkeley
- ADHD is sectioned into “Inattentive,” and “Impulsive.” ADHD-Inattentive seems to be mostly “lost-in-your-head” sort of problems and AHDD-Impulsive seems to be “so hyper I can’t obey social norms.” Which are great and all, but it wouldn’t warrant being called a disorder in my book.
- I didn’t come out of that session thinking, “that explains why I am how I am!” I came out thinking, “yes, I match some of those descriptions, and that’s what psychiatrists would call me, but this in no way defines me. If I can’t overcome my own mental deficiencies, then I must not want to change enough to change, and I definitely don’t want drugs to ‘treat’ my personality. I love who I am. I love life. I’m exuberantly, joyously abnormal, and loving it.”
- That’s probably not exactly what I thought, but something along those lines.
- This post has taken me a long-ass time because I kept losing my train of thought, talking to other people, and texting. It’s tempting to say stuff like, “oh, it’s because I’m ADHD,” now that I have official backing on that label, but I don’t want this to define me in any way, shape or form.
