migumiglorious replied to your post āYou mentioned in your tags on your post that you are in the upswing of...ā
Oh my god "try harder" is what all my teachers and counselor told me for the four year duration of middle school whenever I said I didn't understand the material in class or when I said I couldn't focus and it was h e l l. Honestly I think teachers say that cause they think students are lying, so that they can go "Oh I did my job I didn't ignore them" when in reality they're still doing that. I get close to flipping my shit every time I hear someone say it now.
Try harder has been my mantra through all of my childhood right the way through to my adult years. Try harder.Ā
Like honestly the whole time I was at university I was having a perpetual meltdown, there was no way I could have possibly tried harder. I graduated with a 2:1 with honors (I have no idea how to translate that for the Americans, sorry, itās pretty good though, like not 4.0 good but Up There) and the first thingĀ my professor said to me, with a big ole smile on his face wasĀ ānow imagine what you could have done if youād just tried harderā and all I could hear after that was the Kill Bill siren in my head. Like Iād just coasted my way there, and handāt spent four years torturing myself, crying daily and completely destroying my personal life to try and keep it together long enough to reach graduation day.
And thatās a summary of my entire school life right there, with report cards that sayĀ āJoy is extremely clever but just doesnāt try hard enoughā, ācould be wonderful, if she only tried harder.ā And it took until last year when I was joking with @jeneelestrange that itās odd that I know all the things that I know because Iām not all that clever, and haha isnāt it funny that Iām able to remember these things despite this this and this, and there was this moment of pause which you could hear even over the internet before Jenee very gently nudged me withĀ āhey...uh...that uh...thatās a learning disorder, you have a learning disorderā and I went haha no I just donāt try hard enough, Iām just not all that clever...right? Iām just stupid, right? Why else do I struggle so much with academic things...
Wait, what do you mean ADHD gets overlooked in girls because it presents differently than in boys? What?! What do they mean itās hard?!?! WELL WHY DONāT THEY TRY HARDER?!!











