I was diagnosed at the end of my PhD when I couldn't write my dissertation for more than a few minutes at a time. Before then I was relatively successful in graduate school and developed strategies to compensate along the way. I probably wasted 2-3 hours a day online, and the only way I got things done was to force myself to get up and run an experiment or fix something in lab when I noticed myself wasting time. It was hard writing papers but I got it done 10 minutes at a time before getting distracted/unmotivated.
I went to the student counseling service and met with a counselor and then a psychiatrist to get diagnosed. They were incredibly helpful and prescribed medication. Amphetamines help tremendously with focus, I was able to finish writing my dissertation with much less stress/anxiety and I am much more productive as a postdoc than I was as a graduate student because now I'm actually able to focus for extended periods of time.
I am posting this anonymously here because I am on the job market this year and do not know if it would affect my chances if I make public on Twitter that I have ADHD.
looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20
I was diagnosed at the end of my PhD when I couldn't write my dissertation for more than a few minutes at a time. Before then I was relatively successful in graduate school and developed strategies to compensate along the way. I probably wasted 2-3 hours a day online, and the only way I got things done was to force myself to get up and run an experiment or fix something in lab when I noticed myself wasting time. It was hard writing papers but I got it done 10 minutes at a time before getting distracted/unmotivated.
ReplyDeleteI went to the student counseling service and met with a counselor and then a psychiatrist to get diagnosed. They were incredibly helpful and prescribed medication. Amphetamines help tremendously with focus, I was able to finish writing my dissertation with much less stress/anxiety and I am much more productive as a postdoc than I was as a graduate student because now I'm actually able to focus for extended periods of time.
I am posting this anonymously here because I am on the job market this year and do not know if it would affect my chances if I make public on Twitter that I have ADHD.