The Committee Meeting

Yay! HUGE feeling of relief!

If you couldn't tell already, the committee meeting went well. Really really well, in fact  :)

The day started out not so great...

The meeting was at 2:00 down the hall from my lab at school.  I spent most of the time before the meeting putting the final touches on a document summarizing my current research progress and outlining everything yet to be done, as well as a timeline of my time in grad school.

For my grad school timeline, I documented, by semester, my courses, research activities, grant applications, meetings and workshops I've attended, professional service activities, and, finally, a few notes about when I was diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety, and some of the major life events that, combined with my feelings of inadequacy and "overwhelm," served to make the depression worse, even as I was trying so hard to get back on track.

My main purpose in putting all of that together in a nice, neat, one-page table, was to show my committee that I had started off strong, and, therefore, have the ability and drive to earn my PhD, despite a noticeable lack of evidence from the past year and a half...

Okay, so back to the story...

I intended to wake up today at 6am, but managed to sleep through two alarms, and finally got out of bed just after 7am.  I might have slept a little longer if it weren't for my fantastic boyfriend, who made sure I was up as close to on time as he could, and did it gently, knowing all too well that, despite years of practice, I don't do well when I wake up in a panic...

After making coffee, I headed straight for the computer, intending to get right to work.  Just seven hours until the meeting...

I checked my email, and decided I had a few moments to check a few blogs before getting to work... uh oh.  For the details on how that turned out, see my earlier post, "I love mornings".

I finally managed to focus around 10am (with help from Vyvanse and coffee) on actually getting some work done, just 4 hours before the meeting...

I put the final finishing touches on the meeting documents right around 1:00, still in my pajamas and not yet showered.  Just an hour before the meeting.

For those of you doing the math, the ratio of non-work to work this morning was exactly 1:1 <<sigh>>

Thankfully, I remembered to put on deodorant, because I left my apartment at 1:52, hopped on my bike, and pedaled furiously towards the biology building.  It was a bit muggy out, and I arrived at school, slightly sweaty and completely out of breath, with just two minutes to spare.

I still had to print the documents I had worked so hard on... uh oh.

I had stored the files on our lab computer (I can access the hard drive from my home computer).  I pulled up the documents, and clicked "print."  Red flashing light on the printer.  I loaded more paper, open and closed the cover, rattled the ink cartridge a bit, but it still wouldn't work - it thought it was still out of paper, and I didn't have time to figure out why...

Okay, no problem, I thought, I'll just grab the documents from the computer at my desk and send them to the printer down the hall.

My computer froze up. Crap.

So, already a few minutes late, I go down the hall to the common computers, which happen to be in the same room as the meeting.  Luckily, I had emailed the documents to myself, just in case.  After fumbling around Office 2010 (never seen it before, ugh) trying to figure out how to print, I FINALLY got the documents to print (big internal sigh of relief, considering it was the last of my printing options, short of begging to use somebody else's computer).

Printing difficulties cost a total of 12 minutes.  Not a great way to start a meeting where my goal is to convince my committee that, despite recent evidence to the contrary, I am a smart, capable, and organized (okay, stop laughing... ) graduate student deserving of being allowed to continue working on my PhD.  Woo hoo.

Luckily, everything went better from there...

First order of business: come out of the closet with the ADHD, depression, and anxiety, and then assure my committee that the depression and anxiety are under control (mostly, anyway), and that I am developing the necessary skills to minimize the negative impacts of my ADHD.  I also pointed out that the positive qualities associated with ADHD will ultimately be an asset in my teaching and research career.

Mission accomplished :)

All four of them were very understanding, and two of my committee members even went out of their way to let me know that they think I am smart and capable and that I have already accomplished quite a lot... wow!

So, I get to continue working, yay!

I have another meeting in November to review my actual progress compared to my predicted progress.  I feel good about that - it's always good to have a deadline in the not-too-distant future.

HUGE feeling of RELIEF!!!

Leaving the meeting, I was elated, thinking how nice it would be to just relax this evening.

Then I remembered I still have prep to do for teaching tomorrow... Oh well.

But I do finally get to take an evening off tomorrow, and I sure am going to enjoy it!  For the first time in a while I am not feeling ashamed and inadequate about my lack of any measurable progress over the past year and a half, and that feels GREAT!

I love mornings

I love mornings.  Sitting on the patio, laptop on my lap, sipping coffee, and listening (sort of) to the news on NPR... The neighborhood is relatively quiet, it is just me and my cat - distractions are at a minimum.

I should be preparing for my committee meeting.  And I will, after I write this post, and check the blogs I'm following, and do a load of laundry, and... yes, I am procrastinating.  I shouldn't be. I can already feel that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach that happens when I look at the clock and think, "Crap! Where did the last hour go?"

Procrastinating is bad, or at least it makes me feel bad. But I do it anyway. I make deals with myself. I will only do non-work related stuff until the clock hits 7:30. Then 7:45. Then 8:00. <<sigh>> It is all so familiar.  I am hoping that by admitting to it here that maybe I will not do this today.

But, this post started out positive - I do love mornings. They are so full of hope. The day is still ahead, and maybe, just maybe, today, I won't get to the end of the day and wonder where all the time went... maybe today I will get to the end of the day and say, "Wow! I got a lot done today!"  I am hopeful.

Quick update: It is 9:54am and there it is, where did the last two and half hours go?!?  Crap.  I did it again.  I kept thinking "just five more minutes," but apparently I did that about 30 times in a row. <<sigh>>  I really am going to get to work now.  Self-imposed block on surfing the internet.  Starting now.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Random pet peeve...

Have you noticed that the advertisements for ADHD drugs tend to scroll or blink or otherwise make themselves impossible to ignore?   Funny and irritating all at the same time <<sigh>>

Committee meeting tomorrow!

I have a committee meeting tomorrow... my first since passing my prelims in December 2008. I'm going to have to explain my lack of progress over the past year (actually, a little over a year), and ask them for another chance. My advisor has told me that people inside the department have suggested that I should be 'let go' with a masters degree, and not given the chance to continue working on my PhD...

So I'm pretty sure I'm going to tell them about the depression and the ADHD. I'm just not sure how to do it, and I'm nervous as hell.

Best-case scenario, they all (4 of them) understand that depression and ADHD are the result of chemical imbalances in my brain that do not affect my intelligence and are not the result of personal short-comings, and that I can learn to manage my ADHD and finish my dissertation.

Worst-case scenario (or one of them anyway), is that they see the whole thing as an excuse and don't think ADHD is "real."

That's all for now... I just needed to get that off my chest and out into the world. For now, I should get back to work; there's so much to do before tomorrow, and I have to teach today, and have a meeting with my advisor at 3:00. Lots to do before then!

Funny video

Found this via a post on ADDer World - enjoy!

Video link: Adult-activated ADHD

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6oHBG3ABUJU&vq=medium

Losing track of time...

I'm experimenting with an old timekeeping & scheduling system I learned while I was going through the diagnosis... so far it has worked a bit, but has mostly over the past few days starkly pointed out to me just how easily I lose track of time while I am supposed to be working... something I already knew, but at a more abstract level.

Here's how it works - I make a list of things to do, like usual, but I also estimate the times I will be doing the things on my list, and then I keep track of the actual time I spend doing various tasks...  for example, yesterday, I was supposed to be working on research on the computer (you might be able to see this one coming already).  I allotted 45 minutes out of every hour for working, something I thought was reasonable, allowing myself 15 minutes out of every hour to do something else, like put a load of laundry in or check email.  Well, at the start of one of these 15 minute segments I checked my email, clicked on a link in the email, and suddenly it was an hour and 15 minutes later!  Note to self, Vyvanse helps with focus, but I still have to decide what to focus on...

The end result was that out of 10 hours, I was supposed to have worked on my project for about 7 hours, but really only spent a little over 4 hours on it... I will, as usual, try to do better today, and speaking of that, my 15 minutes of non-project time is over, so back to work!

Finally...

I was diagnosed with ADHD sometime in 2008 I think, at the late age of 38, but more on that later...

Sometime around December 2009 I was looking for blogs about being in graduate school and having ADHD but came up empty handed, so I decided to start one myself.  Well, here it is, June 2011, a year and a half later, and I'm finally doing it.  Ahhhh, life with ADHD... lol.  

The web is littered with blogs by people with ADHD that start out strong and then eventually become neglected - I'm hoping this one will not end up being one of those... 

A little bit about me...

I'm a 41 year old graduate student with ADHD.  Despite both of my brothers being diagnosed with ADHD, the thought that I might have the same condition didn't occur to me until I was in graduate school.  Maybe I'll go into the details sometime in a later post, but for now I'll just say that my growing frustration with my own procrastination and increasingly apparent inability to focus at critical moments sent me packing to the school counseling center to figure out what the problem was.  

The initial diagnosis was severe clinical depression and generalized anxiety, with the additional possibility of ADHD just to round things out a bit.  The counseling center sent me to the school clinic to see about meds for the depression, and we set up the first in a series of appointments that would eventually lead to the ADHD diagnosis.  

I'll fill in the blanks in later posts, but the short story is that the meds for both the depression and the ADHD made a HUGE difference!  Even so, it has been, and continues to be, a long and sinuous path through graduate school (because, of course, the meds don't solve anything, but they sure do help). And so I decided to start a blog with the hope that it will help me stay on track with my degree and also connect with other people struggling through graduate school while dealing with all of the challenges and rewards that go along with having an ADHD brain (and depression and anxiety too, woo hoo!).

I'm not sure what all will end up spilling onto these pages (screens?), but I envision some sort of combination of grad school and life experiences mostly related to the ADHD and other "mental disorders" (I really dislike the term "disorder" by the way, but that's what they call them, so oh well).  What I would really like is to hear from other people with similar experiences... 

When I was first diagnosed with ADHD I had an overwhelming feeling of relief coupled with confusion, and I will no doubt expand on that in a later post...  What I found most helpful at the time, and continue to find most helpful, is reading and hearing about other peoples' experiences.  So, I hope that this blog helps other people as much as I hope it will help me, with getting through the day to day stuff, with understanding how my brain works, and with figuring out how to work with my 'quirks' so that I can do the things I really want to do without screwing up too much along the way...

You can expect the posts to be sporadic, I'm sure there will be days when I post more than once, and other times when I go a few days without posting anything at all, some posts might only be a sentence, and others might test the limits of focus for my fellow ADHDers with their length and rambling nature, but I will try to not go more than a few days without posting something... that's the intention anyways.

I will eventually put some sort of a picture up, and personalize the rest of it (colors and such), but for now, as much as I would really love to hyperfocus on that, I'd better get back to what I'm really supposed to be doing, which is preparing for my committee meeting coming up in a week (yikes!)...

 

In the meantime, leave a comment... especially if you have ADHD and are struggling (or have struggled) through graduate school, but really I would love to hear from anybody who happens across this blog and finds it interesting... 

Thanks!