The good, the bad, and the ugly. Dealing with dyslexia and ADHD as a student

The title of this post is quite apt for many reasons. My dissertation was on the films of Sergio Leone, one of my favourite directors of all time and a dissertation that failed on every level.

Twenty years later, I don’t want to have the issues that I encountered back then, and whilst some were beyond my control, in retrospect, there were so many things I could have done better.

The good

Unlike twenty years ago, where I was just a basic student with a student’s knowledge of film and film making. I come into this Masters's degree with years of experience and knowledge. In my head is all the information that I have gathered from Twenty years of photography and running a photography business.

I am also able to look back at all I did wrong when I was at university and do my best not to make the same mistakes. Certainly, I am not the timid individual polite and forgiving of mistakes to a fault that I was back then. In fact, I have probably gone far too much the other way and in the second term I need to learn from my new mistakes.

In many ways, I am much more motivated and am trying to be more organised. I know that I have limitations and I have to try to work around them, otherwise everything is going to come crashing down around me.

The bad

One of the biggest issues with ADHD, is getting the motivation to do stuff. Particularly stuff I don’t want to do. So whilst I know I have to write the essay, getting in the right mindset, is proving to be hard. I am almost ready to start writing my essay but one thing is holding me back.

I find reading hard. Particularly, technical reading, where I have to find out information. Unfortunately, it is made harder because, whilst there is a lot of information on part of what I want to write about. The main core has very little, so I have to try and scour various books and journals to find that information, and for the most part, it really isn’t there.

The ugly

What is making things worse is I really need someone standing over me. So I don’t get distracted. When I first went to college 25 years ago. There weren’t the distractions that there is now. The internet wasn’t in its infancy. It took ages to do anything, and I was able to concentrate on the work I was doing much more easily.

I am a YouTube addict. Some people are addicted to drugs, some alcohol, for me it is information. I can spend hours watching videos, with each one being an information hit. I know I should be reading for the essay but all those little videos, on cameras, guns, aeroplanes, cars, cinema and a host of other things are much more interesting.

Finding the right headspace to do the reading and writing is proving very hard. I have given myself a deadline of the 3rd of January to finish the essay. Unfortunately, it is a false deadline because the hand-in date isn’t until the 26th of January. There is no danger of me failing if I don’t complete the essay by the 3rd, so I haven’t go that hit of dopamine that I need to get motivated.

I know that, if I don’t get started the work I will end up producing a terrible essay, which will be similar to the quality of my dissertation twenty years ago.