Forums » Smalltalk » AMA: Attending college for adults w/ disabilities

I've always been a motivated and smart person. I inhaled books like they were air I needed to breathe as a child, I was creative, loved learning new things, was always seeking to mentally stimulate myself and learned to do lots of cool things, liked drawing and programming and other outlets that let me create things, and became fluent in 4 different languages before I was 16 years old. My only problem: I was a huge flake who couldn't stay motivated and whose interests and ability to stay on track jumped so frequently I was swapping them as often as I changed my underwear and socks. I almost failed graduating high school, I tried to attend college no less than 3 times and failed before I made it past year 2 every time, I worked several jobs and was fired from all of them because I couldn't keep up, and I was dealing with depression and anxiety like nobody's business.

I couldn't understand why. I knew I was capable of doing so much, but I had an invisible barrier keeping me back. I'd start strong and hard and give 200%, but couldn't last more than a few days, weeks or months if I was really lucky before it all crumbled again. I hid in games and roleplaying, and I basically didn't see a future no matter what. I was angry, resentful, and didn't like myself much, which also left me open to lots of unhealthy relationships and unhealthy ways of expressing my feelings.

Now, thankfully I have a lot of great friends who stuck with me through this and who helped me strive to be the best me I could be. I went into therapy about 6 years ago, learned all sorts of cool coping mechanisms and began to understand myself better.

In 2017, my disability officer suggested that I could get a diploma and be supported in my journey for employment by attending a school for adults with disabilities. They offered a webdevelopment degree with a guaranteed job placement after obtaining the diploma, and I agreed!

I started in January 2018, strong and full of desire to make it work, but here too I struggled. And it was soul crushing to feel like I couldn't make it even when I had everybody reaching me everything I could possibly need. It was honestly one of the most demotivating experiences of my life.

When I met my now roommate, I realized that we were very alike, and the reason for his problems could be traced back to his ADHD diagnosis. I brought it up with my therapist, and a year later I now have confirmation that I too have most of these struggles because my brain doesn't work the same way. I started medication in July and my life has turned around 180 degrees.

I still struggle and my meds are not magical pills that solve everything, but where before I knew the techniques and couldn't utilize them (well or at all), my meds now open the doors and I get to walk through them on my own with the skills I was taught. I still make mistakes, but I'm now capable of picking myself back up and getting things done.

My final project was a knitting portfolio site that implements a bunch of things (HTML/CSS, JS/JQuery, PHP, MySQL) where you can register an account and upload your projects, with images, notes, and other relevant information. (So kind of like an RPR but for knitting (and soon crocheting!)!!) It was a 2 person project that I ended up doing solo because my project partner was too ill to work on it, although I did get some help from a friend who airdropped in some emergency code when I ran into a planning issue and realized I'd noted down the wrong date for my presentation. I aced my final and began my internship the next day to manage a local business's website!

The past week I've been working hard on implementing more features into this project with plans of actually making it go live and running it.