hello all, this is my first post and draft. i understand it will have a lot of mistakes and so don't hold back because of my feelings. all help is appreciated. thank you.
Living with attention deficit disorder is all but easy. It is hard to pay attention when your thoughts are continuously grazing a stampede of opposing thoughts; it is as if I was ordained to a fallen career in which attention prevailed in the four quarters of a classroom where I would fail. The classroom setting has always challenged me primarily with the task of remaining motionless in my seat. This task of compelling my body to remain at rest only excited my already excited thoughts. In a single setting, with time, these thoughts kept amounting every second, until they had to be released in the form of gestures that would deem me as a disrespectful student. At parent conferences, my parents were told many times that I would speak when not spoken to, asks to many questions, and that I was a distraction to the class. There was no hope. All of the qualities I possessed were those that were not welcome in the classroom setting, fortunately, with time, my excessive energy would be converted from random to determinate processes. It was not until my first calculus course that I found that my qualities were encouraged in students. No longer were my questions considered to be negative, for the reason that math was eager to prove its reasoning. It was in this class that my inquisitive behavior was encouraged. I found that I would focus on the goal of the problem, and was able to synthesize and optimize the many approaches that my thoughts were directing at me at every step of the problem. It was as if this encouragement activated the correct foundation on which my energy could be displaced onto free of negative connotations, however it is not possible to believe that this illness had just disappeared. Math had only redirected my energy from "destructive" to "constructive". This trait was no longer one that hindered my academic development; it had proved to be an adaptation. That point between inquiry and amazement, that was constantly present, is full of reasoning to prove each step. This logic math had given me made me more critical of my illness; I knew from math that precision at the microscopic level is anything but minimal in terms of the changes that it can create when not careful. Having this weapon in my arsenal as I walked into my chemistry class was crucial in the way I interpreted his beginning statement, "the atom is responsible for everything". At this instant, I felt relieved of a great burden that was my past academic failure, it was here that I thought, "this removes an unknown from the list" there was no longer that empty thought that lived within that concluded with a reasonless answer, because of math and the advancements in chemistry, I knew I could quantitatively search for the answer to the surplus of neurotransmitters exciting my senses. Not only could I distinguish between a surplus or a deficiency of a neurotransmitter, but I could compute a more precise approximation to the root of the problem. My life has read to me clearly that the blame does no reside in the child because that driving force is outside of his/her will. Because of this realization, I have ironically become more patient as a tutor to the student that does not quickly understand the concept. In all their eyes I see a different manifestation of mine, and, not only the students, but also we as a population are in need of the proper direction. It is easy to place a blanket of general symptoms of ADD over many children, and prescribe drugs that can have a life long negative effect on a child that was just exhibiting normal "child behavior". The line between a hyper child and ADD is very minute, but is crucial to the diagnosis of this disorder. Through the biological approach to psychology, I aim to form a bridge between behavioral and biological psychology that assigns a quantitative approximation to a behavior, and help rebuild hope in the future of these children.
Living with attention deficit disorder is all but easy. It is hard to pay attention when your thoughts are continuously grazing a stampede of opposing thoughts; it is as if I was ordained to a fallen career in which attention prevailed in the four quarters of a classroom where I would fail. The classroom setting has always challenged me primarily with the task of remaining motionless in my seat. This task of compelling my body to remain at rest only excited my already excited thoughts. In a single setting, with time, these thoughts kept amounting every second, until they had to be released in the form of gestures that would deem me as a disrespectful student. At parent conferences, my parents were told many times that I would speak when not spoken to, asks to many questions, and that I was a distraction to the class. There was no hope. All of the qualities I possessed were those that were not welcome in the classroom setting, fortunately, with time, my excessive energy would be converted from random to determinate processes. It was not until my first calculus course that I found that my qualities were encouraged in students. No longer were my questions considered to be negative, for the reason that math was eager to prove its reasoning. It was in this class that my inquisitive behavior was encouraged. I found that I would focus on the goal of the problem, and was able to synthesize and optimize the many approaches that my thoughts were directing at me at every step of the problem. It was as if this encouragement activated the correct foundation on which my energy could be displaced onto free of negative connotations, however it is not possible to believe that this illness had just disappeared. Math had only redirected my energy from "destructive" to "constructive". This trait was no longer one that hindered my academic development; it had proved to be an adaptation. That point between inquiry and amazement, that was constantly present, is full of reasoning to prove each step. This logic math had given me made me more critical of my illness; I knew from math that precision at the microscopic level is anything but minimal in terms of the changes that it can create when not careful. Having this weapon in my arsenal as I walked into my chemistry class was crucial in the way I interpreted his beginning statement, "the atom is responsible for everything". At this instant, I felt relieved of a great burden that was my past academic failure, it was here that I thought, "this removes an unknown from the list" there was no longer that empty thought that lived within that concluded with a reasonless answer, because of math and the advancements in chemistry, I knew I could quantitatively search for the answer to the surplus of neurotransmitters exciting my senses. Not only could I distinguish between a surplus or a deficiency of a neurotransmitter, but I could compute a more precise approximation to the root of the problem. My life has read to me clearly that the blame does no reside in the child because that driving force is outside of his/her will. Because of this realization, I have ironically become more patient as a tutor to the student that does not quickly understand the concept. In all their eyes I see a different manifestation of mine, and, not only the students, but also we as a population are in need of the proper direction. It is easy to place a blanket of general symptoms of ADD over many children, and prescribe drugs that can have a life long negative effect on a child that was just exhibiting normal "child behavior". The line between a hyper child and ADD is very minute, but is crucial to the diagnosis of this disorder. Through the biological approach to psychology, I aim to form a bridge between behavioral and biological psychology that assigns a quantitative approximation to a behavior, and help rebuild hope in the future of these children.
