I am a student again after twenty one years as I have signed up for a course to become certified to teach English as a second language. Why did I decide to choose this route? For two reasons: I want to get out of the restaurant industry and I want to go towards what comes naturally to me: teaching. Additionally, I am considering living abroad again and this certification offers to me a very good chance of finding employment in many private and public schools around the globe.
The course runs for two and half months and costs a little over $1000. The length of the course and the cost are infinitely more appealing to me than two years of graduate school and $50k or more of student debt. No thank you.
So with the years of therapy, multiple ADHD (and Depression) books read and strategies tried, I dive back into an arena that for years caused me endless pain and defeat, resulting in a profound lack on confidence in the work world. I didn't even know how to begin to speak about what plagued me all of those years as I was diagnosed with ADHD at 29. I am now (a relatively happy) 44.
As I read about this course, absorb how to navigate online classes, which include live lectures and time-sensitive quizzes, all the familiar struggles return; however, I have come as prepared as I have ever been. For I am well acquainted with the tricks of my brain.
For example: I know that my sense of time is profoundly flawed; emotionally it's either now or infinity. I possess little to no sense of the natural and logical organization of tasks. Sequential instructions are often physiologically and neurologically untenable. I have learned over the years though to read through instructions at least once, twice, thrice with little expectation of grasping even ten percent of what is in front of me. That said, something will get in there and the next day I will come back and will retain something and will read through them again. I know though, that with enough slow and steady, three-times-as-long-as-others attempts that I'll eventually grasp what is in front of me. Along with this, I give myself time to physically move around when needed, study where I will work best (in a cafe) and work when I study best (early morning and after dinner).
As I've said many times, my ability to focus and then to retain information is often as fragile as a candle in a hurricane. The key is to figure out many tricks to keep that little flame flickering.
