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Notes -
I spent the majority of my childhood and adolescence completely unaware of having ADHD, and neither did my parents suspect.
I'm an intelligent person. Not a genius, but about 130 IQ. That can subsidize a lot of inadequacies by sheer brute force. I never used to study for exams before med school, at best I'd hit the books two or three days before an exam and usually do very well. It was only when the difficulty of exams rose steeply, around 11th grade, that I began to struggle, at least in Maths. I still was pretty good at everything else.
Attending private coaching and having personal tutors is also very common, and it had the nice side effect of chaining me in front of a book or forcing me to practise.
Then I was severely depressed and also realized I had ADHD right before the entrance exams for med school. I begged my parents to take me to a shrink, and they refused, unwilling to entertain the idea that the son they had proudly thought was gifted all his life was a deeply broken individual. The stigma around mental health was too thick for even doctors to see through. I no longer hate them for it, but it's close. Most of my life, they thought it was just boys being boys, especially since my brother was even worse. Could you guess he's got ADHD too, and even worse than mine?
So my biggest issue is with reading textbooks on my own. Without extreme stress or Ritalin, I can't sit down and read something I'm not intrinsically interested in for more than 15 minutes. How did I even think that was normal?
That is by far the most obvious manifestation, I have minor issues that I can handle fine, but a doctor who is unable to hit the books is a bad doctor, at least until they get started on meds.
I am also not very conscientious, prone to procrastination and laziness, and it's a testament to how fucking terrified I am that I am doing something like teaching myself to code. Surprisingly enough, I don't mind it, it works out my brain in a manner that medicine doesn't, at least not at my current level of responsibility as a junior doctor.
Writing is something I enjoy, so like playing video games or reading a fun novel or essay, I can do it for hours on end and not care in the least.
Keep in mind that as best as I can tell, my ADHD is quite mild. There are people who are absolutely fucked, and I'm lucky not to be one of them.
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