My way works but I wish it didn’t

Throughout my time in school I’ve always struggled to communicate. I quit raising my hand for

anything other than trips to the bathroom after 7th grade, and I regularly got comments from

people saying that they didn’t know what my voice sounded like. None of this mattered in the

slightest though because when the end of the year rolled around and report cards were being

finalized I finished typically, with an A.

Writing, like all other forms of communication, has been historically difficult for me.

And I mean really writing. I can crank out a 3 page paper in the 5 paragraph essay style we all

love so much. I can even do it in less than an hour and still manage a decent grade. But I can’t

write. I feel as though none of my sentences make any sense and the only way I can get through

it is by typing it up and then turning it in before I have time to go back and obsess over every

sentence.

I physically can’t stop myself from procrastinating. Having an impending time limit is the

only way I can get anything done. Of course if you get an A no one else gives a shit. But to me a

good grade is usually a byproduct of that motivation of stress. My life feels like it is coming to

an abrupt end in a fiery tornado right up until I hit the button to turn in my work. I always felt

like this couldn’t be a healthy style of time management but it got me an A and no one gave a

shit.

I truly believe school has failed me and the vast majority of gifted, and neurodivergent

students. I have spent the last decade of my life generating work in exchange for letters,

desperately searching for something to actually learn about. I had always been told failure is a

part of learning but my bullshit process never failed. I know I can’t possibly be that smart. I
know I am not a genius, so why? Why is school set up in this way? Why was I forced through it?

Why has it yet to change even though so many people can see that it isn’t helpful?

I feel strange writing this way about myself, because I know most people work extremely

hard for their grades and take school very seriously. The difference is, once again, I do not feel

any smarter because of grades. My hyperactive nervous system is the perfect generator for

cranking out just enough sheer panic to force me through one assignment at a time. Sometimes I

wish I could fail, I wish that my process wouldn’t work and just maybe I would be forced to

rethink it, but I made it through high school and that never happened. Even now I can feel the

panic starting to set in as I write this, I recognize the old feeling that I am going to be too nervous

to re-read anything and submit what I hope are coherent thoughts.

Oftentimes I think back to my first ever panic attack, which was directly involved with

writing. The writing itself wasn’t so bad, the typical research paper fare. The issue came when it

was time to revise. To my chagrin, he began picking names out of a hat and reading their

unfinished work to the class. He didn’t hold back with his criticisms either. Part of me is certain

he knew it was bothering me and didn’t care as out of the 6 to 8 people he went through he

picked all of the people right next to me. In my paranoid brain he seemed like a shark slowly

circling its prey and I was trapped. I ended up hiding in the bathroom for the last 20 minutes of

class just to confirm I wouldn't be picked, and funnily enough I don’t remember anything else

from that class. In fact, I am not even certain of that teachers name, but I remember his face and

that one excruciating class out of a full year of otherwise unremarkable ones.

It was around this time that I received a medical diagnosis and medication for my anxiety

problem. This helped me stay calm during class but made it difficult to stay fully present. For

several years of my highschool experience I was in a daze for the entire day and had to reread
notes when I got home or just wing assignments without all the relevant information. I noticed a

downward trend in my grades in the last years of highschool but it was too late. My terrible

process had already gotten me through the worst of it. And now here I am.

I know my process sucks especially for writing but as I learn more and more about

myself and reconsider what I've been through and where I am going I have come to realize that I

am at square one again. Only now in my first year of college am I truly wrapping my head

around skills that my panic autopiloted for me.

I have a lot of relearning to do, but realizing what I have to accomplish as opposed to

accepting that writing as a concept can be condensed into a 5 paragraph structure is freeing to

say the least. I know that if I showed this paper as it is to any of my previous teachers they would

scoff and ask if I learned anything from them. The answer would be no. but for none of the

reasons that they think. If nothing else I consider this paper to be a new start, not for getting

things done or explaining ideas that have been explained before, rather, to pull a little piece of

my mind into the real world so that I can examine it more closely.