by Judy

Seriously! I know I have been out of school for a couple of years, but where have all of my highlighters gone? The only one I could find in my house is inching towards the Great Memo Pad in the Sky with every stroke. It is essential for me highlight as I read. Even if I highlight every single word, it is a way for me to keep focused on what I am reading.

While I may have honed my study habits, I do still have ADD. I don’t have ADHD. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am not hyperactive, or even active for that matter. Nope—I’m the spacey, gazing-out-the-window-at-the-clouds, distracted-by-shiny-things, has-to-read-the­-same-paragraph-three-times kind of ADD. I took Adderall all through high school and college, but I don’t take it any more because I find I can mostly cope with the above symptoms in my personal and professional life.

But I’d forgotten how hard it is to read dense, just-the-facts material. It’s roughly as fun as chewing a dry sponge.

Right now I have some things going for me, and some things against me. What I am reading is essentially instruction, not abstract academia (what most college material in the liberal sciences consists of). And it is also something I hope to put into use in real life. However … man. It’s pretty boring. (I was going to end that sentence with a couple exclamation points—it’s pretty boring!!—but when it came time, I couldn’t muster the energy.)

So I’ve been trying to get back into my old study habits sans prescription drugs. I am doing some good and not so good things. Here’s what’s good:

1. I am studying when no one is home

2. The TV is off (I know, I know, like many ADD people, I claim that I can study while watching TV, but the truth is, I can’t. I will inevitably take way longer to do something if the TV is on. Really, what I can do is watch TV and follow the train of thought in what I am reading, but there will be several pauses in said reading while I just watch TV. This may, in fact, have to do with not wanting to be reading whatever it is that I am reading.)

3. I have printed off my reading material and am using a highlighter, which is decrepit but not yet dead.

4. The light in the living room kept flickering so I went to a different room.

But here’s where I am going wrong:

1. The room I switched to is my bedroom. I used to try to go to the library to study whenever I could when I lived in the dorms in college, because studies have shown that you should not work where you sleep. This is because your body will naturally think, OK, this is the bed, this where we sleep, ergo, it is time to sleep.

2. I let not having a good highlighter distract me into a long search for more highlighters around my entire house.

3. I am hungry.

4. I put off studying much further into the day than I should have.

While changing my behavior is good and all, I know that it will always take me a long time to get stuff done. It’s sort of like how no one will ever go grocery shopping with me, because I criss-cross the grocery store, stand there contemplating which price per ounce is better, remember something after I’ve paid and have to go back, etc.

It’s OK; I made peace with my deficiency long ago. I just need a good highlighter.