Emancipation for college, executive dysfunction and chaos
30 Jan 2018, 11:10 pm
As an undiagnosed teenager, I've been struggling badly in a lot of areas of my life, specially at studies. Despite my high IQ, I've been failing most exams and subjects during the last two years of high school, which everybody, including all my teachers and my parents, attributed to me being lazy and careless. I almost didn't pass, but surprisingly to everybody, at the very end I did.
So, when I had to choose a college, I decided that I wanted to move to Madrid (Spain's capital if you didn't know) because I couldn't stand living with my parents anymore and because I wanted to live in a big liberal cosmopolitan city where I could find more people like me. But I've been living here for four months and everything is already a mess.
I've discovered that my lack of executive function skills is even worse than what I though (and I already knew it was very bad), I think I have almost a completely lack of it.
My room is an epic disaster. There're clothes and food wrappers everywhere. I haven't changed the sheets even once since I live here. I hardly ever wash my clothes, and when I do I end up mixing it with the clothes that were dirty and I don't know anymore what is clean and what isn't. I hardly ever wash the dishes or clean the apartament either (which pisses my brother, who I share the flat with, off a lot).
Food and cooking is also a disaster. I eat almost everything without cooking it because when I open the fridge and look what I have, no dish comes to my mind, I just keep staring at the food, and when it does and I try to cook it, I end up almost burning the kitchen or making something inedible. And this is when I have food, because I also hardly ever go to the supermarket to buy some. I starve a lot. This combined with that I've gone vegan have made me lost like 15 pounds (although I don't think it would be much better if I hadn't gone vegan, I know I'd be eating just fast food if I hadn't).
I'm failing everything again in college. Despite choosing to study political sciences, being my main special interests politics (I spend hours everyday looking up things about it on the internet), I just don't know how to take notes and I haven't done any of the papeworks or projects or read any of the books that we had to. And without my mother being here cheking on me, I just don't go to class a lot of times, specially during the last month, in which I think I've literally just gone to class twice. And in high school at least I had books that I could study in the last moment to try to pass, but now we had to study everything from the notes that we take, and I don't have any.
My personal hygiene is being very deficient too, but at least one of my inflexible routines is always having a shower before leaving home, so anybody has noticed. The thing is that I don't leave my home (not even my room) very usually.
Not going much to class, I haven't even made one friend here yet. I miss a lot my old friends and having a social life in general. I think I didn't know what loneliness really was until know.
So I don't know what to do to solve this chaotic mess. I think I just need urgent professional help, but the psychiatrist that I went to doesn't seem to be much in a hurry to do anything. I need at least something that helps me explain to my parents why I'm failing everything. They don't know yet, but when they do they will tell me again that I'm just lazy and everything is my fault. They may even make me go back home again, and that would be such a big step back for me. It seems logical that I'd be happy to return being all my friends there and being my life here such an epic fail, but I know this is the right environment for me to develop as a person, live my youth and find my future. I just need help because I'm disabled, but I need the diagnosis right now, I don't have much time.
(Sorry for rambling so much, I'm the worst person ever at summarizing. It's also another ASD trait if I'm not wrong. And sorry if I made any big linguistic mistake, English is not my mother tongue, obviously).
31 Jan 2018, 12:57 am
So, when I had to choose a college, I decided that I wanted to move to Madrid (Spain's capital if you didn't know) because I couldn't stand living with my parents anymore and because I wanted to live in a big liberal cosmopolitan city where I could find more people like me. But I've been living here for four months and everything is already a mess.
I've discovered that my lack of executive function skills is even worse than what I though (and I already knew it was very bad), I think I have almost a completely lack of it.
My room is an epic disaster. There're clothes and food wrappers everywhere. I haven't changed the sheets even once since I live here. I hardly ever wash my clothes, and when I do I end up mixing it with the clothes that were dirty and I don't know anymore what is clean and what isn't. I hardly ever wash the dishes or clean the apartament either (which pisses my brother, who I share the flat with, off a lot).
Food and cooking is also a disaster. I eat almost everything without cooking it because when I open the fridge and look what I have, no dish comes to my mind, I just keep staring at the food, and when it does and I try to cook it, I end up almost burning the kitchen or making something inedible. And this is when I have food, because I also hardly ever go to the supermarket to buy some. I starve a lot. This combined with that I've gone vegan have made me lost like 15 pounds (although I don't think it would be much better if I hadn't gone vegan, I know I'd be eating just fast food if I hadn't).
I'm failing everything again in college. Despite choosing to study political sciences, being my main special interests politics (I spend hours everyday looking up things about it on the internet), I just don't know how to take notes and I haven't done any of the papeworks or projects or read any of the books that we had to. And without my mother being here cheking on me, I just don't go to class a lot of times, specially during the last month, in which I think I've literally just gone to class twice. And in high school at least I had books that I could study in the last moment to try to pass, but now we had to study everything from the notes that we take, and I don't have any.
My personal hygiene is being very deficient too, but at least one of my inflexible routines is always having a shower before leaving home, so anybody has noticed. The thing is that I don't leave my home (not even my room) very usually.
Not going much to class, I haven't even made one friend here yet. I miss a lot my old friends and having a social life in general. I think I didn't know what loneliness really was until know.
So I don't know what to do to solve this chaotic mess. I think I just need urgent professional help, but the psychiatrist that I went to doesn't seem to be much in a hurry to do anything. I need at least something that helps me explain to my parents why I'm failing everything. They don't know yet, but when they do they will tell me again that I'm just lazy and everything is my fault. They may even make me go back home again, and that would be such a big step back for me. It seems logical that I'd be happy to return being all my friends there and being my life here such an epic fail, but I know this is the right environment for me to develop as a person, live my youth and find my future. I just need help because I'm disabled, but I need the diagnosis right now, I don't have much time.
(Sorry for rambling so much, I'm the worst person ever at summarizing. It's also another ASD trait if I'm not wrong. And sorry if I made any big linguistic mistake, English is not my mother tongue, obviously).
Well you know what you need to do that you don't do, so that's a start.
You don't need to be perfect, just functional. I make more or less the same few meals for dinner. I usually use paper plates, and I take the trash out about once a week. My dirty clothes go in the dirty clothes basket, and my clean clothes...sometimes I put them away, sometimes I leave them in the clean clothes bag.
I started showering more in college.
I made a point to attend my college classes, at least during the first few years. I had the schedule printed out and in the front of my binder, and portions of my binder dedicated to each class. Each class also had it's own note book and I kept track of my assignments. I kept a pretty tight schedule during the term. Most of my day was planned out.
Some universities offer study skills classes you might find valuable.
31 Jan 2018, 10:59 am
You don't need to be perfect, just functional. I make more or less the same few meals for dinner. I usually use paper plates, and I take the trash out about once a week. My dirty clothes go in the dirty clothes basket, and my clean clothes...sometimes I put them away, sometimes I leave them in the clean clothes bag.
I started showering more in college.
I made a point to attend my college classes, at least during the first few years. I had the schedule printed out and in the front of my binder, and portions of my binder dedicated to each class. Each class also had it's own note book and I kept track of my assignments. I kept a pretty tight schedule during the term. Most of my day was planned out.
Some universities offer study skills classes you might find valuable.
Thank you for you answer!! Your advice seems pretty useful, I see most of it working out. Except the part of having most of my day planned out and scheduled. I'd love to have tight routines to adhere myself to (after all I'm austistic) but I'm completely unable to design my own schedule. I've tried a lot of times (since like five years ago) and it never has worked. That's one of the main reasons why I think I need professional help.
31 Jan 2018, 8:41 pm
You don't need to be perfect, just functional. I make more or less the same few meals for dinner. I usually use paper plates, and I take the trash out about once a week. My dirty clothes go in the dirty clothes basket, and my clean clothes...sometimes I put them away, sometimes I leave them in the clean clothes bag.
I started showering more in college.
I made a point to attend my college classes, at least during the first few years. I had the schedule printed out and in the front of my binder, and portions of my binder dedicated to each class. Each class also had it's own note book and I kept track of my assignments. I kept a pretty tight schedule during the term. Most of my day was planned out.
Some universities offer study skills classes you might find valuable.
Thank you for you answer!! Your advice seems pretty useful, I see most of it working out. Except the part of having most of my day planned out and scheduled. I'd love to have tight routines to adhere myself to (after all I'm austistic) but I'm completely unable to design my own schedule. I've tried a lot of times (since like five years ago) and it never has worked. That's one of the main reasons why I think I need professional help.
When I first started college, my daily schedule revolved around two things. 1. My class schedule, and 2. My exercise schedule because I was losing weight.
Here is an example. Let's say on Monday you have four classes. Three are 50 minutes long and one is an hour and 50 minutes long.
Class 1: 9am-9:50am
Class 2: 10am-10:50am
Class 3: 11am-12:50pm
Class 4: 2pm-3:50pm
My schedule would look something like this...
7am: Wake up, get dressed, have breakfast.
8am: Leave.
9am: Arrive at first class.
10am: Arrive at second class.
10:50am: Snack
11am: Arrive at third class.
1pm: Quick lunch and do some homework or study, either what was just covered in first three classes or what will be covered in fourth class.
2pm: Fourth class.
4pm: Start homework. Typically the difficult subject first while it's fresh in my head.
5pm: Leave for home.
6pm: Dinner
6:30pm: Continue with homework and studying. Typically I would alternate subjects in hour and a half intervals.
In my case I would go to the gym around 10pm and come home at midnight, have a snack, shower, and go to bed, but you might choose to keep studying with a few breaks in between or finish before bed and watch or do some other relaxing thing.
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