Subject related issues

Whenever I was in class, you know, looking out of the window when I was supposed to listen to the teacher, I would think about video games. Video games are a staple in the lives of teenage boys. I’ve played hundreds of them over the years and even researched the process of making a video game quite thoroughly. I was fascinated by every element of it, the design, the creation of art and models, the music, and most of all, the coding to make it work.

For a few years, game development seemed to be an ideal career. My ADHD caused my class performance to be quite inconsistent as I was unable to pay attention for long durations. However, I never seemed to have these problems in computer science classes and was noted by teachers to be quite good at programming. Additionally, art and story writing were also things that I seemed to be reasonably good at. Taking all these things into consideration, something that required a combination of creativity and logic seemed to be the best job for me.

In the USA, you don’t need to take a particular set of subjects to get a computer science course. However, since I planned to study in an Indian college, I would have had to take the JEE route which required Physics, Math and Chemistry, or PCM as they are commonly referred to in this country. Science (PCM) is considered the hardest stream by most. Taking into consideration my natural disposition and academic performance, Humanities was the rational choice. However, due to my desire to work as a game programmer, I decided to go with science.

All three subjects require an immense amount of work. Maths required that I practice as many numericals as possible while chemistry involved a great deal of theory and had a lot of things to memorize. Physics had a combination of both. The teachers would also move at an incredibly fast pace and covered entire chapters within the short span of a week many times. Since I had trouble paying attention and retained very little even when the teacher went slow, this was terrible for me and I would end up knowing next to nothing about multiple topics.

Additionally, due to the amount of content, I would feel overwhelmed and often procrastinate, ending up doing very little actual work.

The issue was that since the topics I was studying had no relation whatsoever to game development, I felt very little motivation to work. Add to this how demanding the subjects were and the end result was a string of extremely poor performances by me.

There was no accommodation that could really take me the extra mile here. In this scenario, ADHD held me back and there was no clear fix for it. I had to realize that to achieve my goal I had to go through these steps, and as a result started working. My problems continue to date, but to make up for it, I spend almost every moment I have working to make for the time I waste.

To conclude, the moral here is simple and applies to everybody, not just students with disabilities. If you want something, you must work for it.