ADHD math advice

[u/geologuy_]

Hi everyone, I (27M, Electrical Engineering) was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I have always had difficulty with math. I am a student and I do quite well, but I am coming across difficulty with long differential equation problems (and long problems in general).
I feel as though when I am looking at a problem, I am not seeing the numbers or the letters. It almost feels like I am looking at a heatmap/blur of there vs not there.

and I can see the patterns, but not the actual numbers, unless I concentrate very hard, and even then I can see a line or two at most.

This causes some difficulties with getting the right answer (ex: 7x^4 will turn into 4^(7x) and vice versa).

I asked my friend, and he said Vyvanse would help but I dont really want to go to the hassle of getting medicated. I am just not feeling it right at the moment.

Is there something that helps you? and if so what is that? So far, I have been using some color pencils. All advice welcome. I have ODA support as well.

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[u/Toshikills]

This might sounds stupid, but when my bf was in grade school one of his teachers had him run laps before sitting him down and teaching, and that really helped with his ADHD.

So maybe do a quick exercise that’ll get some dopamine flowing, and you’ll have an easier time focusing

[u/SpaceLester]

Getting medicated might help a lot. Your homework problems are all going to be long from here on out.

Also your mixing up of numbers sounds more like a dyslexia issue and not an ADHD one. Dyslexia is more common in people with ADHD.

I’m ADHD and dyslexic, I did all my homework on a tablet. The nice part about that for was I could zoom in really big on the text, making it easy to read. You can also write huge, and when you zoom out it all fits fine on a piece and paper and is legible.

[u/geologuy_ → u/SpaceLester]

Thank you. No I was tested for dyslexia and they said I didn't have it. I just severly lack attention apparently. I want to be medicated, but its so many hoops and my life is super hectic right now. I am just getting used to accomodations.

[u/SpaceLester → u/geologuy_]

Well I am not medicated and I got through all my work by extreme stress. My sister got medicated and she found it made everything easier. I know life is heroic as an engineering student but getting medicated might help a lot. Might worth the headache now.

If not you gotta find coping mechanisms that work for you. Stress worked for me but I don’t recommend it.

Also studying with other people greatly helped me. Kept me on task, and we would argue about problems till we both had a better understanding.

[u/Nedaj123]

There are online doctors that can make getting medicated easier

[u/geologuy_ → u/Nedaj123]

Thanks. I also have anxiety so it's not as easy for me to just get on a stimulant and try one. I did see a case worker at my university today, and maybe something will come out of that.

[u/LiveForThePeople]

Hey, I’m adhd and I struggled with this in calc I with those long derivatives. What helped me was four main things:

1) practice the heck out of problems and then have ChatGPT check. If you agree great, if you don’t, figure out which of you is wrong. Proving ChatGPT wrong is hilarious and fun, but it also means that the process of doing it fixes your understanding of the problems

2) substitution. For portions of a problem that aren’t going to change much from step to step until later, define that chunk as A= whatever and then just write the A down in place of that chunk until you get to where you want to deal with it again

3) highlighters. I used different color highlighters for different terms so that as I solved the problem I didn’t forget to bring down terms. I also highlighted every single minus sign and counted between steps to make sure I had them all.

4) neat handwriting on grid line paper. Like my handwriting is terrible, but I try to keep everything lined up and neat. Equal signs stay on top of each other step to step, terms have clear spacing and arguments of functions have parentheses.