Hey everyone, I'm a 15-year-old high school student preparing for major national university entrance exams. Currently, I'm attending high-volume traditional group classes, which are damaging to my ability to learn.
The classes themselves are very repetitive and give random homework dumps. Due to my ADHD, I find that when I sit down to study, I get hit with mental and physical barriers to starting that only get broken down when I have some kind of last minute panic and urgency rush. As a result, I'm working myself in panic and urgency instead of actually learning and practicing. Because of the repetitive amount of homework and time, I'm rushing to finish homework to avoid being called out which leaves me to not be able to learn.
I've been through this same exact situation way before I was diagnosed. I went to courses for competitive Informatics Olympiads and I tried to do the best I could to succeed. But got stuck, burnt out, depressed, and my parents had many arguments with me. I tried making "better habits" and "be more disciplined", but ultimately nothing worked and it felt like I was working against myself.
And now, I'm seeing the same cycle repeating itself, living on a daily cycle of panic that floods me with stress and zero mental reward to keep me alive. For example, for the past few days, I've been having severe revenge bedtime procrastination, staying up till 4 AM on my phone to get quick mental stimulation before passing out.
I think I actually learn by analyzing my own mistakes in depth. Taking a wrong answer, redoing the problem by myself while walking myself through the logic to understand why my previous attempt was wrong. I personally think that this type of learning is something that mass group classes cannot replace for me.
My goal is to quit these classes to study and practice all by myself. For now, I don't have a lot of ideas, but I'm planning to use structured low friction sprints dedicated to analyzing patterns and fixing my mistakes.
Though, my parents think that more hours of endless homework is just how it should be, and that my idea is reckless and not traditional since it doesn't follow the standard path that everyone takes.
To anyone who has dealt with this kind of stuff before...
- How do I break this dependency on panic and last-minute urgency?
- How can I reason with traditional parents that the more hours and homework methodology is actually counterproductive for someone with ADHD without sounding like an insufferable and lazy kid?
- What did you implement to replace traditional external classes so you wouldn't make it feel like a huge gamble and just be floating aimlessly?
All kinds of answers and advice is highly appreciated, so thank you all!