study

Yes. BIG YES.

You can have ADHD and still get good grades. You can get good grades and still have ADHD.

ADHD can affect our ability to learn. We have difficulty paying attention to our work and study. We can have difficulty storing the information and more importantly, recalling it during tests. 

As such, struggling academically is often used as a preliminary indicator of ADHD. But that doesn’t mean ADHDers have to get bad grades. 

All ADHDers have a unique combination of ADHD symptoms and how they manifest. My issues, its severity and how it affects me can be completely different from someone else’s. 

Also, while we ADHDers might struggle with topics we aren’t interested in, we can thrive in the topics we enjoy. So, if you’re studying something you love, you might not be struggling at all.

Finally, ‘gifted’ individuals might be able to push through their symptoms relying on their intelligence. Though, even then, it’s just they can cope with their symptoms better for the time being. 

Unfortunately, ADHD will catch up to them. Pre-diagnosis coping strategies are but a house of cards. ADHDers who manage to avoid crashing in high school tend to crash in university (as there is less external structure). Or immediately after graduating and their coping mechanisms for academics no longer work for the working environment. 

I have experienced all of this first-hand. I used to get As and Bs in high school. Then I got into university for my Undergrad, and the lack of external structure meant I started falling apart. Then a close friend of mine passed away, and I crashed HARD. Years of failing EVERYTHING. 

However, thanks to my diagnosis, meds and healthier coping strategies, I was able to get back to my As and Bs in my Masters, and earning a Distinction. 

ADHD is a big looming wave in the distance, and it will catch up at some point in an ADHDers lives… most likely when we are under a lot of stress and pressure. It’s why diagnosis and subsequent treatment is vital. 

Not to mention, ADHD also brings about a whole slew of emotional/ interpersonal problems and makes us more vulnerable to co-morbid conditions. Even if it doesn’t affect you academically, it could affect you in other ways too.

If you think you have ADHD but get good grades, you shouldn’t let that put you off seeing a professional.

ADHD can and does cause memory issues. It can affect short term memory (eg, remembering phone numbers for a bit), working memory (ie, manipulating information, like doing sums in your head) and finally, recall (bring back up the information stored). 

Of the three, issues with recall feel like the worst (to me) as it means that we have difficulty bringing back stuff we should already know. It’s frustrating cause we know the information deep down, we just struggle with recalling it when we want to.

This friend I have known for years now? Forgot their name again.

My house number? Forgot it again.

The name of the restaurant I have been to multiple times? Nope.

One of ADHDers’ most common catchphrases (“umm, what was just saying?”) is because of this recall problem. We get distracted mid sentence and can’t recall what we were saying.

ADHD in general, from concentration to these memory problems, can make learning very challenging. And it certainly did for me until I found a strategy that worked (for me).

Imagine you lost something in your house. The common advice given would be to retrace your steps. This involves going down paths you took, chained one after the other to finally reach what you were looking for. The strategy is that even if you don’t remember the final destination, you can retrace your steps to recall it. 

My strategy involves exactly that, with the metaphorical house being our minds.

A fact or a piece of information is easily lost. To make it easier to find, you have to connect it to other pieces of information. I see it in my head as a massive spider web where all interconnected information is connected. So even if I forget one piece of information on that web, I can navigate down other paths to help me find it.

So a real example is when I needed to learn about electricity generation (I am a renewable energy engineer). I couldn’t just learn about generators and have it stick in my head.

So what I did instead was start from the basics… from how electrons work. Then how wires work. Then how AC and DC electricity works.. And so on. So now, even if I forget a detail about a generator, I can essentially start from scratch to re-remember it. 

Yes, it does take much longer to learn but the information is stored and recalled more solidly.

This is the method I use to study and learn that has taken me from failing everything to getting As and Bs. I start from the very basics and build my knowledge up like a web, making sure to take time to understand in the process.

Of course, I won’t claim this will work for everyone, nor that this is the one true method. But it worked very well for me, and I hope that even if it didn’t help directly, it can give you some helpful information.

Studying is difficult. Studying when you have ADHD is significantly more difficult.

Despite the ADHD, I didn’t struggle too badly in high school. However in college, the complete lack of structure meant all hell broke loose (in my mind), resulting in me failing exam after exam, year after year.

After struggling for a few years and then getting diagnosed, I tried to find some study tips aimed towards people with ADHD. I read many of the articles online but they were essentially just basic study tips, ie, take good notes, take regular breaks, etc. However, that isn’t very useful when you can’t even bring yourself to open a book to study.

So through trial and error, I found my own study method. It’s not perfect, and I am definitely not the first person to have though it up for sure, but it worked for me.

When you have ADHD, it’s quite hard to get yourself to start studying. Hell, this first step is most often the most difficult. You just can’t bring yourself to do it, even with the looming threat of failing. 

However, we have a special talent; an ability to focus obsessively on things that we are interested in. You might have experienced it already when pursuing something you love. I mean the thing you are OBSESSED about. 

You can use that for studying! The tip is to relate your study back to your obsession. It sounds simple but it can be effective.

Say you are interested in music and you study physics. Relate them together. Understand physics in relation to your passion for music. Understand waves using how the strings work in guitars. Understand how electricity works using how electric instruments function. You can even make up a song to memorize things you need to remember in the tune of your favorite song. 

We have a hard time remembering or learning things for the sake of itself, because it’s boring. But once it’s related to what we love, what we are obsessed about, it becomes easier. When we are interested in something it stops being difficult so what you are essentially trying to do is to spark an interest in the subject.

I had failed a Statistics module multiple times. Then I related it to my curiosity, my desire to understand scientific papers and suddenly, it was no longer all Greek to me. It MADE sense and it became easier. I wasn’t studying for the test.. I was studying to further my passion.

Everything can be related to something else. Use the power of your obsession and you will find that even the thing that you struggle with the most will become much easier. 

I can’t guarantee this method will work for everyone but it helped me quite a lot. Despite the repeated failure, I did manage to graduate and not only that, I actually managed to increase my GPA by 50% in my final year.

Update: Using this method, I was able to achieve As and Bs in Masters.