Hey everyone, welcome back to part two of at my conversation on the all the things ADHD podcast, kind of miss doing this by myself where I don't have Amy going, oh
the thing me things, I
actually made that longer than it needs to be it was kind of fun. Alright, so we're gonna pick up where we left off last time. And we're really going to dig into a concept that Amy coin and is going to turn into a research paper very shortly, I am sure around crypto knowledge, CRI P knowledge. And those those hard won lessons that if people would listen, we would share. And it might benefit everyone and not just those of us with special specialized needs. So enjoy the rest of this conversation. And we'll wrap up at the end, and maybe see you next week, maybe not. Who knows, we'll see. That's the great thing about this podcast, you never know. It's always a surprise. So yeah, enjoy part two of our conversation.
We've spoken a little bit in the past about those research posters I saw they're like doing studies of attention and mind wandering. And then underneath it says, if you are diagnosed or have ever been diagnosed with ADHD, you are excluded from this, right? Because your attention is weird. So we're not going to study it. Right? Yeah. But I'm thinking more and more What a loss that is not just for neurodivergent people who would like to have some research that helps them understand themselves and also understand how we differ or conform with other people's experiences in different domains. Like who knows, who knows how much we are like neurotypical people in our patterns of thinking or behavior. We don't know because we never studied those groups together. Right? Yeah. But also how many things that that the neurotypical scholarship by neurotypical people for neurotypical populations, how much they're struggling towards things that are already very evident in neurodivergent populations, the need for movement in the day, or how much of knowing is embodied, right, or how important switching tasks and doing something intrinsically interesting is in order to maintain focus and productivity, these are, these are all things that if you stopped pathologizing, neurodivergent people for five minutes, you'd sort of say, like, oh, you know, like, Amy's, like, really bad at this paperwork. But like, she doesn't panic, in front of big crowds. She's incredibly engaging as a speaker, and her students, I just saw them racing around on chairs in the classroom the other day, and everybody was smiling, like, what is she doing? Like say, Oh, she's doing stuff because she didn't have a lesson plan. And she doesn't know what she's doing. And it's pure chaos in there. Right. And but how can we make teaching more engaging? Right, once we make me be normal? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like there was a lot of ways in which the things that neurodivergent people do that have been pathologized that you're trying to therapy us out of seem to be the very same qualities that neurotypical people are struggling to understand the need to develop in themselves? Yeah.
And they're being recommended that they do that. Like, isn't that funny how that works? Is that weird? It's funny
how that works, or, like, how many people benefited from fidget toys? Because it turns out sitting still, and listening to unbroken streams of discourse, with nothing physical to do is totally mentally taxing. Yeah. And that your toys can help everybody pay a little bit more attention, right? As it turns out, so neurodivergent people who insisted on doodling like, my kid was always a doodler. In class. She's like, it helps me listen. And they're like, No, it doesn't. And now there's a study that's like, if you do it all while listening, it helps you understand we should all learn how to doodle. Right? And like, okay, which probably took a lot of really expensive studies to get to, none of which neurodivergent people in them, right, yeah. Or like, any of this about focus time or about chunking, or about preferred workstyles or universal design? There's a lot of
there's also that question of, like, again, it for me is like the question of also like the Undiagnosed versus the diagnosed, right, like, we got those late, like, what if we had done the studies in our 30s? Before we knew, right, yeah, like in some how much of the population is actually diagnosed? Not to say that, like, No, we should make a concerted effort. But like in studies like this, because we know so much about people being undiagnosed if
we just leave agents in the data,
right? Don't that that's, I mean, we would have been sleeper agents in the data. Yeah, right. Like my kids before their diagnoses were sleeper agents in the data Yep, you know, in those kinds of ways, so I mean, even you know, it's it's, it's just interesting how that may have changed because maybe we would have a better understanding of where we fit in between, in in the in the quote unquote, normative curve. If we had a bigger diversity, people diagnosed and undiagnosed, because we're undiagnosed, you can come in, if you're diagnosed, you have to stay out, but you don't use any data,
you still corrupting the data, right? Yeah, a neuro divert. Yeah. So we're artificially restricting the population to a pure sample, that is never going to be pure, because they want the wellness, right? Yeah, it's, it's like we had talked a few episodes back about the difference between divergent and convergent thinking and how much is like, the advice, you know, in universities, like we have to teach these kids how to do more divergent thinking again, except my neurodivergent students are like, could I have 10 more pages on this essay? Because I have more ideas, right, or I have to throw it out? And start again, because I found five better ideas. And
I'm really sorry about this 30 Page footnote. Exactly.
Right. And, and so like, some of these students are neurodivergent. And they know what some of them are not. Some of them are just kind of like, creative people. But we're always like, everybody's going to have this deficit. Yeah, that we have to compensate for. And nobody has this as a strength of the people that have this as a strength like habit so much as a strength that it's a different kind of deficit. Right. And, and so I think if we acknowledged more broadly, that people's like, like me, I can teach a three hour grad seminar with no notice, but I can't remember what day I teach on. Right. Or that was the most
Amy story ever. I'm sorry, it is. Quick, like, yeah, yeah. And it's, I'd love I love it for that.
I do too. I think like, if
I hope you learned to love that. I hope you I hope you embrace that. If we had
written it as a scenario. Yeah, it's too good. Yeah. You know, it's too good. And,
but it's so good. I didn't even see it coming. And then it came. And I was like, of course. Yeah, sure. All right. This
makes sense. Like at the end, like I can't believe I got fooled. Of course, I got fooled. But I'm alright with that. My schedule, I go full, but I'm alright with that. And yeah, and that's like, just the quintessential stories. Like you're so good at this. Why do you suck so bad at that? It's like, well, listen, well, maybe the thing that I suck so bad, maybe it's sucks. Maybe we need to maybe that yeah, maybe that's it is so hard, right? Or, if I can do this this way. Why? How about we don't shame me so much for finding this other thing difficult and find a way for me to work it through or like, if the normies don't actually know, excuse me what they're interested in. Right? Because they're so busy fitting in with everybody else that they never learned how to be themselves. Like, I think I know some neurodivergent people who can help you. Yeah. Like, listen to your inner voice? Because they're like, do you have other voices that are not your inner voice? All I hear is like Ma Ma Ma, but I don't listen, because I'm like big into Pokemon right now. And that's all I want to think about, or whatever it is, right? So if we stopped pathologizing, in one population, what we are very expensively producing self help books to try to figure out for the neurotypical population, I think we would get closer to universal design to because we would understand people not as one group that's normal and needs help. And one group that's broken and needs fixing, right, we would just be a kind of wide variety of people, some of whom are going to be in charge of answering the email for the podcast, and some of whom are going to be in charge of reading five peer reviewed stories in one day, and then be like, I have an idea for today, if you want to record about
writing, I'm like, sure, yeah, let's go. And then I haven't read any of this. But I could react really well to think about things. And I'll do that right here on the spot. And I think that that's like it, it is our ability to, you know, I know a lot of podcasters it's a different kind of podcast, but it's, again, a different kind of where we're just like, I'm going to record with Amy today, and I don't have any ideas, but I'm pretty sure Amy's gonna have an idea. And I'm fine with whatever and we're going to talk for an hour, an hour and a half and I'm gonna be fine with it. Whereas like that again, that's some people's nightmare. Yeah,
that's showing up the first day of school not realizing you have to teach. That's what that is for some people. Like what where's my research assistant in my notes, and my fact checker, I look back.
Yeah, and my script, like, how do I know what I'm gonna say? And I'm like, I never know what I'm gonna say that's the ADHD thing. Like
it would never happen. It just didn't happen. I turned my new pants into a lesson plan on the fly, if you will. Nice. My class was I make them do case studies right? So we'd ask them first aid because they do pre post right firstly, class on our social media good for us or bad for us. So right for three minutes about that. Okay, great. They did. And then the second day, I gave them case said he's seven groups got seven things in the file on my email called links I sent to myself. And it was all links I'd sent to myself within the past 15 hours before class, though it was all brand new, super relevant.
Had a chance to read yet so you didn't really read them. Okay, okay, but
I wasn't going to remember what I read unless I just went through my inbox called links I sent. I was like, yeah, he's seven. I'll just because there's so much There's hundreds of them. And they're like, Do you have a course seven from literally the 15 hour period before I taught, which is to say from supper till breakfast, the next day, these things and bookmark them and I use them as case studies. You know, one of them was like, meta is suing the state of Ohio, which now has a rule about parental approval for underage teens is required to sign up for social media. Another article was about the National Parks Service in the US there x feed, which I highly recommend the National Park Service, you need to find your Twitter feed, and it's the greatest thing on earth. A story about Bret Michaels of poison adopting a husky named Bret Michaels. What else did I have? In
Northern Virginia? Like he's a local Boyer? Yeah,
so yeah, I know, because that's where he brought the Husky he is, right. The Husky needs a bandana. And a mullet is like kind of what needs to happen now. But um, and then I had to, I put up a hashtag, which was closet core Mitchell, which is the pants that I made on group did that, and I was wearing the pants. So like, Listen, I'm really good at this. This was an exciting class seven groups of seven studies. They had to read the case studies. And then they had answered the question again, is social media good for us or bad for us and like, but you can only think of it in the context of that one case that I gave you. Right? So the point of that was like, Well, it depends what you mean by social media. It depends what you mean by good, what you mean by that? And for what audience, right. And so they all got to see each other's work, because we put it in the Google Doc. So they got seven answers for the price of one. And then the group that had the hashtag, they were like, well, you're wearing those pants, like SATs. I was like, did you just like notice that they're like, your photo is in the feed? And I'm like, yeah, and then we got to talk about like, the death of home sewing from the 80s through the early 2000s. And the resurgence of like pattern finding online and the building of community and the sharing of tips and stuff. And it was like Yeah, cuz I made pants. Like, again, that's another thing that was like my obsessive hobby. over the break. Am I gonna make these goddamn pants but I was doing the pants that I saw on the paper pattern that I ordered. It's like tag us on Instagram. Show us your makes hashtag Plaza corpsman. Like it's right there on the box at the pattern comes in? Yeah. Yep. T your gram. Right. When you search it, you see what everybody else has done. So I'm like doing my hobbies very intensely. And in the background, somehow curriculum is bridging right. And if when I tell you that my students were beyond impressed that I managed to wear to class, a pair of pants that were in the case studies. Well, they were so I looked like I had my shit together. Even though I don't know what class I'm teaching. I don't even date.
Yeah. Well, and that's, that's what happened to me with my sewing blog. I probably told this story, where, you know, I just started to blog about it to have a place to sort of carry it. And I have a blogging problem. So I have like 75
blogs, serial blogger. Yeah,
I am a serial blogger. Like, I've abandoned my blog. And now I'm just a sewing blogger, apparently, anyways. But part of my job is to explain WordPress to people, right part of my job is to explain WordPress. And WordPress is a content management system. So WordPress is really hard to explain and to show what it can do if you have no content to manage. You just walk in with a gift, you just walk in with a fresh install of WordPress or like, there's nothing there. Yeah, and you're trying to explain the difference between pages and posts. And why you would want to use pages over posts or posts or pages, and what categories and tags can do, and all that kind of stuff. Well, now. I have a whole website of media and structured data. Yep. And pages.
One, two, because you have more than one blog. In this blog, I made this choice. So
usually, like this is the most structured data I've ever done. Right, right. Usually my data is very unstructured, right? So in this data, I've actually made choices about like, what my categories are, I've decided and the way I explained it is like categories are kind of like the table of contents. And the tags are like the index at the back of the book. And so there's no it's it's agnostic, it doesn't care what you call them. There's no rules about categories and tags. WordPress is just looking for a string of letters that look the same and say this stuff goes in this bucket. Right. So I have three main categories on my site, which is pattern reviews, free pattern reviews in general sewing, I will probably Probably add a new one if I ever get around to doing them, which are book reviews. Right? Right. And so those are my broad categories. Everything I write fits into one of those those broad buckets, but then my tags I get into, is this woven or knit material. Yeah. Who is the pattern designer? What pattern? Is it? Is it a? What kind of garment? Is it dress pants? That you know, and then you get into the fine points of like, what kind of dress it is like? Is it wrap dresses or fit and flare? Is it just, you know, just a plain dress? Is it a top is a blouse is it, you know? And then if it's like, a fabric that I know, like my marimekko stuff, I'll tag it marimekko as well. And so like, that's like the most structured data I have. And I've ever really created. And it lends itself to that. So I can really show.
Yeah, like, I think for me categories are like categories are for navigating right now. And tags are for searching. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Right. Like, if you just browsing a site, you're like, what is in here? Like, I want to read all the like pattern reviews, no, just the free pattern reviews because not good paying money, right. But if you're like searching for like anything that's with a knit like that, it can be in many categories. But you're like searching for something specific rather than browsing or navigating your way. Again, table is a different way to see Table of Contents versus index, right?
I don't want to know just about this one author. So I'm just gonna find all the pages that talked about that one, either. But, but again, I'd like that I wasn't thinking about it. But I did inadvertently create this really great demonstration tool. Yeah, to sort of say like, you might be talking about ecology and environmental impact. But like, you could create categories and tags, you just have to decide, right, but here are the cool things you can do. You can create areas and pages in searchability and tag clouds and all of these kinds of things, which is like really hard to do in a here's a blank WordPress site demonstration.
Yeah, and and the great thing about that, too, is like, the content now that you're using for the example at your work is not like a made up example of like, you know, Suzy spinach, and, you know, Jani turnip, I have a blog together, you're like, Oh, my God, or like
someone else's site that I have to hope that they've kept it up to date and not violate any FERPA or that you don't
have? Not? Yeah, well, that too. Well, and I'm
an admin, I have the access to back end on everything. But like, that's not exactly. Again, not what you want to be doing either, like, random, this random fact that this website.
What, yeah, but like, so you made something meaningful. That's a real world example that has stakes in it that you can explain because also you're the author. And yes, blog has a purpose, your use, you can explain like, don't this is how you make categories and tags. But also like, this is why I made these choices, because my goals were this in their human goals, and also in in pursuing your interest in getting that site together because of the content you want to share. And also because like you like nerding out on WordPress and stuff. You probably learned a lot about the gargoyles on WordPress, right? Like you young Oh, yeah, our use case for that. And the same way, like all my metaphors from teaching and turn on my math students in my academic writing course, this year, my math and computer science students, like nearly all of them were very accomplished on an instrument, most of them piano, right, so that I could use a lot of jokes in my visual materials that I'd explained to you, but are better with if you could just show the sheet music to people, which my students found highly entertaining, because they all read sheet music at a higher level. It just gives me more metaphors for teaching, which makes me be a better explainer, that helps me relate to people better, because things that they're interested in. Usually I have some sort of some hook into that. I'm like, oh, yeah, like I used to knit in class all the time, or did this thing or like, oh, I used to bake this type of thing all the time, or, you know, like, Yeah, I've been in a running club. It's kind of like that, right? Like, it gives me more ways instead of just being like in the ivory tower book nerd that does nothing but scholarship all the time. By pursuing interests in my own life, it makes me better at my job, and it makes me a happier person. And it always attaches in like, quite unexpected ways. Like exactly my hobbies, like Cisco six degrees of special interest is kind of like, like how it works here. And I wouldn't be half as effective at my job if I was exhausted all the time, because I didn't do the things that brought me joy. And I wouldn't be half as effective in my job either. If I wasn't so full up with information about 10 million domains and my special interest that I can create a grad course out of nothing, with no notice, right, because my heads full of stuff, right? Because it's not actually out
of nothing. No, it's not right. It's not it's not out of nothing at all. Yeah, it's got
sewing metaphors in it. It's like my classes like arts and crafts. We did drawings from my interest in sketchnoting. And like things that I've learned in my drawing classes that have been taken, right, so I took all of those things, and I cobbled it together into something being original that's worthy of my paygrade. And my job category, right? Like they're paying for access to me. I'm supposed to be the expert. I'm supposed to be the value add here when I was Did I have a paper syllabus? I did not. That's less important. Right. And, and I can see a world in which I would benefit from being better at calendaring. But I can also see a world in which a lot of my colleagues disciplinary wide, would benefit from being a little bit more ADHD and autistic in the way that they teach. If that's the way that I teach. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm not broken all the way. Right. I'm really, really good at some things. And I'm not great at other things, and I'm really good at paying attention kinds of ways. And
like, you should everyone should take an improv class. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. And so because I find that that's one of the ones when working with faculty with technology, right? What if something goes wrong? Yeah. Well, and you deal with it? Yeah. And they're like, Oh, yeah. Yeah,
in your job. And my job to a lot of what we do is troubleshooting on the fly, right? I'm not sure why this isn't working. And you're like, then your special interest zone of focus cone comes down over your head, you're like, Oh, cool. I am not moving out of this chair to like, figure this out in a Google like, we have to figure this out. And we're gonna die. And you're like, I have to figure this out. Because I will not rest until I know. Yeah, yeah. This is something pressed the special interest. Yeah. Right. You've like activated nuclear mode here. And I'm gonna solve it because I love this kind of challenge, because some people don't do well on that. But like, that's something that many neurodivergent people are really, really good is like bullheaded focus
on problems. So I think, I think that part of it is like, and again, this is a level of acceptance. But I mean, some of us who are neurodivergent, it's like, something might go wrong. You're always like, I've like something always goes wrong. Oh, like goes wrong, something always goes wrong. Like, I don't know what, like, your life is really a lot easier than mine. Or you're just doing a lot more, because like, something always goes wrong. And it's never what I anticipated. Because I can see 10 million futures except for the one that is like when that happened. Surely the most likely to happen.
Oh, that's weird. Yeah, I didn't expect that to happen. Yeah. Because okay, we'll figure it out. I broken lots of stuff before. Exactly.
I break everything. I'm never making
it work. Right? If not being so like, it has to be perfect every time because it's going to be never been, you're like, Oh, well, let's put some glue on. And it'll be fine. Right? Like, I think there is a thinking of calling it something like crip wisdom, right? That there are things that you know, if you break your arm, and you are like, I can't do anything, if you want to talk to somebody who's got, you know, a disability in their hands, they'll be like, listen, I know how to do this. Yeah. There are a lot of things that people can learn from the hard won knowledge of disabled people, right? Disabled people have a lot of experience navigating bureaucracies at HQ, right? We have a lot of experience making do with things that aren't exactly right for us, right of working with the physical world that is not built for physical world or a bureaucratic world or, or a logical world that is not built for us, we have a way of becoming a little bit more independent in finding out a way for us to get done the things we need to get done. Without a lot of help, we're good at that. We're also much less robust in terms of putting up with the bullshit of late capitalism and just eating that cost with our bodies because we fall apart faster, right? We thought we find our boundaries a lot sooner than other people find their boundaries, right? Because our boundaries are a little closer to the surface, right? I can't work too many hours in a day or I start crying, and then I don't sleep in them, my whole week is shot. That's just how it is. Right? So I have Andres around my electronic communication, that some of my colleagues are only coming to now that I've been doing for years and years and years because I broke first right? I was the canary in the coal mine wasn't safe for me, it's not going to be safe for you later, right? So that some of us, we are the breaking points, we are the person that doesn't fit in the aeroplane seat quite right. And something needs to be done about it. We are too heavy or too light or too short or too tall. Or we talk too fast, right? Slow, whatever it is, right that we have to we behave like
millennials, whatever that like millennials,
like all of these things that rebuilt these workarounds. And sometimes it's not that we've done a workaround. So unless we're just really skilled at stuff that most people are not skilled at. Yeah. But if we always assume that anyone with a disability is somehow broken, and that whatever knowledge that we have, is compensating for our brokenness, rather than maybe demonstrating a skill that everybody would do well to develop like the divergent thinking or flexibility around like, I guess I'm teaching a class right now cool, or boundaries around Um, I need this kind of focus time or I can't do email after 7pm, or whatever it is, it's not maybe always indicative that we're wrong, right? In the same way that those people were like, Andy Warhol can't be autistic, because if he is, then he's not really an artist. It's just all symptoms. And I'm like, really? Like, because that's how we get treated, right? Yeah, it's like, the only reason Amy can do this, like rad class with no notice and stuff is because like, she's like autistic savant, she has all these facts, or whatever it is, but that's not it. Like, that's not its full skill. Even if there's something linked to a disability there, it doesn't mean it's agency free, or that other people shouldn't have to try, right? So if Andy Warhol could maybe be autistic, but still be considered to be an artist, even if you look at his art to be like, that feels a bit autistic, still be art, then maybe, you know, the the ways in which neurodivergent people move through the world might be functional. And it might be more functional than the ways other people move through the world. Like I keep this week thinking about Leo, saying, like, I can't do this anymore. I gotta kind of have a nap after school. Right? It can't be more than like, having three hours of alone time in Italy in the afternoon. Like God bless him for having that knowledge. Yeah, right. Yeah, most neurotypical people could benefit from recognizing their own unmet needs for alone time and less activity. Right. But they, they don't. So maybe it's not like, well, he gets to do that because of his diagnosis. Maybe it's he's unrestrained from doing that, because he's not so prey to social conformity. And that's why he's eating a need that we all have. But most of us don't admit to ourselves. Right.
And also, I always want to give myself some credit here to where like I said this last week, creating an environment where it's okay. Yeah, right, where it's like an honored and respected and heard and, you know, just being said, Okay, right, if you are if this is exhausting than sleep, yeah, right. And if this, if spending all day at school is too much, and I'll give credit for the school board for this, too. They're like, Look, if all day school is too much, let's move your move a little class online. Yeah. And then you can go home earlier in the afternoon. Yeah. And we were like, Oh, cool. All right. That's actually perfect. Thank you. You know, and, and I think that that's, again, I think I said this last week, where it was like, if we are if I am going to walk the walk on this. I've got to be consistent with my kids. Yeah. Right. And, and my students, and then how do you do that? But like, you know, it creates these ways where they're where I'm hoping they are not in like we were active battle with ourselves. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Where everything I do is wrong. And it's like, you know, what's not wrong on taking nap? It's not wrong to be exhausted. Yeah, every day, it's not wrong to need to
have a nap every day. And you're like, well, you're different people. Yeah, right. Exactly. Do with your kids. Sometimes it's like a warm welcome sibling gets this and like, because your sibling needs it. Yeah. And you don't, right? You get this? Or like, how come this person gets to do that? Right? It's like you were talking earlier about, about flexibility, right? How flexible do we have to be before we lose all structure, maybe some high school students want to do an overload in one semester, because the sport that they play is more active in the other semester. And that's a good workaround for them not a reduced course load, but like overload, get one term because they will not suffer. Doing that in a way that would suffer if they had to do their sport intensely. And of course load at the same time, right, like,
well, and it's also like, we're finding this in higher ed that maybe you don't like the Completion, Completion, Completion. But it's also maybe you don't need to do the full 15 credits. Yeah. Every semester time for people
like maybe your accommodation is not extended deadlines on literally everything into next year. Maybe it's you take fewer courses, but it still counts as fun.
Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Like, like full time, can also be 12 credits or whatever it is at your institution. You all know what it is like there is there's sort of the upper limit and then the lower limit and maybe the lower limit is okay. Yeah, right. Or maybe partly, I mean, again, depends on your financial situation, but maybe part time is okay, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like the world is not going to end if you spend six years on this rather than only four. Yeah,
six good years, rather than four awful ones. Yeah. Or maybe
you're like my daughter and her like, I'm so sick and tired of high school. Yeah, I'm gonna get a normal degree and finish it in three years. Because I hate it here. You're like, Oh, my
God, I had five years of high school. Lee five.
Oh, because you guys still a great 13 or 13
That's how old I am. Sure story. I was like, 19 When I started university. Yikes. Yeah.
I mean, that was the same for me, but we had sage up. So it was sort of like splitting the difference anyway. Yeah, it's yeah, it into the weird Canadian school systems. And then there was the double cohort here in Ontario.
Because grade. Yeah, this year I started teaching but like, listen, I give different advice to my students to simply come in, I have to know them, though. It has to be relationship. And they're like I'm having trouble getting on my essay won't be like, well, I need you to do some brainstorming, because some of them are like, well, what's the problem? And they'll be like, Well, I have 75 good ideas. I'm like, Okay, you need to stop having ideas. Your other students will be
like, which I know can be a challenge. Yeah, yeah.
Right. And the other students will be like, I'm not sure what to write about. And I'm like, Well, what are you interested in? And they'll be like, I don't know. And I'll be like, Okay, so let's do some brainstorming right later. Yeah. To find out like the best way to work with people to get done. What needs doing, you have to know who they are, right? You have to ask the question out, like, Well, every student who stalks should do some brainstorming because like, the students who are like, I have 400 ideas, right? Or like, that's not going to help them that's just making the problem worse, worse, right. And the so some 150
of them. Yeah, that's like, think of more
uses for the paperclip, right? They're like, Oh, is 1 million? Not enough, right? Yeah. You can't move because there's too many paper clips. Right? You probably need to start shoveling paper clips out of the way and stop thinking about paperclips, right, yeah, you need to focus and narrow down, right. It's you have to give that advice to some people. And some people you say like, maybe you should co work with other people. And some people you're like, I think you need to find a quiet space. Yeah. And turn it ON OFF. Right. But you just, it's relational. Yeah, you have to trust people self report. And sometimes you have to ask follow up questions, and they have to trust that you have their best interests at heart.
I know. That is the hardest part as an educator these days. It is is like when I did peer driven learning, and I've done stopped. It's like getting them. They were so convinced in my peer driven learning class that I was just gonna pull the rug out from under. Yeah,
I know. I know. I know that. They were like, yeah, yeah. They're like getting to the trick. Yeah,
they're waiting for the trick. It's like, if I do this, are you going to come back and say that either wrong? Yeah, I know. I know. I'm like, no, because that's literally what I'm telling you to do. But then they, but they just like, I know, who hurt them. But like, Who hurt you? Like, yeah,
I know. I know. Like, that's the same thing that we have to trust each other. A lot of professors, a lot of employers don't trust employees, right. A lot of employees don't trust institutional systems or, or schools. And there's a lot of reasons that that's true, right. And the only way we can rebuild that is through interpersonal reaction, interpersonal interaction, in my case, through a pop in. And in my husband's case, by booking a meeting and his calendar, right. And we made
an arc and in our case, following each other on Twitter for a decade, that's right,
following each other on Twitter for a decade and be like, we should just like record when we talk. Because like, some of the the overhead for that, right? The opportunity cost there is that we have to open our imaginations to get to know somebody a little bit. So that we can find a way to work together on our mutual needs, right? It's not about if we had slack, this would be easier, it's not because then you're just trying to avoid doing that work of figuring out the best modality for the compromise so that you can all work together, or figuring out what advice to give people like there's no way you can outsource that to a tool right? At best our tools free up the time, so that we can spend that interactional energy on one another instead of on, for example, web forms, or doodle polls, right? That, that we're very well able, I'm very well able to mentor each of my individual students, when I have time to see them. Right? When they trust me, if I don't have to book a meeting with them, that takes me 90 minutes of emailing back and forth for a 10 minute meeting. Right, which I'm going to forget to attend. Like, if I can just see them. And we can talk to each other face to face, we're gonna get it done. Right? If you book a meeting with my husband, and then show up at the appointed time in the Zoom Room or on campus, or wherever it happens, or wherever it is, yeah, you will be fully prepared and you will have the best version of him, right. But if I'm late for a meeting that I almost forgot, like, you're not getting the best version of me you get the best version when you stick your head in my office door, right like, but we can figure this out if we have enough time and space in our day to remember why we're trying to do something. And what is the optimal way not for capitalism, but the optimal way for us to do it and continue to thrive. And then maybe,
and maybe the answer is just a little neurodivergent. Yeah, right. Like maybe
it's winging it. One of my grad students today was telling me that she like muffed up something in her putting her course together. So she showed up with materials that was not what she needed for this class. She was teaching and then she winged it in a way that I would have done that we've talked about a lot. She gave me a bunch of stuff to do group so she's like, Okay, well, you guys are gonna figure it out. But she was like, it was amazing. I was like, Ah, you did it right like you went a little neurodivergent there is like you stepped away from the tried and the true or the stereotypical way of doing something and tried a different You know, it worked and I'm so happy, right? But other people will have different strategies is to be open to trying them or learning what they are trusting one another having space to experiment in those ways so that we can maybe when, when we find ourselves in a position where we're teaching a three hour grad course that we forgot that we were teaching that we can accept ourselves enough to talk about it on a podcast. Yeah, right. Um, and
I'm not as a teachable moment as a warning, but as a teachable moment of like,
funny. Like, the gift here is like both that we have degrees of high functioning and low functioning in different areas. Um, but also I'm trying to model for myself and for others that like, Listen, this disability is disabling. Yeah, it's kind of stuff keeps happening to me, even though I try really, really hard to prevent it. But it's my Achilles heel, it is my kryptonite, where I make mistakes is not I get an idea wrong. Where I make mistakes is I get the schedule wrong, right? Yeah, every when the mistakes happen, it's that
it's that part of your brain doesn't fire like there's not enough dope, I don't know, dopamine or whatever. I don't know, some some
work in, in there. And I accept that about myself. I'm doing my best. It's a reason not an excuse, right? I'm doing my best to compensate for it. And in this case, like no harm, no foul, but now it's funny. And as you say, it's like a peak AMI experience. Right? The whole story is peak. Peak me like you could not be me, if you tried and there was a time when I would have denied that UFO myself, right? Or said ha, that's really funny Tears of a Clown kind of thing. And then Ben, were humiliated and ashamed of myself. And like, I wish, like I would not wish on it. But you know, it's really great. If you could just manage to forget what day you teach, then you'll really discover something about yourself. I don't wish that on anybody. I don't wish but it happened. And I dealt with it because that's where I am. Right. self
acceptance. Yeah. And I think that that is, yeah. And I guess that that's the kind of that's the kind of lesson to take from that. Right. Like I said, like, it's, it's a it's not a cautionary tale. It's, it's something that happened. There was, you know, a moment of learning, but it was more of a reflection of aha, what can I take from this moment? That is not that I need to be better at calendaring. But aha, this might be a thing. This
might be a vase. This week, I've also left my lunch on the counter. You know, at the end of last semester, I locked myself out of my own office twice. Like I'm trying I'm really trying so hard not to be a burden on other people. In these ways. I and I'm so much better than I used to be. I'm never going to be good. No, no, I'm just gonna fail. Maybe 20% of the time instead of 80% of the time and then any better than that?
Well, it's, it's like any activity, right? Like I you know, I am good enough at sewing that I'm happy with it. Yeah. Right. Like, my aim is not to be like, it was like, You should totally close and I'm like, No, don't even talk to me about that. Like, don't don't take this away from me. Don't wreck my joy here. Don't wreck my joy here. And it's like, I am terrified pants and I might never saw myself a pair of pants. It's not attached to the top of a jumpsuit. But like, I'm okay with that. Yeah, I know. I'm really impressed. I'm almost convinced. But I also have pants that fit me really well. Yeah. Should they
be spinning around in the webcam? in mind? Yeah. Yeah. Um,
but, but again, like we all like, most people aren't going to the Olympics. No. Right. Most people are not. You know,
I still enjoy shotput ya know it? Yeah.
Or running, right? I don't yet like, I hate running. I can still enjoy swimming and have enjoyed swimming my entire life, even though I never got anywhere near the Olympics. And, you know, 99.9999% of my swimmers because one of a swimmer that I coached way back when she was young actually made the Olympics, but like, but like, so what? Do
entirely to your influence and also genetics? Yeah, well,
and for that for the for the eight months that I happened to coach her before I like started university. And Right, right. But so again, like we can we can accept these things about or, well, maybe we can, but other people struggle with this too. We can accept our physical limitations. I mean, they still fall within the norms, because again, it's not the physical disability, but we can accept our physical limitations within the norms and most people can accept everybody's physical limitations within the norms. Right? Yeah, but we really struggle with the end intellectual, like the norms are so much more narrow, I think as you're trying to say,
or the brain feels like an abstraction, right, it's inside your skull where you can't see it. Right? Yeah. So like, like, like Tressie I have a bad foot, right. And so I have a clubfoot, which has super restricted mobility and it's a weird shape and stuff, but my other foot works great. Yeah, right. So I have two feet, just one of them doesn't work correctly, right? Like I have one brain. But the part of it that's for calendaring is not working. And that's for abstract reasoning is a top notch. Right. You know, I have a clubfoot. It doesn't mean that my hands are asymmetrically disabled. They're not because like it's one body, but on the body, at least we can see that feet are different from one another. And a foot problem does not indicate a hip problem also, right? But it's like if one part of your brain is very high functioning, then you have a magical perfect brain. Right? And if one private, we've talked about this, too, right, like Yeah, then your whole brain is broken, right? We just are not able to account for the brain having multiple tricks, right? We're maybe disabled in some aspects of brain function, but less disabled, and even gifted or touched by the smarts in other parts of brain function. Right? That's just really hard for like, not only neurotypical people to wrap their heads around, but for neurodivergent people exactly
right. Where it's just like, we're doing it wrong. Yeah. Yeah, right. I must be doing challenging wrong. I must be, you know, I must be running wrong, because I'm not getting any faster. And
I'm so bad at this other thing. I must be dogging it on that. I must just not be trunky. Right. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, no, you have flat feet, knock knees, a swapped back and, and uneven hips. Like you don't want to even do this. Yeah. And it hurts and you hate it. Right? Yeah. It's like I was I was trying to explain this to my kids. Right. Where, like, I was enraged. I've told the story because we've told so many stories, but hey, what the heck, like we had the they call it the Pacer Test. We called it beat the beep Do you remember beat the beep? I do? I do. Oh che lei J but it was beat the beat. They still do it. I was a distance swimmer. Yeah, right. Like, I my races were the 400 I am the 800 freestyle and backstroke. Like those were raised by trained art. And along and I, you know, lifted weights every single morning, right, like our three times a week trained, you know, an obscene amount. I could barely pass the Pacer Test.
was just like, you weren't good at though. Yeah.
But you know what? No, it wasn't. And, you know, I was also asthmatic. And there was a whole bunch of things like I could didn't know how to breathe. But I mean, you know, it was just like, everybody would look at me it goes, Well, you're in terrible shape. Yeah, no, you weren't? No, I wasn't. But I always felt like I was I when I was on. This is where I told it. So I was on Audrey waters podcast. And she said, Well, you were an athlete. I'm like, I never felt like one. Because I was really good at swimming. What terrible at any other sport. And so in my mind, athletes were these, like catalogs and you could play baseball, and you could play soccer, and you could
paint easily.
Yeah, and they think you were just the I was so clumsy in other than this one thing that I could do. And so even though I could do it really well, and I was really proud of that, I still never felt like an athlete. Because I was terrible at everything else. And everybody was like, You're terrible. You're so out of shape. And I'm like, Yeah, I guess I am. Let me just go swim for the next two and a half hours on
great neuro divergence metaphor there assumes that a test in one domain is indicative of literally everything, right? Like I would say, Well, I have really beautiful penmanship. I do calligraphy with my right hand. And I can do chicken scratch with my left hand. Right? Like, that doesn't mean that I actually don't have good handwriting. Right? It means that most of us like handedness is a thing, right? We have a dominant side and a non dominant side, right? So and
for a long time, they forced everybody to be right handed. So it's my mom, right?
That's why nobody speaks French in my family. Got my mom left handed and so so you're a really good distance swimmer, you had excellent, like conditioning for endurance events, and you're very strong, right? But if the test is like, how high can you jump, then it's gonna be like, Wow, you're out of shape. Yeah, you're not me. I
couldn't do a pull up right like
that. That's sort of like so if somebody was like, yeah, now we need you like to draw. I don't know, do a perspective drawing like with your left hand and a Sharpie, but like, No,
I can't do that right. Yeah, good. I guess I'm not an artist then. Right, right.
I have like, yeah, so it were much more various than that in every skill is is more nuanced, right? You can be really great at throwing a baseball. You could even like maybe train yourself to throw a knuckleball, but doesn't mean you can put a spiral on a football, you'd have to learn, right? You'd have to learn and maybe you just don't have the knack for it. Ultimately, you can put as much time into the knuckleball as like turning a spiral. And even though spiral is like a lot easier to learn than a knuckleball, you get the knuckleball, and you never get the spiral, it doesn't mean you're not an athlete are good at throwing things.
Right. Thinking about like affordance has physical affordances. So, my daughter, we all have small hands in my family, like we just all have really small hands. Yes, I don't know, like, No, I have small, really small hands like tiny. And so to both my kids. And but for whatever reason, Cassie has always been able to open any of the jars that we have, you know, that are hard. And so we always joke with her because her hands aren't any bigger than mine. And so we always called her like man hands. Only because she was like it bring your whole cans over here to be able to do it right. Then we finally realized what it was because of her EDS.
Oh yeah, she just has an elbow
all the way down. But she could also turn her elbow all the way around and out
the shoulder over the top and then crank it back and
it gets more torque on it. Yeah. And anyone else in the family to sort of run hands. It's
like physics. Yeah,
it's physics. To me. No, I know, it was just like, because she was walking around the house with her elbows like pointed forwards, and like hugging us with them. And we were just like, how do you even and then I realized watching her open a jar of pickles that I'd asked her to come and open because I couldn't do it. That is because she can talk her elbows all the way around. That's
funny. I just had a very similar insight last night, which was probably be our last story. Because rolling a time here, I often thought I was very weak, right. I often describe myself as a bendy weakling on this podcast, right? And I have these heavy pants like steel, like I have heavy anodized like quality pans of the steel bottoms that are very heavy and stuff. And I you know, try to lift to pour from a sauce pan into dishes and I can't I'm trying to use two hands. And I can't and for a long time I thought it is like God, my arms are so weak that I can't lift this pan and turn it like they do on TV. And I changed my grip a bunch of ways. But it turns out it's my my EDS. Because what happens is I lift the heavy pan high enough. And if I try to rotate all the bones of my wrist dislocate, it's not that I can't handle the weight. Yeah, it's the joints can't handle the weight. The muscle is fine. The joints are like a muscle is fine. And it's just like, Oh no, what was the? What was that noise? Oh, that was my elbow dislocating when I lifted the soup pot. Right. So it has nothing to do with my muscles. But I thought it was I'm not strong like No, no, it's my joints. Right? So, so similar. Similar thing there. That's the version of you forget what day you teach. But you can do the grad class, if you're just in swimmer who can't pass this one beat the beat. Right? You
go ahead and do ballet anymore, but she can open a
jar of pickles. Listen, these are life skills that we need. I would love to hear from any of our listeners about their experiences of this kind of asymmetry in skill or any peak listener experiences of like, oh my God, it was so me that I did this. Right? We would love to hear about those and any moments of crip wisdom that you have. When you get to tell people like cut your hair short, you will be happy. I did. Right? Let us know. We'd love to hear it.
Yeah, or anyone who is listening to this because you have someone in your family who is neurodiverse that you love and are trying to better understand or in your life. Or your students. Right. What are some things that you have picked up that you have adopted for yourself from what Amy is calling crib wisdom? To be able to to this is going to be a paper now isn't it
different from inspiration porn? Lee? Not you're such an inspiration, because your life is obviously so shitty. I mean, look at you. How do you even stay alive? And yet you're smiling. It's not that.
It's like, wow, my daughter?
How do you do that? Yeah. Anyhow, let's not get mad.
No, no, no, no, no, but I'm saying this is gonna be an essay because you've just coined the term. And now you're already spinning it towards like, this is the antidote. And I'm just like, watching it happen as we speak, where I'm like, this is going to be Yeah, this is gonna get published in two years. This is going to be because this is what academic publishing is. Two years. This is going to be a paper. Next year she'll be presenting on this at conferences. There'll be
only if I get invited. Oh, that's true. That's yeah, yeah. The birth of a special interest you witness Sit here first, everybody. Next rabbit hole diving into it. Well wait. My last thing is the study I read this morning for that news interview about people and misinformation. This is going to shock you, Lee, that they had people install a browser extension so they could see how they were doing this internet research. And the number one way that people tried to fact check something that would have a headline like, fascist Trudeau uses engineered famine through COVID lockdowns to promote globalist agenda. They would cut and paste the headline, yeah. into a Google search bar. That would never occur. To me that is such a on the face of it. idiotic way to fact check something. But that's what they do. Are they paste the URL into the search bar? Yeah. And like, since these like misinformation sites all tend to use language in a way that nobody else uses language. Yeah. All the results you get back seemed to confirm that thing that you read. Oh,
no, they didn't like it, of course, because of AI. All right, right. So so yeah, this is terrible. So I there's a book I'm holding it up right now. And it's called verified checkmark in it. Whoo. Yeah. It's by Mike Caulfield. Who does this might I know, I know. Mike is awesome. And Sam Weinberg. I'm reviewing this for natural Teaching Learning Forum, but like that. This is what everybody should read. Because it literally like goes against like Mike even admits it. That's like research can make it worse. This Yeah. Like, like,
you know, front end loader is a great tool for digging holes in your front yard unless you don't know how to drive it. Right. Do your own research works great. If you know how to research. You're not so great if you don't, okay, so we should stop there. Even though
it's getting dark out for goodness sakes, like watching the sun go down in the background of both of our? Yeah, okay. Because it's winter and the sun goes down at 4pm. All right, maybe I'll cut this into two. I don't know. This seems like a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. And there was a point where we went in coherence. So like, I've got to find that spot of your favorite spots to cut my favorite spots.
This is an episode that you're listening to after an episode that was not incoherent. You'll know that Lee cut a bit out. Yeah. And that this was actually two episodes.
Yeah. And if not well, because I got distracted. Because editing the podcast is not something that I learned it out of necessity. And I'm so proud of myself for learning and finishing, finishing a MOOC. But also
let's go home now and put pajamas on and start sewing things for the week. Yeah,
yeah, I think I like that. I have a coat that I knew I will stop. I have a coat that I've cut out I found this video because I was too scared because as lining the first time we didn't line me it didn't go well. But there's a video so this weekend, I'm going to show my first coat. Oh my god, I can't wait. Yeah, sorry. I'm excited. Yeah, alright. Alright, so I already said email us at all the things ADHD actually said into the beginning of the episode, which might actually be another episode. So email us at all the things adhd.com Maybe don't follow us on Instagram because we just block you. I mean, this is Social Media man we teach you teach a course on it and yet we're still bad it was on Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good. But do do the email if you want to comment on the Spotify do that to people seem to be doing that. That's awesome. Thank you. And we will see you when we see you. Bye
