Hi everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the all the things. ADHD podcast,
all the things, yay, clap,
clap, clap. I don't know if the noise canceling will recognize the clap or not. It's incredible what it like, what it cuts out now, like the sound of like the sound of the puppy, yeah, like the sound of my puppy in the background pushing up against the size of his ex pen so that he can get out his zoomies before he finally, hopefully takes a nap. Well, I
was just listening to Brene Brown interviewing Roxanne Gay, and at a certain point, Roxanne Gay's dog went skitter, skittering down the stairs for something, and we get she's like, well, there goes my dog. So like, Listen, if Roxanne Gay can have skitter, skitter dog noises with Ray Brown, well then, yeah, I think we're fine.
I think we're good. I think we're good. It's
a feature, not a bug. It's
a feature, not the bug. Welcome to ADHD Awareness Month. Welcome to the fifth, sixth anniversary of our podcast. Because this time, where we started in October, we've, of course, haven't recorded in over a month. But that's fine, because we went back to school, and we sure did got crazy because, you know how, how's, how's your back to the semester going so far. Amy,
so far, so good. So far, so good. I've been just really busy trying to get to know all my students names and keep up with all my grading and all of that. And it's just a bit of a chaos at the beginning, and I'm still digging myself out of the email hole. How
about you? Yeah, actually, five years. So six years I registered the domain and we recorded our first podcast episode, and then a full year later, and then a full year later, we
started the podcast. So, yeah, classic, yep, that's how we roll here.
It's going really well. I'm teaching at 8am which, again, your nightmare, my dream, except I forgot that I actually have to get to campus for eight o'clock that's a problem. And traffic is a nightmare, sure. So like, at one point we were because my husband will drop me off on the way to work, because of the whole car situation with the kids and stuff, and so he'll he can drop me off on his way to work, and we would progressively leave earlier and earlier and somehow get to school later and later every day. And I was like, what is happening? And Google Maps is like, No, you really want to take the worst route possible? And we're like, No, we don't like, like, why don't you suggest it? Because it's like, 17 routes I can take. And they're like, No, we are going to recommend the worst one every time. And I'm like, how are you this bad at your one job, because it
recommends that to everybody. That's why it creates the traffic patterns at a certain point.
Yeah, anyway, so, but the class is going really well, and I'm having a lot of fun, and it's, it's really I am also struck again by the by the how flipped upside down higher education is here in the United States is that I've taught at, you know, serve at public service institutions, right? And I've taught freshman writing in those and your instructor, I was on a five, four course load with 25 students per class in freshman writing, right? Right. It's too many. It's too many. And then if you're if you're not, lucky, I've done it actually before with 30 students per class, because they wanted you to overload. And then I'm here at Georgetown, which is, you know, private, selective, and I'm not full time. I am. I am an adjunct, so I only have the one class anyway. But even if you're full time, I think you, I don't think you do more than two, maybe three sections at most a semester, and our courses are capped at 15. Oh, my God, jealous. And because, yeah, and because I only teach at 8am I only have 10 students in my class, because nobody, Oh, that's amazing. Not 12, but two of them dropped, you know? And it just like, for me, the this is, this is the dream. This is the kind of environment where, like, I love it and great work, but it's like, who needed this more? These students or my students that I was teaching at these service institutions? Yeah, I think we know the answer. And it's just kind of, you know, frustrating to think, like, how much more good could I have been doing, right? Or could we generally within higher education, right? And I'm sure this is a moment that any writing instructor has had, or teacher has had,
yeah, yeah, I teach all of my courses in the kind of writing intensively, right? Miss, I'm an English professor, and I the I ask every year to teach our English 109, which is intro of academic writing. I teach a math section, so it's all math and computer science students. And I love it because it's my smallest course that I teach. And that's why I request it, because all my. Their courses are capped at like 40, and I'm trying to teach, like, a whole ton of like, disciplinary content in addition to writing, right? And my first year writing course, I am capped at 25 and I'm only teaching writing. So that's like, just so much easier. And like, maybe you might see a difference between, like, your students in Kentucky and your students at Georgetown, but like, everywhere there are writing instructors, and none of them should be teaching 30 students, no at a time. Like, never mind what the students need. Like, they all need
students at a time, just broken up,
just broken up into sections. Like, yeah, that's just not sustainable. No, right, exactly. And
anyway, I've been railing against this for a while, but it's just, you know, all that one of those moments. Of those moments where it strikes me, it's, you know, really strikes me, is like, oh god.
Well, it's been striking me too. You'll be surprised maybe that I have noticed some emails that I have received, maybe not all of the emails I have received, but I have received, like, since, well, I know you
received emails. It's like I know, but I noticed them. That's why
I'm surprised some of them I have even responded to. And since school has started, I got two emails about that piece, about AI and writing. I wrote for composition studies, and one was from an adjunct professor just telling me how meaningful the piece was to him and how nice it was to read, and he heard my voice, and he just wanted to reach out. It was, like, he doesn't want to waste my time. I'm like, sir, you are an adjunct to your teaching four sections, like, honestly, like, I have much more time. Who's
wasting? Who's time here,
who's wasting, who's time, right? Like, with my Beastie Boys jokes in my paper. And then I got another one, and this is not the first one I've received from a first year composition student at another institution, just saying that it was so nice to read something that sounded like a person. It was so nice to read something that suggested that there was something magical about doing the writing yourself and and so I was like thinking a lot about first year composition and about the the scale up and expectations and the time crunch and all that, and how everybody wants to use all these AI tools to make things faster. But I've sort of written this screed about the human, human need to write, and the human way of writing, and it's like, weird because, like, I've published things in my life, but this and the the piece about neurodivergence, those are the two pieces that people write to me about, and the AI and writing pieces, I would say I've got six or seven spontaneous emails from people around the world about that one, and they're grateful to have an opportunity to engage with writing as if it matters. And I just don't think in those large classes you can do that or with a teacher, yeah, who was like, it's Tuesday, I must be in Seneca Falls today, like it's just right, when people can't really pay attention to it, it harms everybody's ability to learn, which is kind of what we're talking about today, right?
Yeah, no, that's exactly real excellent segue. So, yeah. So we, I've, I've, I had the same discussion actually, with my my writing students, because we, one of the first assignments we were doing was technologies of writing. So we thought about, like the pencil and typewriter and word processing, and we've, you know, thinking about how that impacted. And then the next thing we talked about was writing and AI. And we got into the discussion about, what is writing, you know, and what is it that you do as a writer that is different from when chat GPT produces text? And I was really, I was really clear to make that difference, too. And so we got into these conversations around the around these kinds of things. And I mean, they, they got it for my class. I don't know if they'll like, see the value of that. If they're in a class, they're like, I know what chat GPT does is different from what I do when I write, but I really need to just generate text. And I guess that's the difference. Is like, right? Do they view the assignment as just generating text, or do they view the assignment as something that an intellectual activity that they want to be engaged in.
Yeah. I mean, that's a little bit like, you know, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time, like and like, sometimes that's what instructors do, right? Is that it's clear the words don't matter. It's clear that an onerous amount of writing has been assigned as a sort of gatekeeping rigor move, and it becomes pretty clear it doesn't matter, really the amount of heart and soul you put into it. It doesn't matter one little bit, right? And so people don't. And we teach, I think we teach people how to treat us. And I think when we design curricula, and when we decide how many students are going to get together in one classroom for how long, with how many teachers around them? I think we are teaching students how to treat those classroom situations, right?
Yep, yeah,
and so. So today we were going to talk about an article that we both just speed read that was enraging more minutes, maybe. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So the article in the Chronicle, what is it called Lee,
are colleges getting disability accommodations? Wrong? Higher ed's maximally inclusive approach hurts those it's attempts to help. And then my favorite, though, is the slug, right? So the slug for this article is, do colleges provide too many disability accommodations? That's right, yeah.
So it's a fairly lengthy piece, and we timed ourselves, because we were like, Let's talk about it today. And then I was like, Okay, great. You explain it to me and I'll react in real time. And you're like, Well, I haven't read it. I'm like, okay, great.
I read the discourse reaction to you, yeah,
right. This, you like that scene in metropolitan where it's like, I just read the scholarship so that I idle the subtext. It's, it's funny, because I think it took us longer, like I found the article, but I got stuck by paywall, so I sent you the link, and then you made a PDF for me, and then popped it in the chat, because you have institutional access to it, and then that took longer to get that done than it took us to read it. So we timed it because we thought it would be really funny, and it took you four minutes to read it, and it took me eight No, it took you six minutes and it took me eight minutes, but I produced two pages of handwritten notes also during that time. So we're just going to lay that out there as two women with ADHD who have a legitimate medical diagnosis and medication, treatment and often therapy, who identify as disabled in an academic context, we read really fast and take lots of notes. So we'll start
especially when we're fueled by rage, especially when we're fueled
and gamifying it. Let's see, this is
the fastest, right? So the article, we both didn't want to read it, because it's sort of like, get the headline, you're like, Oh, what is this fresh hell. Except it's not fresh. It's a stale. It is.
It's a stale, it's
like the laptop thing, right? It's like, actually, we haven't really seen those this year. There has not been the laptop, no, because we're all worried about chat GPT, We're all worried about AI. We're not worried so much. The discourse is
about phones this year. Oh yes, that's right, the phone
ban. And so my kid reports in grade 12, where they are at now, everybody is playing Tetris on their school issued Chromebooks, yeah, when they used to be fucking around on their phones. Okay, right. So we didn't want to read this article, but you had read the discourse. Can you tell me and our listeners, Lee, what the discourse in general has been saying about this article?
Well, so you have to understand that I am in and in my social media circles in a very inclusive, anti ableist, inclusive pedagogy kind of spaces. And so these are the, you know, this is the we have disability advocates, people who work in Disability Resource Centers, people who have put their whole anyways, it's middle fingers up like that is, that is reaction. It is middle fingers up now there may be circles where there are faculty and and and administrators who are applauding this, which, which is hinted at in the article as well. Yeah, this is a brave act that this faculty member is doing by exposing this truth,
right? This is, I love this. This is such a classic sort of reactionary conservative, fundamentally conservative move, right, which is to say, I'm just going to, you know, I'm probably going to get canceled for this, but I'm going to take a risk, and I'm going to say something that 90% of the general population already believes. Yeah, right. I'm so brave, like, look at me saying I think we should discriminate more against those people who are cheating by pretending to be disabled, which is a thing that we know, that so many people do, because it's so amazing to be disabled, right? Yeah, particularly in the academic context, particularly at selective institutions. Now, listen, rich people, done. Ruined it for everybody. Let's be clear. Thanks for nothing. Felicity. Huffman, Thanks for nothing. Aunt Becky, right? Listen, knock it off with your trying to get stuff right. But this article begins in the classic way. It's so classic that I in fact, satirized it in a piece of scholarship that listeners of this podcast will recognize as the one that had 106 citations in it, 106 items in the works cited that I spent a long time on, which was precisely about disability accommodations, and it opened with a paragraph describing what is, in fact, a moral panic, where people are saying, Oh, my God, it's too expensive, because we had to hire all these people to do the disability accommodations. I think people are probably cheating. Students are snowflakes. Nobody knows how to read books. I thought this was about elite standards. People are getting dumber. We don't have rigor anymore. Right?
And, well, think of the children. Well. So
anybody think of the children? Right? University
is falling apart because all these disabled people who are unqualified to be here are like draining all of the resources, and perhaps even worse,
we're going to do when they're in the workforce and
don't, right, right, right? It's like, I'm not, I'm not being a jerk. I'm pretending to be a jerk because the world is full of jerks, and you should learn how to deal with them, right? Like, yeah, so in my article at great length, I had discussed about how this moral panic really suits the university's understanding of itself as an elite space, right, built on excellence. And again, in this article, among other things, we see this idea that excellence is incompatible with disability. Yeah, just from the get go
thoughts, yeah, well, and it's, it gives that there's, there's the expression that anything you say is negated by the word, but as soon as you say it, so if you you're saying like, you know, I think you, I think you do a really good job, but, Mm, hmm, none of that, none of that other part matters. Actually, I've had conversations around this in family therapy where words to use instead of but when we were trying to, like, help, help hold two possibly conflicting thoughts, because we can do that, but we don't have to, you know, anyways, and this is a classic, but this is a classic, like anything I said before, the but is completely negated. Where it's like, we love diversity. We love disabilities. We should be more open. We should be doing things as it's a tragedy, and so glad that all of these students are getting help now that weren't getting help before and getting these diagnoses,
but, but it's gone too far. It's great. It's got it makes the the classic move as well, of leading with like and when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed and we required accommodations in universities, I mean, that was long overdue, right? We should have done that a long time ago, because the blind students are now able to attend. So we always lead with the physically disabled students, because their barriers are mobility like and as you know, in the university, we're all meant to be brains on sticks. Our bodies still matter anyway, so it's a lot easier to think of like ramps, right? Or Braille, you know, or guide dogs in class, because those students might be the regular kind of smart, right? But there's just a physical barrier keeping so we don't really see our standards. But also don't record my lectures, yeah, also don't record my lectures. Don't record my lectures because I don't even know what the hell I'm saying. So, yeah, so physical disability, we always lead with, like, Thank God those people now can finally get in the building, because, boy, that was really bad when they couldn't get in the building and they couldn't go to university, even though they were the regular kind of smart just because their feet don't work or whatever it is, right? But it shades very quickly into learning disabilities before going full force, right into ADHD. Is the problem?
Yeah, I would that pivot was like, astounding. I was like, and again, this panic around ADHD, this panic around, like, Oh my goodness. Like, and the best line I found, where is it that, like, it was, like, a a significant minority.
I wrote that down too. That was on the first page. Significant minority of people are faking it, all right? Like, listen, significant. Remember that paper I submitted once where I said significant, and they were like, I don't see the stats behind this, and I said meaningful, you jackass. It's a synonym for meaningful, but here I'm gonna say a significant minority. That sounds like you're talking about a number. Yeah, show me the data, right? I don't see it. Do you mean Felicity huffman's kids? Right? Like, is that who you're talking about? Yeah, all right. And is
significant? Mean that they're all rich. Like, is that so significant, right? Yeah, is it that and again, right? Like, we're painting, this is the other thing of painting higher education with the same brush, right? Like we are doing this for to get students into elite institutions, right? And it's like, but like, every single university, including the underfunded, as we were talking about service institutions, right, they're all clearly lying, too. And it's like, yeah, yeah, so they could get into a place that has an like, 85% and 90% acceptance rate, like, yeah, water. Like, there's no right. So
that, that argument, I've said, that's one strand of the argument. There it is. It is a concern that access to scarce resources. Justice, which is elite education and the social opportunities that that provides, right? Because you don't have to do well at Harvard, you just have to get into Harvard, and then your life path is paved. Like, that's just how it goes, right? How many Supreme Court justices went to Yale Law? Right? Like it's, it's, once you get in, you're fine, right? And we keep those numbers artificially low in order to maintain a prestige system. So the scarcity is artificial, and it is on purpose. And so when that is framed as a meritocracy, and you know that there's so many more qualified people than you're able to admit, now, you start looking for more reasons to to get panicky about that, to say, like, Well, I think these fake disabled kids who got extra time on the S, A, T, I've now stolen a place from someone you know, who actually did play lacrosse for four years, right? And went to the Olympics or whatever it is to get into this school. But, like, that's because of a bullshit prestige system. So that's, like, actually not a real problem and problem, but not when it comes to accommodations, yeah, like, Do not blame ADHD kids for this. And like the next thing is like, Well, we think Rich kids are getting diagnosed more often. Well, guess what? I wrote about that too. I wrote about that in my paper where, you know, it is very true that racialized and poor children are often diagnosed, quote, unquote, against their will so that they can be moved out of regular education and into warehousing. So it is, in fact, the case that some middle class and upper middle class and rich parents will seek certain types of diagnoses for their own kids, either to get drugs right the thinking drugs, or to secure some kinds of accommodations. And so the author is trying to make a little bit of a social justice claim here. But it's like, these fake disabled people are just helping the rich right? So it's, it's like, very muddy, yeah.
And it's also this, like, well, if I take a with, there's only a certain number of diagnoses that go around, yeah, the rich kids get the diagnosis, and the poor kids won't get them. And it's like, no, the poor kids still won't get them, even if the rich kids aren't getting them right. That is not, we do not have the socialized healthcare and diagnosis system where it's like, I'm going to jump the queue to get a diagnosis. I mean, they are essentially, but like, but it's also not like, it's not like the oh, I have a new diagnosis spot opened up because, you know, little Alfred decided that they were rich and didn't need it. So I'm going to give it to, you know, I'm going to go to the the to school in a poor in a in a lower income zip code, and do do a free diagnosis for them. Like, that's sure that's not how it works, right?
Absolutely not how it works, yeah. Like, it's crazy. So, like, it starts with this, like, the rich kids are winning because of these fake diagnoses, right? A significant minority of fakers are faking it, right? So there's that, there's always the sense of fraud in the system. And then the author is like, well, you know, you can't blame the professors, right? It's the Disability Studies workers, like the disability services office. He described them. This made me laugh so hard inside my head. Said that they their primary role as a provider of services, not a gatekeeper. And I'm like, Sir, did you even read my article? Because their job is 100% gatekeeping, 100% the Disability Services office at your university, at your university, at my university, at everybody's University, has been set up by the institution to manage legal liability related to frameworks, legislative frameworks around a duty to accommodate right that they are set up to make sure the university cannot credibly be sued. That's it, right and everybody's experience from all the published Disability Studies literature, if this person had cared to look at it is how humiliating and degrading and expensive it is to actually get the required paperwork in order to get an accommodation, which the author also, quite rightly, points out, are usually not Very helpful Yeah, accommodations, and they're just boilerplate. So it's like, on the one hand, these accommodations are ruining higher education for people who are not rich enough to get a diagnosis, but on the other hand, they are so useless that they're not even helping disabled students, which feels moral panicky, because it is trying to pin everything, even if the arguments like to say rich kids are benefiting disproportionately because they're buying these diagnoses to get access to all these amazing accommodations. And then in the next paragraph, say, but you know, the system is harming disabled students because the accommodations that are available to them don't even work. Well, we pick one, yeah. Which one is it? Yeah?
No, I was amazed by that too. I was like, Are you kidding me? Like, again, like, if, somebody, if, if, if a student had come to me in my freshman writing class with this essay, I would have been like, go back and rewrite that. Like, you need to revise. Like, this is there are, you know, like, the logical fallacy. Is like, let's go through the semiological fallacies and, like, identify all the straw men and all of those kinds of things. Like, they're just, it is, it is pure in the worst way possible rhetoric. Yeah,
it's content free, right? Yeah, it's, it's the arguments don't, don't cohere, right? So this idea that disability services offices are primarily providers of accommodations is laughable. I don't know anybody whose experience no matches that I truly, truly don't in fact that they are gatekeepers, right? And again, this long piece of scholarship that took me forever to write and has 100 and 106 Work Cited items, lists from my own institution, what the requirements are, right? I reprint some of those web pages and what the requirements are and the the duty to provide paperwork and giving in all the paperwork doesn't mean you're going to get an accommodation. It just means they're going to decide whether you're entitled to ask for one or not, right? Like, it's, it's expensive and time consuming, especially if you have ADHD, like, you're just never going to get
it. Like, yeah, it's just like, your file these paperworks in triplicate, but also this form on these three different websites, and it's like, yeah, oh, well, if you could fill out the paperwork. Clearly, you don't need accommodations, because right? Like, and
if you, and if you don't fill out the paperwork, you're not going to get accommodations because you didn't fill out the paperwork, right? That's, that's like the classic, you're too autistic or not autistic enough, right? You're either too autistic but you don't understand what the grown ups are saying, or you're not autistic enough, because you do understand what the grown ups are saying, right? Like, okay, so the goal here is, like, disempowerment and right? So there's a bunch of spurious arguments about how intensive it is for staffing to, like, sort out all of these various claims and how they're not qualified to do it that some rich kids may be taking advantage of extra time on tests. And the whole thing is just, it's offensive to me personally, because the way that it, it characterizes ADHD and the sort of like, what it describes as these kind of diminishing criteria for what qualifies as a diagnosable condition, requiring
a call, yeah, that whole thing about, like, let's look how we've like, how it's gotten all slack and like, it's, what is this? Where are you, what? What are you? You are a religion, a religion. Professor, yeah. So really, this is you're going to speak about the evolution of psychology over the past,
yeah, 3040, 50 years, I will say that over the pandemic, when regulations were loosened around telemedicine, right? Yes, there and Tiktok, there has been an explosion of people self nominating for diagnosis, and because the drugs that treat ADHD in particular are drugs that are abused by neurotypical populations, typically not by neurodivergent populations, because it's difficult to imagine that it's it's funny. I i got, this is a sidebar, but I got switched without my knowledge, to the generic byvance Last time I went to get my prescription refilled. And I don't know if you know this, Lee, but I looked it up when I felt like I was having a panic attack for three hours because all of the Vyvanse went into my system simultaneously and not in a timed release kind of way. It was, wow, grim. I thought, am I having a heart attack? Am I having a panic attack? Oh, motherfucker. I think that's my by dance, all of it kicking in simultaneously. That time release formulations of medications are, in fact, the hardest to do, right? So that when the generics become available, you're much better getting like, you know, sort of generic Adderall, because that's like an immediate release. It's the drug and a covering over it, right? But something like like vidance or Ritalin, I guess it's a time release, right? So there's like, pretty complicated mechanisms, both chemical and sometimes mechanical, in the pill itself, that smooths the release. And so they switched me to this without telling me, and I was like, the pills look different. Like, Oh, geez. And I tried it, and it was like, awful. So I went back to to get it switched to my my regular one. So the reason I told you this is to say people take these drugs to abuse them when they're neurotypical, I will say when all of my Vyvanse hit simultaneously, I did not like that. No, right? I don't want to get high from my drugs. What my drugs do is they put me in a zone where there is less gap in between my intention to do an action and my ability to do that action. It turns down the volume on the seven radio stations playing in my head. So that I can direct my focus where I wish to direct it, right? I'm not abusing this drug, because if I do, it just feels like I'm having a panic attack. I don't want that, right? So there are probably a lot of people who are taking these drugs, because you can get high from them, but also they can help you pull all nighters, right? I mean, there's a reason needs to get them to fighter pilots, right? It helps with wakefulness. It helps with alertness and attention. It helps people lose weight. You know, vidance is the only drug currently approved for binge eating disorder, so there's a lot of reasons that people would, in fact, at this point, fake having ADHD, yeah, yeah, and be able to get drugs for it quite easily from telehealth providers. Like, yeah, and that says more to me, like, people aren't faking the autism so much, right? Because there's no good drugs associated with that well, and
he doesn't, he doesn't really mention that.
No, no, it's ADHD, yeah, around. ADHD, right. It's like, aren't we all just a little bit ADHD, right? Like, university is about learning how to be overwhelmed and manage deadlines and have to be the best you can possibly be at all possible times, because the world is a hard place, right? Yeah, and I don't think that's true, so that enraged me also, because I will tell you, Lee, my great failure of this fall. Are you ready? Yep, I am sending $65,000 back to the Trudeau Foundation, because the only thing I can spend it on is organizing a conference or other public event. And I've been trying since August, and my my contact in the Office of Research at the University of Waterloo, which is to say my husband, has done so much of the hard stuff about like finding a venue, and looking at hotels and planning a schedule, and this, that and the other. But I am freaking out every day about how to get the perfect call for papers going. Who do I want to invite for keynote? Who do I have to email about this stuff? All the things that I need to do. I need to get a program committee together. I have $65,000 in my fucking pocket, and I just sent it back because I can't do it. I can't do it. I have ADHD. I have a therapist I see every two weeks. I've been on this journey for six years. I take my prescribed medication. I am never going to be a person who can organize a conference. Yeah, I am the person who I'm going to go for a walk with my husband on Sunday morning. And I said, Well, just let me order my coffee before we go. I pull out my Starbucks app, and he says, Can you get me a cookie? And I say, Yes. And then he says, Do you know my glasses are? I'm like, hold on. I think I know where they are. I put my phone down. I go find his glasses. I see my reusable coffee cup. Is it clean? Okay, it's clean. I'm gonna bring it with me. I'm gonna order my coffee and I don't order the cookie. Yeah, right. I've been delayed by 30 seconds in between, my husband asking me to order him a cookie and me placing my Starbucks order, but because I had two other thoughts in the interim, I completely forgot. And we go to Starbucks, and he's like, where's my cookie? And I'm like, shit, shit, right? So, like, Listen, this disability is real. It is costly. It hurts relationships. It hurts executive functioning. It's like, costing me grant money because I'm being asked to do things that are not reasonable to ask of somebody with my level of executive function, and do I over perform in other areas? Absolutely, yeah.
And we've talked about this before, right? Like, that's and it's like, you know the line about, God forbid, when they don't get extra time and are expect to show up every day at their job, and it's like, well, you know, if I get enough self awareness, yeah, right, then maybe I'm not going to take that
job. Well, that's the thing, right? That's maybe, maybe I,
you know. And again, I tell my graduate students this, and they don't believe me, and I understand why? Because scarcity in this economy and all of that. But I'm like, and you've all heard me said this before, it's like, part of the reason why you are paying a lot of money to get a Georgetown graduate degree so that you can be selective about where you want to work and what kinds of environments and for what kinds of companies and for what kinds of work you want to do. And you know, again, at the end of the day, like, we have this conversation as well. Like, because people here, I have ADHD, and they want to talk to me about and they're always like, well, what medication are you taking? Right? Because then, and sort of quiet under the breath, because we must talk about these things. And I say, I'm like, I'm not currently on any medication, because I have a work environment, yeah, where I can, I can be successful without being medicated, yeah, right. And I, because I have that flexibility, I have way I can self accommodate the way that the work like, if I tell people, if I had a job where I just stare at spreadsheets every day. Yeah, a, I would be looking for another job immediately. Yeah. B, would probably end up having to take the medication, even just to, like, open my computer every morning. Yeah?
And like, there's probably, in that case, no amount of medication that would actually make that a viable long term career for you.
Exactly, right. So, and, yeah. Yes, are there still things I struggle with? Yes, right? Again, spreadsheets. But I don't know if that's ADHD or just like you spreadsheets, you know. Again, the the other sort of executive functioning. I have so many lists around me. Same sort of thing with you. You give me two things. And like, you know, my husband asked me. He's like, Okay, well, after you do this and that, when you come back downstairs, can you bring me a seltzer? And I'm like, are going to have to remind me, yeah, when you hear me come down the stairs, yeah, yeah. Because I will forget, because I have two other things that I'm going to do, and who knows how many other interruptions, because they involve the children. So, like, those two things are going to turn into seven things,
yeah, yep, yep, yep. Like, it's real, it's real, like, so you can be in a situation now where you're not taking any medication for your ADHD, and I'm never going to be in that situation and because I can't function, No,
exactly, and like, and so again, there's those levels, there's degrees. And it's not to say that, you know, I am, you are more disabled than I am, and it's thought to say that it's like one is better or worse than the other, but it's just like this is, this is just the reality of our particular circumstances and situations and, you know, like, and this article, again, just made me think about my daughter, who could not get accommodations because she was doing well enough in school. Yep,
see, that's in the article too, right? Yeah, that's, this is like, Dick, it has a complete unawareness of all of the scholarship on twice exceptionality, right? Or he said, like, Well, what about gifted kids? And I was like, raise his hand in alarm, right? Like so gifted kids, when they suffer deficits, it's deficits relative to their over performance in most areas, right? So they have a substantial percentage difference in functioning, but it's still probably above average. And like, I'm sorry, but my thought to that was like, fuck you, sir. Like, honestly, so former gifted kid here, and I will say that is the expectation that everyone has. The expectation that everyone has is that you are gifted, and if you suffer difficulties in some areas, that it's difficulty relative to your level of giftedness, not difficulty relative to baseline. I lost a bicycle when I was a child. I am very smart. It doesn't mean that I remembered where I put it, or whether I locked it, and enough time went by before I went looking for that it was gone, right? Like, that's like, I am that smart, right? But I'm also that disabled, right? And so this idea, this is another thin edge of the wedge into dismantling accommodations in higher education, particularly because the presumption is that everybody is an intellectual top of the bell curve right to go to university, that you are in some ways, if not meeting the threshold for gifted you have above average intelligence, so that any sort of discrepancy in your functioning relative to that is still going to put you higher than the general population. And you should, like, put up and shut up, basically, right? It's like, if you're thin and pretty, like, don't complain about having cancer, basically, right? Like, think how much harder it is for people who aren't thin and pretty, right? Like, all right. Those are two different issues, right? So when we think that everybody who is smart just just begins at a much higher level of functioning across all domains, and that a disability just knocks them down from 150% functioning to 110% functioning. That's not true, right? That's never been true, and their research is pretty extensive into the prevalence of various forms of neuro divergence amongst profoundly and highly gifted, yeah, individual and,
I mean, we did a whole episode on this right, like, we did an entire episode. Like, again, like we, we should have just cherry picked the top five episodes that debunk this particular article and right, like, send them, but, but I think it was, I think it is really important to address, though, because it is so pernicious. Yeah, it is so damaging. Because again, what this message like? I can imagine being a student reading this, because now, like, and I maybe you, you've overemphasized with, not emphasize, sympathize, empathize. I
don't empathize with anybody because I'm a robot, remember, but
I'm thinking of my own kids who are going, who are getting closer and closer to higher education, and just thinking like, I do not want them in a classroom like this with someone like this, and I don't want them at a school where they they have this view, right, where you know the attitude like, well, maybe you're just not cut out for higher education, yeah,
maybe this just isn't the path for you. Yeah, right. Let's translate everything into Braille for this blind student, because we can admit that they can. Be both disabled and smart at the same time, yeah, but not if it's in your brain, not if it's in your brain. Pick one, you
know, and not if you're not, if your physical disability is also, you know, chronic fatigue or chronic pain or Well, that's
just hysteria by another name, and hysteria, as you know, just affects women because their uteruses are wandering around in their bodies unmoored. Well,
this feels like that sometimes, though, doesn't Oh, yeah, listen,
don't get me.
It's a whole other topic. Apparently, today's I mentioned this Amy, apparently today, and I really want to record because today's international perimenopause day,
I'm celebrating like Gen X women are like, fuck you. It is having hot
flashes and unsure whether it's a new period I'm having or the same one I've had for a month. Yeah, great. I don't know how you celebrate, but it's a red letter day for perimenopause day.
Mine is I have not slept under the covers in months. Yeah, that's a good time, and not just because I live in Northern Virginia, our house is very air conditioned. We are I literally have not been cold in I don't remember how long. It's
nice, and I worked in the basement
of my house, where it's always cold.
What the hell were we talking about? Oh, yeah, we were talking about
communications, of course, yeah,
holding two thoughts at the same time, right? That people can be disabled, but also high functioning. And I think, yeah, it's dangerous. Like, who's reading this, right? Like, I love that. The Chronicle is just like, yeah, sure, let's publish this. It has no foundation, right? So it cites a study that was done by someone at Queen's University in Kingston, which is in Canada, a country to the north of the United States. For listeners who are American, who tend not to know where the researcher there had produced a hypothetical student file, yeah, student accommodation request that said ADHD, but all the diagnostic tests attached to it showed subclinical, which is to say not really meeting the diagnostic criteria, and then sent it out to various accommodations offices, asking, would you right give an accommodation to the student and to professors? And she's like, Oh my god, 49 out of 50 said they would. Well, sure, because they're not meant to be reading the medical literature. First of all, nobody knows how to interpret those tests. That's why you get a diagnosis. I don't know why we're sharing the tests with the test with the university anyways. And second of all, how cheering, how cheering it is that people are like, Okay, this student needs some help. I will give this student some help. I don't see that as the doomsday scenario, particularly as a thought author. It's like, yeah, and the accommodations are kind of dumb anyways, that we give people, yeah, right. It's not like you get an automatic
and the accommodations are dumb and and, well, somebody think of the the minoritized students,
yeah? Like, this feels like such a not gotcha thing. Like, I think of these other studies where they they do stuff like, they have online sections running, where the same instructor teaches it twice, one time in the voice, like using the name of a woman, at one time using the voice of man. Like they determine, yeah, these things are pretty gender biased. When you have the same person teaching it with a different pronoun, they get different evaluations. Or when they do things, like, they send out resumes to a ton of companies, that the resumes are identical, but like, there'll be an ethnic or black coded name on it to see who gets callbacks. Like, those were ones where people were showing their whole ass. Basically, it was like, oh, it's pretty clear we are biased against women even though the material is exactly the same. Or we tend to give more callbacks to people with white sounding names who have identical resumes to other people. But in this it was like, Yeah, somebody had disability paperwork, and everyone was going to grant them the accommodation to which they are legally entitled. Like, I don't see the problem.
Yeah, I don't do you, yeah?
Well, and it's like, and also, like, what I would like I tell my students this too, like, I've told my students I'm like, deadlines are important, right? We have them, and there are reasons behind them, right often, particularly in the professional setting, people are relying and all this kind of stuff. Deadlines within higher education are strictly arbitrary. Yeah, they are more there to help you organize your time than it is like any sort of imperative that it has to be in like, now, if you're scaffolding and building and you know, like this assignment, if it's not done by this, you're going to have trouble doing like, there are reasons, but you can give those explanations. But you know, in my class, I tell them, ultimately, the only deadline that matters is when the university declares I need to have your grade in,
yeah. And so you and I have talked about this before, right? That you are like, yep, you can hand everything in from the whole semester on the last day school. That's fine. I'm gonna, like, as long as I get my grades in, that's okay. And I say to my students, like, No, you'll let me know if it's gonna be late, and we'll talk about it, because I have the assignments set up in such a way I don't. Scaffold them anymore, because if you miss one, then you're fucked basically, like, now they're smaller one offs, and I tell them that I give them time to work on in class. And I say, like, I have 65 students this semester, and all of your writing a lot, so I've got this paced through the semester so that I am able to get through this with my mental health intact, right? And and that works out. So some students like, what's great about academic freedom is that you and I can both be teaching first year writing, and we are, and we can have completely different policies about late work and we do, and we can have different rationales for that. And each of these are ways that we are trying to implement a kind of universal design for learning that allows students to self accommodate, right and and when, like, everything gets too standardized, then you don't get to have your policy, and I don't get to have my policy. The University tells us what the policy is, and it is that kind of standardization, under the name of rigor, right and standards, that produces this, what the author describes as this overwhelming demand for accommodations, like the research that I have read shows that the number of self identified disabled students in university populations is lower proportionally than what they are in the general population. Yep, right. So there are, in fact, proportionately fewer identified disabled people in university than outside of university, right? So like, Oh, everybody at University has ADHD all of a sudden. Well, that's not true actually. You know, if you look at number of people who are getting, like, accommodations for being bipolar or depressed, that there are actually higher numbers of people identified as bipolar and or depressed outside of the university. So that's like an under reporting in the university proportionate to the general population. But insofar as we see those numbers increasing again, they're still not at population levels, right? It is because I believe University has got stricter and stricter and fussier and fussier and tighter, with less tolerance and more students, with fewer teachers and higher stakes and greater scarcity, and so the whole edifice is under strain, and in the same way that some people now have to buy two airplane seats when they used to fit into one, because the airlines have been shrinking the seats for 30 years, right? That this epic of disability has in some ways been produced by the inflexibility of the institution, right? So I get a request for accommodations from students, and by requests, I mean, like, the accommodations office sends me a student in your class, blah, blah, blah, yeah, and they're like, asking for stuff that is not relevant in my class. They need a volunteer note taker. Well, as listeners of this podcast, know we do group note taking in my class, and we do it in groups, so that even if you have the note taking accommodation, you could do the proofreading or the link finding, right, or the like once over, or the document formatting, or whatever it is, right? It's about learning how to work with what you have without requiring volunteers and charity, right? Or I always get a two and a half hour exam period for my final, and then I write an exam that should take them an hour and a half to write. That's fine, and I don't care. I'm like, even stay here the whole time, if you want. If half of my students leave before the time is up, I feel pretty good about that. It means I've probably given enough space for people, because I don't think completing this exam quickly is what shows whether you're excellent or not. Well, yeah,
that's Yeah, exactly what I mean. So like, when
students are asking for, like, I need a quiet room for this or I need extra time on the exam, like, are our exams too long, right? Why don't we just give people more time to do them? I don't see what the problem is there. Or a lot of professors assign material that's just too much to read and it's too much to write. Like, I had a student, a first year student, math student, come to my office the other day and he said, Can I just ask you something? It's like, Yeah, sure. He said, are you really strict about the word limit? Because you said, like, at 900 words plus or minus 5% I'm like, Yeah, I'm strict. And he's like, Well, that's like, Can I ask why? And I said, Well, yeah, because, like, the rest of your life, nobody's going to say, like, I want 900 words, but 3000 is okay. Like, nobody wants that. Nobody. Like, in the world of work, people do not want to read more than what they asked you for. Like, they often want to read like, this is why chatgpt summarizes stuff for people now, because, like, there's too many words, right? I'm like, most people don't need more words. They need better words. Or, like, I know your grade by the end of the first page anyways. Or I want you to actually have time to focus on making this as good as it can be, not as long as it can be. And he was telling me about the provincial exams in Alberta high school exams at the compulsory that they have. And there's one on the English test where you have to do an analysis of a like an article or a short story or something, and it says 1500 words, right? But there's no max. And he's like, because he's a master, and he went online to find out, like, what proportion of people get what grade and how much they wrote. And he's like, it's pretty much guaranteed that if you write 4000 words, you get full marks. Yeah, they don't have to be good words. He's like, but everybody who wrote at least 4000 words for this 1500 word question got full marks, right? And if we are designing education like that, then this is why people need more accommodations, right? We have just overloaded people with tasks. We're not mindful of student time or instructor time or the different ways in which people flourish, right? So that was like, people, like, what
are we going to do? We
can't just keep taking all these documentation and we can't keep hiring more people to assess it. We can't just keep doing more one offs. I'm like, yeah. Like, how about, how about Universal Design for Learning, right? Why not? That would be easier, but, but standards? Lee, yeah, but rigor, yeah,
no, it's and, I mean, it reminds me of again, like, like, oh, well, you'll never get that in the workforce. I'm like, hey, guess what? You know what you know what most people get to wear at their jobs if they're easily distracted now, noise canceling headphones. Everybody
does it, yeah, right. Like,
you know what? Even, even when I was working in cubicle land, yep, right, I was allowed to have a radio on low volume in my office. Yep, right. Like, we, we have been, you know, this idea that in the real world you're not going to get any accommodations whatsoever. It is, is it, you know, is it a great experience to be disabled and have ADHD and, you know, no. Um, would it? Would? Is it still an ableist society? Yes, yes. Like some of the things that we that you are objecting to in this are things like, yeah, you'll get that in the workforce, yeah? Like, you need a quiet space, like, even, even a shared workspace. Almost always they have a place where you can go, Yeah, but have an understanding that there's, like, together work and focus alone, work, yeah, yeah, focus work or stuff like that, right? Like the, you know, especially in the knowledge economy, like, you know, if you're going, if you're going to university, chances are you are going to have a job within the knowledge economy. Yeah,
yeah. I
mean, we keep being told, too, that we need to be more flexible, that the jobs of tomorrow are not the jobs of yesterday. But we're still, when we think about what these students need to toughen up for in university. We're still in this sort of 1950s model of the man in the gray flannel suit where you have to, like, be, you know, in leather shoes with a, like, a button shirt that you had to iron, that you had to commute from Connecticut to get into Manhattan, and you have to be at your desk at nine, and you don't get to leave until six, and you have to answer the phone and stuff. But, like, you can't say that the jobs of tomorrow haven't been invented yet, and they're all completely different. Completely different, and we need to be flexible, but then sort of say, like, Well, no, everybody has to have exactly the same skills, and have to be 1950s skills, right? Like, there are a lot of ways in which people find the jobs in which they're they're going to thrive, right? Like you like your job, so you do. You have a lot of variety in your work, right? You get to work with a lot of different people, and both of those things play to your strengths. There's a lot of things that happen kind of spontaneously and crisis wise, and you're good at that, right?
I get to write a lot of things and read a lot of different things, and you can be a generalist, which suits my brain, just without having to go, you know. And if I want to go too deeper, like I have a freedom to do that too, you know, and a flexibility, but also a balance and, you know, like there's just Yes, exactly, right? Yeah, I
have insomnia, and I can't really be reliably good for anything before 11 in the morning, and I can't run a conference because I don't have the executive function. I don't like to call people on the phone or answer emails, but if you gave me a topic, I could teach you tomorrow morning, and I don't care to how many people I could go on TV right now. Give me 30 minutes and the article you want me to respond to, and I will do that. I'm really good at grading. I am really good at mentoring students into work habits. I'm really good at explaining stuff and learning things and connecting with people based on my 5 million hobbies that I have, that I know a lot of stuff about, that gives me an entrance into connecting with students who feel alienated from stuff but like, Can I show up at like, a nine to five job and every day and not lip off to people I can't like? I can't do that, right? But if University was trying to equip me for that kind of job, well, then I wouldn't have got through, yeah, university, right? I just wouldn't have, like, there are all kinds of different jobs that people can have. Then go through university and start a business. Like some people really like to be entrepreneurs, because they get to fly by the seat of their pants constantly, and have that kind of risk of potential homelessness, but potential riches. And I'm like, I'm not that kind of ADHD ADHD either, right? But if like, what we're trying to learn in university is the content of the degrees that we're doing as well as ways to get along with people, we'd be a lot better doing group work where we could acknowledge one another's diversity and one another's strengths, where we could was just listening to the dead ideas and teaching learning podcast, which is back now, after a bit of a hiatus, and Kate denial was on talking about her new book. And like, I also think work is kindness, by the way, God, you have kindness, yeah, because, like, she was suggesting, like, I just almost like, want to give her a hug. Because she was like, and sometimes like, maybe you take a day off from email. And I think she meant, like, in the seven days of the week. Like, right? And I was like, What? What? It's like, you know, now I book, I book lunch for myself, where I block time, where people can't come in and interrupt me. And then the host was like, Oh yeah, I don't let people book things in my half an hour for lunch either. And I thought, God, y'all are broken. America is broken. Capitalism is broken. Like, sure, I could never, I couldn't do that, right? We are the canaries in the coal mine. We break first, right, people. But I think the world of work and the world of education has got so constraining and so shitty for so many people, largely because we're in the sort of always on, always more scarcity environment, right? There's too much information, but not enough opportunities.
And really, that's what he's like. If you distill it down, it's like, it's basic. What they're saying you should be the ones who are breaking first. Yeah,
I mean, that is, you don't deserve to be here because, yeah, right, like
you should be the ones who are breaking first. Like, we are going to agree that this is, you
know, that's how we know we're better than you, because some people have to fail. Yeah, right. Some you, you know, not everybody can be admitted, and of the people who are admitted, some of them can't hack it, and that's how we know that the rest of us who get through deserve it. Yeah, right. So people can't succeed unless they see other people failing, because that's how, you know, you have standards. And I just think that that politically is shitty and pedagogically insupportable. Oh, god,
yeah. So, yeah. So it's just, there's, yeah, I really did, because it again, it's, it's, I am trying to think of, you know, not, not necessarily, in my daughter's case, just because she doesn't, you know, like me to fight, but like, I'm thinking of, like, what are the battles that I'm going to have to have? Like, this, is this, to me, is informative. Like, you know when you know something, but then read something like this, and then you're like, Okay, now it, now it's, it's there, it's in front of me. I knew this, right? I didn't have to read it to know what it said, right? Now that I've read it as well, and I'm glad I did, but it's like, all right, this is the kind of stuff that, you know, I am going to have to fight as a parent. And that's a whole other thing. They're like, Oh, you're fighting your children's battles. It's like, My children have executive functioning disorders. Yeah, right. Like, yes, I want them to learn how to do these things. But also, you have set it up so that somebody who works in higher education and has for their entire career will have trouble with this, yes. Like, you know, like, I mean, let's be fair, right? Like, we're going to talk about fair, let's be fair here. Yeah, right. Like, that. I'm not doing their homework for them. I am not. I am not trying to argue for grades. I'm trying to get them their legal accommodations that they you know that they and I don't even like the word entitled anymore, because everybody's got, like, ick entitlements, right? But like, this is it according to the law? Yeah, right, these are the things. And you know, again, that that sort of twice gifted thing where it's like, there are, you know, I want them. I want my children to advocate for themselves, but I also want them to know who they should advocate to effectively, right? Yeah, it doesn't do you any good to yell at the wrong person in university.
Yeah. I mean, this is so hard to so I'm just going through this thing right now where I'm like, sending all this money back because I can't handle the thing that I'm supposed to do with this award I got before the pandemic, which was never a reasonable thing to ask me to do anyways, and the profound amount of shame that I feel right to to admit to myself, like, Oh, this is an amazing opportunity. Some people would really thrive. I had $65,000 to run a conference. They're like, I would do this and this and so about like, No, I can't. Do you want me to keynote that conference? Sure, right? Give me two weeks, like, and I'll have something for you. But like, plan it, step wise with tasks every day for 20 minutes from now until the end of June. No, I can't. It's not that I won't. It's not that I think I'm better than it is that every time I do, I have a panic attack and I screw something up right every time, and it just, I can't do it. And I hate that about myself. I hate that about myself. So when people will say, but like, Oh, but I believe in you. You're so smart, like, you can totally do that. I just hate myself more. So when somebody writes an article that they're like, these ADHD people are over diagnosed and there's nothing wrong with them that a good kick in the pants and some discipline wouldn't fix. I'm like, Yep, I hate myself too. Get in line behind me, right? So if you're trying to shame people who are actually disabled, right? Nothing works better than these articles, because those are the voices that we've had in our heads the whole time. And anybody who's trying to cheat the system to be like, I'm gonna get some Adderall, I'm gonna pull some all nighters. That's gonna be a real competitive advantage for me, or like, I'm gonna get extra time on tests because of this. They don't give a shit if you're ableist in your article, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Patient, because they are actually not playing in good faith anyways, right? So you're not going to reach the cheaters. All you're going to do with an article like this is reconfirm for everybody who has ADHD, because that's the main disorder that really gets talked about here, right? You're just going to reconvince everybody who has ADHD that they do not deserve to be where they are that their disability is not a real disability, that they are cheaters, taking away from other people, and they're getting unfair advantages that they ought to be able to handle on their own, which is something we already believe. Yep, so well done, sir. Right? I think people just don't understand how self aware people with ADHD are about all the things that they're not good at, right? I saw this, this reel on Instagram the other day from this couple where he's like, he says to her, did you text Catherine back? And she said, Oh yeah, no. He's like, do you remember to text Catherine? She's like, Yeah. He's like, so you did it? And she's like, No, but I remembered it. I remember it every 20 minutes all day for the last two days, and I haven't written her back yet, and all I know is I'm a garbage friend, yeah, yeah, right, like, and that's it. But this is another one where, like, a guy, he has two cups labeled, one is labeled work, and one is labeled relaxing, and both cups are empty, and then he takes a pitcher full of water and then pours it in between the two cups, yeah, right? Because, like, I'm not working, I'm not relaxing, I'm just anxious about all the things I think I should be doing and I'm not doing. So probably our listeners to find themselves in similar places where people don't understand what their disability is. People are like, but you're so successful, or you're so smart, or you're trying to get out of this, you're trying to get an advantage, and we'll be like, Yep, all of that is true, yeah. And somehow I still suck. Yeah. All of it, right? And then all the things, right, yeah, and all the things that you're good at don't matter, because those are too easy. And obviously the things that people value are the things that you find impossible to do, right? So it gets just, it feels this article just feels so ablest to me, because the only people it's really going to land with are the bigots who already believe this, yeah, and with everybody who has ADHD reads it and it's like, Yes, I'm a garbage person. So that's all that this article has done. Very bravely, reconfirmed the prejudices of people who have them, and given a kick in the self esteem to people who are just really struggling to understand that their disability is not their fault. Yeah,
yeah. So, you know, middle fingers up, yep, two. Middle fingers up to that. And rage, yeah, rage. And I just, anyways, should I tag the Chronicle when I share this episode out, yeah, yeah.
I don't know why they would publish it. It's like, really, there's so much scholarship that directly contravenes everything in this that's just click bait. It's garbage click bait. Yeah, honestly, yeah. I
just Please, Sir, give
me your hot take about a group of people you clearly know nothing about, and you're gonna find one study about a hypothetical student, and all it shows is that people are kind. I fail to see the moral pan. I fail to see right, how society is being destroyed by this currently. Well,
it's, it's because so many of them are so quiet, right? They're too scared, right? They're too scared. Scared because, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna go, you and me personally, are gonna go and cancel
them. Yeah. Well, they're too tired. They're too tiredly because they have to write those tests really fast, yeah, because they're not getting accommodations, no, right? And they're doing all the group work for the people who have ADHD and got excused from it. So they're just like, well,
and all the research for all of us who are doing the research, and, you know, reading the spreadsheets, for all of us who don't want to read this, who don't want to read the spreadsheets. And that's right, oh, boy. Oh, I'm
just so mad. Thanks for making me enraged.
I mean, I figured you'd already seen it, and we're enraged. But like, you know, today's my turn to bring something that's going to enrage you, as opposed to you bring me stuff that will enrage me. Well,
I've spent the last six weeks, mostly in a whole of self hatred, trying to become the kind of person who can organize a conference. So I'm like, I'm off my game, right? I've devoted so much of my energy trying to become a completely different person and hating myself about it, right, that I've just not really had the opportunity to bring any more negative energy into my life. Well, I
I'm going to say this because I don't think anybody else will say it to you, and especially not yourself. I'm really proud of you. Thank you. I'm so proud of you. Like, I when you said that that's what you had done, I was like, Oh my God, that sounds like the hardest, one of the hardest things I agree he has ever done. I'm not surprised. I i And and it is, it is, like, just difficult. But in as you said, like it is no amount of money is worth the amount of mental torment that you went through. But also that's not how anyone else will see it. Yeah, right. Like I see it that way, because I know. Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, we've been doing this for a while. Um, but, like, but like, the amount of and it doesn't feel like this, and, but the amount of strength that it took for you to do that is, I think, I hope, for the listeners, inspiring because, no, because, like, this is, these are the hard kinds of decisions. And it's not because we don't want to, and it's not because it is just like, I literally can't, right? It'd be like, you know, I'll pay Lee, I'll pay you $65,000 to run a marathon, and I'm going to be like, no, no, no, I couldn't even do that when I was in the best shape of my life, right?
Like, have you seen my knees? Have you seen my knees? Have you seen my you know,
you know, just to give but anybody, but, like, well, if you trained and if you're like, No,
no, no, we did this. If we do that, I believe in you. You're like, no, that's not what I need right
now. Yeah, no. It's exactly like, Yeah, sure. But then maybe I won't be able to walk anymore, yeah, or do literally anything else, yeah, I gotta get knee surgery and, like, not be able to do anything. Like, sure, I finished the marathon, but at what cost, right? It's the same thing. Sure, I organized a conference, but at what cost? Yeah,
at what cost did it go as well as I could have. No, was I miserable for however many months? Was I, like, arguing with my husband, who's much more methodical than me? Did I become avoidant, like, all of that stuff, right? Did I have more interactions with an organization that has caused me nothing but pain, like all of that and like, I will say that that my husband, from the get go, was like, Are you sure? But he was like, he was like, Do you think you can handle this? And I was like, so determinedly. Like, look at during season five of this podcast, I know better. I wrote the fucking paper about this. We had 106 things in the works cited, but then I'm like, No, listen, I could be a different person, right? I recognize what a great opportunity this is, and like, how privileged I am
that there's $65,000 that, because that says maybe I could be a different person.
Yeah, exactly that
before, right? And I was just like, No, I'm I'm gonna do it this time. Like, but I'm like, Charlie Brown with the football, right? Like, I'm like, no, no, this time, I'm, I'm gonna get it, but I'm also holding the football and pulling it away for myself, you know, I mean, like, yeah, so, so Tom was really, like, from the beginning, quite kind about this, and I really insisted, so it is in no way his fault. And that's
right, I see the insistence, right? Like, I, I do things like that all the time. Well, yes, of course, I could take on yet another
project, right? I'm like, the taller I do it myself. Yeah, I do break it Yeah, and
that's what it's but again, like to to have, I don't think we have enough models of people saying, No, yeah, in this way, yeah, where it is an opportunity. And it's not even, like, I don't even want to think about it as like, the failure CV, right? Like, that whole other thing. This is like, this is the like,
the CV of successful boundaries, yes. Cv of successful boundaries, the
CV of successful boundaries, the CV of self awareness, right? The CV of making myself and my own mental and physical health a priority,
yeah, eight, it will say I really benefited from my friend Megan giving me a reality check to you know, my friend from high school, okay, known forever and ever and ever. It's just kind of an important job, too. And I was like, I want your perspective on this as a neurotypical person, right? Like, how does this feel to you? And and she was immediately like, Amy, that's not your wheelhouse. Yeah, right. She's like, and on top of whatever you're doing, even if you were neurotypical, I think this is a bonkers ask. Just say no. Like, she was so clear about it. Like, so clear. Like, that's ridiculous, right? And I was like, what? And she was like, You're good at lots of things, because you're not good at this, and also you're too busy anyways, even if you were good at this. And I was like, what? And she wasn't like, I believe in you, you can do anything. Because she was like, you can do almost anything, right? Probably not this. And I was like, God bless. Like, from somebody who knows you and will support you like that. So both my husband and my friend Megan have done that for me, but I will say it's been very difficult. It's I did not want to have to admit defeat, and also, I think it still feels like defeat, yeah, right, yeah, even if it's a win, if I'm going to be so much happier and get more done in the things I'm good at,
and, you know, be a better teacher, be a better parent, be a better be a better, like everything, yeah, those things that are not only that you're good at, but that you value, right? Like, yes, this is a decision that also aligns with your values, yeah, you know. And, and that's that's important too, because I think we, you know, like, I tell my grad students, I like it real clear on your values, yeah, right? Because ultimately, yeah, it is. It's so hard. And, I mean, even when they get clear on them, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to, like, kind of always make your values based, yeah, values driven, decisions around things, yeah, but, but again, like, that's the, this is the kind of example. It's like, they're, you know. We have our limits, we have our boundaries, and we have our values. And, you know, neurotypical or neurodiverse or ADHD or autistic, like, you know, to be able to say again and make the decision or come to the conclusion, no, especially after saying yes and coming like, this isn't Yeah, and, you
know that's like, articles like this don't help. No. Articles like this just are like, Oh, so you said no to that. It's because you're not worthy and you can't handle it. Yeah, right is, is what that is, right? And to
be fair. Listeners to be fair. Amy shared the story during the podcast, and when I suggested this essay. I do not know that this would be quite as triggering
as it ended up being. It just
it turns out my ADHD has high salience this month in between, like my byvance Switch and, like getting super high there by accident. Have a friggin heart attack in my office. Imagine, oh, like, listen, it was like the highest therapeutic dose of Vyvanse, but all at once, Jesus and I've been so tired all day because I was like, when is this drug gonna kick in? Right? Took me a couple days to figure out that it was, like, probably the generic that was doing me in, because it just kept hitting at like, the weirdest time, and then it would wear off early, like, it just, oh my god. Like, I don't think my cardiovascular system can handle that. But, like, right? So I said no to this thing, and everybody's gonna think I'm crazy, right? Anybody who's neurotypical is gonna be like, you won this big award and they gave you $65,000 to run a conference, and you sent the money back. And I'm gonna be like, yes. And they're gonna be like, What is wrong with you? Like, well, I
made ADHD, I can actually
tell you what's wrong with me, right? Yeah, that there are actual things that I can say to you of what, what is wrong with me? Like, I have, I have a medical diagnosis, yeah. And
people like, the discourse around ADHD is so prevalent right now, particularly in this era of, like, the telemedicine and the tiktoks about, like, how to get diagnosed and get your drugs and this, that and the other. And it's like, such a major topic right now that everybody's talking about it, and it is like, that's great, yeah, you know, now we know more women have ADHD, but also it is a little bit lonely too, because all of the discourse still is often failing to understand, yeah, what it is actually like to live with this? So you still get the thing, like, my therapist is always telling me, Oh, it sounds like you have some internalized ableism there. Amy, you should accept yourself on Accept yourself. I'm like, Well, what the hell good is it going to do for me to accept myself when nobody around me? Yeah, accepts that from me, right? So when I internalize what people are going to think of me anyways, and I'm trying to mitigate the damage that maybe it's other people's ableism, but that's fine, but it's like, great if I can accept about myself that I'm never going to return your phone call. But everybody's like, Wow, what an awful person. She thinks she's all that, you know, she just doesn't think she has to do those things. And I'm like, I can't. And they're like, oh yeah, that's what you say, right? Like, or whatever it happens to be, right? Self acceptance doesn't get you very far. Everybody's still fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the disorder, and I'm sure that our listeners have, in one way or another, gone through this many, many times in their lives. And like, we can say from like, I'm at the top of my game in my profession right now, and you are at the top of your game in your profession now. And we still deal with other people's ableism. We still deal with doubting ourselves because of the long history we have of learning to doubt ourselves, we could still be triggered by these kinds of garbage articles that like, I mean, it's hilarious that I have, in fact, already written a rebuttal to this piece right already. It's been out there. It's highly cited. We'll
do this in the show notes. I swear I am going to do this in the show notes. I'm downloading it, even though I know where it is. I'm going to download it and then upload it onto the WordPress site so that it is available in the show notes, even though I think I've shared it before, but as well as a link to the paywalled original article and and your thing on AI and writing. And I was like, Oh, well, I'm assigning that next semester or next time I teach a class, but, and I think that that is one of the things that I have always appreciated this podcast for, and I think a lot of people appreciate this podcast for, is that you are not alone, Amy and The listeners, you are not alone, and we are in the same way that I It might mean less, but we are proud of you, yeah, you know,
you proud of you. We're proud of each other. We're proud of our listeners.
Yes, because you probably don't hear that enough. Yeah, you probably don't hear that enough that. And again, it's, it's the there's also beans that get around, like, the little things that everybody else takes for granted. And you're like, food is the dishwasher. And everybody's like, yes,
no, come on. I was like, I totally understand how hard that
was, all
of the bushes. And also everything that I cut I put in a yard waste bag on the same day. Yeah, it's a miracle before I left it there long enough that it kills the grass, right? It's like, why? Yeah. Or like, Tom saw this hilarious reel he sent to me where it was, like, this kind of, like dance song, EDM sort of thing. And it was like, about how to do the one was like, laundry, 10 minutes washer, 30 minutes dryer, 60 minutes put it away, seven to 10
business days. Oh, my God. Was so funny.
I thought of you because of, like, your thing with laundry too. And I was like, Yeah, that's it, like, so I just Mom,
I've been wearing the but, so here's the funny thing, it's all clean, yeah, downstairs in the basement, but again, executive function problems in my own household, where it's like, no, I've worn the same pair of underwear for four days in a row, but I'm like,
clean ones are just too far away to go get this. Clean ones
are just too far away, and I always forget to go get it. So the button I'm naked, yeah, I'm butt naked, and I don't want to go down six flights of stairs to go to go get laundry. So you have a pair of underwear again, and then you have a
PhD. Yeah, yeah, you wrote a book. I wrote a book, and you wear the same underwear for several days, because you was my son, actually. But like, keep forgetting to get the clean underwear.
I have infinite amounts of underwear. Yeah,
I know you do, because you hoarded underwear before.
I knew I would never save up
all my new underwear in high school, because I know when I get to university, I'm never gonna do the wash. And I love that. People would be like, That's so stupid. Why you just wash it? You'd be like, do you even know me? What an amazing self accommodation.
Oh, do you need more? Yes, more. Costco, get them just on sale. Great. Another five pack. Let's
go. I'm proud of you for your excellent planning skills, right?
Like fortnight, but my 14 year old brain being like this is gonna pattern five years
that was like, such a classic ADHD plan. You're like, I know it's like the Rube Goldberg machine of having clean underwear. It's a multi year project. Looks like hoarding, right? And enough foresight to know, like, how much you're going to need before you come home for Thanksgiving, right? Like, it's just the amount of executive function you devoted to problem solving several years in advance. He's like, obviously, a lot more work than just doing the laundry would be, I mean. But then here's me. I wrote an email I'd been avoiding while I was at therapy the other day, not while I was like, he was like, just dictated to me, yeah. Oh, okay, right, yeah. And I did, and then he emailed it to me. He's like, now send it. And I was like, Okay, why was that so easy? He's like, Well, no, Amy, listen, it's easy for a lot of people. It's only easy for you if you have accountability and body doubling. And I was like, God damn it, I'm paying this man, like 170 an hour so that I dictate emails to him. And he's like, there you go. But I'll tell you what, I was cured. Yeah, right, you or your underwater. I dictate work emails to my therapist, like, Whatever gets you through that day. Yeah, right, yeah. But like, so this man can go hang this like, Chronicle, opinion writer who's, like, full of ideas about how everybody is cheating. Doesn't know that you hoarded underwear for years so that you could get around your laundry problem at university. Doesn't know I'm dictating work emails to my therapist so that I can send them, despite it being aversive and being full of shame, right? Like we ought to be applauded for, actually how much harder, yes, we have to work that other people do. And I believe our listeners do that too, and they probably also do not recognize how much extra they're doing the Rube Goldberg machine of their self accommodations. Yeah, is an achievement and adjustment to your desire to get into the work, not out of the work. Yeah, I
agree. And my puppy, who is back here. Nobody can see him on podcast land, but Amy
can see him. Maybe, if you could see him, listeners, you would go,
would you like a yellow lab puppy is, is basically, would you like a yellow lab puppy that is, that is who Apollo is, so, um, so we're back listeners. We'll be back again eventually, someday, someday, someday, it's gonna
be a very long episode to tidy over to whenever we manage to get our together again, or whenever somebody writes something in raging, yeah,
whenever somebody writes something new raging, which, which, actually, if that was, we do way more podcasting. That's true. We do way more podcasting. So you can always find us on the socials. I am ready writing Amy is digiwonk. You can always email us at all the things. Adhd@gmail.com
you can also comment on these episodes on Spotify now, which. Happens time to be alive, what a time to be alive, and we will. We are proud of you, and we will see you
