So, I don't have a learning disability.

Last year I noticed something different a few months after I started my first year of university. I was having trouble concentrating on material, in lectures and while studying and writing assignments. I was pretty sure I had ADD. Most others around me also thought I had ADD when I described my symptoms to them. Thus, the journey began.

I approached my family doctor about my concerns and she referred me to my school to be tested for learning disabilities because she wouldn't prescribe me anything without a diagnosis. So I went to my school. They did some preliminary testing and told me that I am above average in my intellectual ability but I might be on the borderline of ADD. This was all found out around November, 3 months after I started university.

Today I finally had my appointment with the testing centre. My results? I don't have ADD. I don't have any learning disabilities. Again: I am above average in my intellectual ability.

I literally stumped the psychologist. My grades have dropped 20% since high school. Something is different, something has had to have changed.

Inevitably, grades do drop in university from high school but things just feel harder here. Or easier. I am bored. The material I am learning is not what I want to be learning. I find it boring. I love my majors (psychology and philosophy) but my profs are not doing it justice.

I explained all of this to the psychologist and he has decided to try to piece things together. Essentially, he thinks my inability to focus on my work has to do with my motivation, despite me having very high goals in my future. I have amazing goals it is just the tasks I have to accomplish to get to my goal (school) is not my cup of tea. I am stressed all of the time. I am bored. I am unengaged. I do not care about what I am learning. Even if I transferred schools it would still be the same format of learning.

So what do I do? The psychologist I saw informed me he was going to dwell on me a little longer and then contact the learning strategist I have been working with at my school and the three of us will work together. 

I wish I had a learning disability. I wish my problems could be solved with strategies or medication. But my problems are bigger than this because they cannot be fixed. My problems are my choices to face because of the goals I want to accomplish. 

This is the biggest rut of my life. I am sad. I am depressed. School depresses me. But I want to attain my BA in Psych and BA in Philosophy and then my Bachelor of Education, perhaps my masters in Education. Why? Well, I want to teach high school. I was fed up with the high school educational system and I wanted to help fix it from within but also teach high school as well to fulfill my passion for educating and being a leader. I am now leaning towards wanting to work in university education just because of how much it takes out of me. 

The system does not work for me. It does not work for most people. Human purpose is to live. A part of living is sleeping. University students do not get enough sleep. People should be able to live the life they choose but instead we pick the unhappy route so we can conform to society. This has been troubling me for a couple of years now and I still am conforming to all of this bullshit and it is maddening me. It is depressing me. It is pushing me deeper and deeper down into my own despair.

I shouldn't care this much about the university and education system in general but I am the type of person that likes to take charge and fix things and that is what I have been inspired to do. 

But for now, I am going to keep conforming to depression. Also, I can't do anything without a degree because of credentialism. I also cannot do anything because ageism (I am 18). 

Although, I did just get a good job (FINALLY). Readers may remember getting a job was one of my goals for this year. I am a Blog Editor and Marketing coordinator, it is an executive position with my university. I don't know too much about it because I was just hired and I have not started yet, but I find out tomorrow. I am looking forward to it. I am fairly lucky, job wise, compared to other people my age. I am not working a part-time shitty stressed job with some fast food or chain store. Someday I will probably have to again, before I have my degree, but for now, I look forward to having a job that I can actually do something effectively in. I am not putting down workers of chain stores or fast food stores, I am just judging the work of those places to have higher stress than my job and I am just thankful that I will (hopefully) not have to deal with it.

So at least that is good.

But I don't have a learning disability. I probably just have the psychological disorder called "conformity".