At one point late last year I knew that things really weren't going very well for me. I realized that paper deadlines were slowly sapping any joy I had in life out of me. I had a hard time getting anything done. I was choosing an experience for myself that was very stressful and difficult. I was depressed, very depressed and having a hard time even getting out of bed in the morning. I did get out of bed though.
When I was talking about the experience with a fellow PhD candidate the other day she said, "how did you do it?" She knew another friend of hers who was in a similar situation and had taken a 6 month leave in order to deal with her depression and ADD diagnosis. What got me through was my family.
My incredible wife Vanessa has been my mainstay and support. I have to give a lot of the credit to God, because he was there helping me and her too. He also gave us the gift of our children. Now you all who have kids (and many others I'm sure) know how challenging parenting can be. Throw in some special needs and it can be an explosive mix sometimes. Despite all of that though, my kids inspire me to be a better person. They love so much and unconditionally. We get to share so many hugs and kisses each day, and special times where I can really see what love is all about and why we're really here.
It is because of them that I kept going, and I'll give myself a little credit too, I'm tenacious. Even when I'm barely hanging on, barely making it through, had very little hope or faith, I still held on.
So I was on Skype with one of my supervisors (I have two and two other advisors) and she asked me how I was doing and it all poured out. She knew something was off. We had a long talk about everything and she was so supportive and loving... it was a blessing. I asked her about talking to my other supervisor and advisors and she encouraged me. I did that. My advisor at Philips Research said that given how things were going in terms of my health I should at least mention it to my manager. I had that discussion too.
It was all very positive. I felt somewhat ashamed but none of them did anything to engender that... it was an experience I chose for myself. In telling them what was happening with me it also spurred me to action. I had a plan to see a psychiatrist and get evaluated. They all agreed it was a good plan and added a few little tidbits here and there. All good advice.
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Soon thereafter I went and did all of that diagnosis stuff, I did it while attending a conference. I did a number of questionnaires and bunch of the history before arriving, and then scheduled various things during the lunch breaks including some SPECT brain scans. I got some very pretty pictures of my brain activity and that helped pinpoint exactly what was happening with with me. ADD, depression (well duh!), anxiety disorder, and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) among others.
I even shared a cab from the venue to the clinic with a fellow attendee (they dropped me off as it was on the way to where he was going) and he was respectful of the whole thing.
What I'm trying to say is that grad school and ADD, and an academic career can be successfully mixed. I think that in some ways it can be helpful. Sure conference deadlines are fixed, and grading has to be done by certain times, but with some external structures to help, good teaching assistants, and being open and honest with people things can be pretty good. Not that I've decided to do the fully academic thing, but I think it can be done.
The hardest thing for me by far about grad school is the reading. I love reading in general, but conference papers, and especially journal articles are written in a special way that, in some ways, seems to be a kind of gauntlet that is placed between the authors and their peers and the rest of the world. They use complicated words and dense sentence structures. They go on endlessly about the minutia and theory. It's worse than philosophy much of the time (I know my BA is in Philosophy, at least philosophy tries to really deal with the world as it is and so much of academic work is so reductionist.). So getting through reading and then remembering any of it or being able to really engage with the material is difficult for me.
Since getting some treatment (anti-depressants, stimulants are recommended for someone with anxiety) it's a little better, but reading just 5 or 10 minutes at a time is what works best for me. I set a timer (use timer-tab.com) and just read for that period of time. No matter what else happens I stick to it. I need to pee, get a drink whatever.. that can wait until the 10 minutes is up. I remember something really important I need to do, I have a post-it not on my desk and write it down, stick it on my monitor and get right back to reading. I typically have my noise cancelling headphones and some kind of lyric-free music on. Often when the time is up I'll do another block of 10 minutes again because I finally got into it a bit. If I didn't I can also take 2 minutes to do something else like facebook or get a drink etc. This strategy works for writing as well and has been really, really helpful for me.
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