Need Your Opinions: ADD and Essay Writing

[bekahboo714]

Hey guys,

My husband has ADD as well as me. Because his went undiagnosed throughout elementary school and high school, he thought he was not as intelligent as others and never really performed well in school--although he's EXTREMELY intelligent and gifted. (Even my dad, a college professor, thinks so.)

My husband wants more than anything to go to college and get a degree--something he has always wanted to do but never thought he could until he was diagnosed. However, we are having one major hurdle: writing.

He has extreme anxiety over writing anything--essay questions, a short paragraph, and of course, a term paper. He panics and say he has no idea how to go about writing. Some of this is because he never really learned in high school since he was considered an "underachiever."

Is this typical of ADD? Or does he just need to learn how to write? Any thoughts? Thanks.

[boardtabitz]

YES! At least I think so because I have that trouble. I used to wait til the night before to write things because of it but eventually even that stopped working.

My advice for him since he is so worried. Don't start at some big university. Go to a school that has small class sizes and use student services. I went to a community college and got my AA so that I could transfer to a university as a junior.

[Alex]

Writing is actually surprisingly easy, I find. The biggest challenge, and in his case he even knows it, is getting over your fear of not being good enough. The rest takes care of itself.

I'm lucky. I hyperfocus when I get down to the last few days before a paper, and I can punch out reams of really good material in that time. I wrote, for instance, my Honours thesis in about three weeks total, and I wasn't pushing hard for the first two. 50 pages of text.

Now, my chief experience is with research-based essays. I'm a History grad. There's a very easy key to these; write what you find out. Go read the sources you need to use, and almost the entire essay will consist of you saying "X said Y about Z, and because he takes into account A and B, which noone before him did, his interpretation makes a good deal of sense."

That seems silly, but that's what an essay is. There are three parts, an introduction, the body, and the conclusion. The intro and conclusion only need to be a paragraph each, and don't need to be very long, the bulk is in the body. And all you need to do for the introduction is ask the question you're going to answer. And for the conclusion, give your answer.

The body, you just provide evidence. It's like writing up the minutes of a court case; A says B, but because of evidence C, D's interpretation is better. D says E. Now, assuming E is true, we can take a fresh look at F . . ." The difficult part of the body isn't the writing, it's finding solid evidence and building the case. And that's got little to do with the writing itself. You also do not have to be creative; there's some fairly easy tricks. For instance, Microsoft Word has a grammar check utility. Usually, you can ignore what it says, but it will also pick up on you starting sentences the same way. So if you constantly use "Therefore, ", it'll point that out. The advantage here is that you can write the whole paper saying "Therefore, ", so you're not worrying about that kind of crap just getting your thoughts down, and then use the computer system to help you prettify it.

Not that the computer is a replacement for proofreading, but it's helpful nonetheless.


The best thing I can suggest would be that he try and take a low-writing type of program in University. Sciences, obviously, aren't much on writing essays. If that's a no-go, though, there are other options. History and Anthropology are big on fact-based essays; these tend to be longer than a lot of other classes, but you can pad it out with "he said, she said". English and Philosophy, on the other hand, have generally shorter essays, but the work is all you.

Also, it sounds like your husband's biggest problem is confidence. It's harsh, but there's no way he's going to get more confident about writing without writing something. University can be a very good location for this, though. He can take a writing class; these are typically offered as a brief weekend or evening thing just to give new students like your husband tips on essay writing. They'll be able to help as well in ways I won't. Also, professors (good ones anyway) will be leaving him constructive comments on his returned essays, so he can see where he can improve. And if it's obviously nerves, they often can give extensions or let you do a rewrite. Just don't expect or rely on this.

Writing's like anything. Scary when you don't know what you're doing, not a big deal when you've done it a bunch. I bear many battlescars; what I'm passing along is the result of someone who had a troubled high school career, and then failed out his first year of University, followed by flailing along at it for another three years getting a total combined credit value of a normal first year. And then I worked out the kinks, got my head on straight, and went back and got my BA with Honours. If I wanted to go to graduate school, I could; my thesis advisor said he would take me on as a masters student. So obviously, I've figured some things out. I'm just trying to be clear that I was also the biggest kind of third-rate dropout idiot as well.


Anxiety is normal. I still get anxious. I often don't start a paper until the last 3 days before it's due, when the dam of anxiety finally bursts. And your husband probably won't be winning awards with his first attempts. But that's what you go to university to do, to learn how to write a decent paper. I guarantee that high school wouldn't have done it for him. If he's got good ideas and isn't near-illiterate, his professors will give him tips and help him improve his style, and before he knows it he'll be churning out decent essays.

[boardtabitz]

Some people have trouble just starting the thing. Last semester I took a business english course and it should have been easy. Most of the time it was just re-writing a stupid letter but I would sit for hours trying to start. I'm a senior, I have had the low level classes and I have written research papers, ect. but it doesn't matter. It's not something that can be explained because it doesn't make sense.

[Alex]

boardtabitz, your comment sparked up another gem of insight I've gleaned from somewhere over the years;

Write the whole essay. THEN edit.

If you keep rewriting your introduction trying to get it perfect, you'll never get any further.

Besides, it's a lot easier to say "this isn't perfect, but it's good enough and I need sleep" if you've got a finished product, even if it's not as polished as it could be. Working on just the introduction can keep you up the whole night, and you still won't have the essay done in the morning.

This is true of any kind of writing, essays, poetry, fiction, articles. Write it, then correct and edit, trim and pad.

So, to expand on boardtobitz' point, start writing, and don't stop till you're done. Take breaks for eating, classes, and sleep, of course. But when you sit down to work on the essay, pick up where you left off and keep writing. Don't start rereading the earlier stuff and editing it to make it better. Reread the last paragraph or two to remember where you were, and then continue on.

[boardtabitz]

It's not a matter of editing or trying to get it perfect. I can take tons of notes - too many in fact and get them all arranged. I still can't start the thing. With the letters we were expected to make up the details including the name of the person and address. Now why a person should get stuck with something like that makes absolutely no sense. I sat at the computer for hours and hours. Then we got to the point in the semester where we were supposed to write a proposal. No direction on what to write about just that it had to be a proposal. We had to pick a problem, think of a solution and write a proposal. I just quit going. At that point all my grades were going to go down if I kept spending so much time on that one stupid class. I ended up with three A's and a F. I'll just take the English over again.

[literati]

Writing is hard, especially for us ADD'rs.

I'm a journalist, and it's STILL hard. When I was in college I'd procrastinate until the last possible moment before my brain would kick in and I'd be able to have a somewhat coherent thought.

Personally my biggest challenge with college papers was doing research. If it was an especially boring subject that just made it worse. I have ZERO attention for research if I'm not interested. But, I guess I would say that's the first step of writing a term paper: Write down what research he needs to do for a paper. Break it down into small steps. Spread it out over a week or so into manageable bites. Go to the research librarian at the school and ask for help, they're more than willing to give assistance.

Once research is done, the next part is structuring your paper. Alex is completely right about having an introductory paragraph that outlines where you're heading, supporting paragraphs, and then a conclusion. Most people get stuck in the writing process (the infamous writer's block) because they don't know where they're going in the first place. Especially true of ADD.

Then just write. Sometimes just write whatever comes to mind just to get the "juices" flowing if you will. The key to good writing is simply write and rewrite. Personally I never get my best paper done until about the third rewrite. Write a first draft. Step away for a day. Take a look at it again and I guarantee you'll be able to see where you need to clarify a point, or take something out that doesn't make sense.

Sorry to ramble on, but if you need any help feel free to private message me. BTW Boardtabitz is right, take full advantage of student services.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by boardtabitz

It's not a matter of editing or trying to get it perfect. I can take tons of notes - too many in fact and get them all arranged. I still can't start the thing. With the letters we were expected to make up the details including the name of the person and address. Now why a person should get stuck with something like that makes absolutely no sense. I sat at the computer for hours and hours. Then we got to the point in the semester where we were supposed to write a proposal. No direction on what to write about just that it had to be a proposal. We had to pick a problem, think of a solution and write a proposal. I just quit going. At that point all my grades were going to go down if I kept spending so much time on that one stupid class. I ended up with three A's and a F. I'll just take the English over again.

What you're doing is editing, in your head. You're trying to get it right.

What I was trying to say in my last post is that you only do that when you've got it done. If these are fictitious names and addresses, just jot down a placeholder. John Smith at 123 Fake St. You can go back and prettify it later, and replacing names is easy with most word processors, just set it to replace every instance of "John" with "Rafael" and "Smith" with "McFunnyPants".

As for the proposal, in that kind of a situation, go talk to the professor. That's what he's paid for. If you don't understand the assignment, it's his job to explain it to you and give you a leg up figuring out what to do. Of course, I've never seen any English class with assignments like that, so I have no idea what the purpose was. You may be better off with a class with better direction, like an "intro to literature" English class.

Originally Posted by literati

Then just write. Sometimes just write whatever comes to mind just to get the "juices" flowing if you will. The key to good writing is simply write and rewrite. Personally I never get my best paper done until about the third rewrite. Write a first draft. Step away for a day. Take a look at it again and I guarantee you'll be able to see where you need to clarify a point, or take something out that doesn't make sense.

Not to disagree, because I know this works for most people, but to provide another perspective, I almost never rewrite. This, however, is because I stew over the thing for weeks leading up to it, so I've already solved most of the problems in my head, at least to the point that I won't see any remaining ones. I'm not perfect, by any means, my GPA was only 3.4ish, but it worked for me that way.

Still, you'll note that literati, too, writes it first. Then rewrites. That's incredibly key, in my mind. Get something down on paper, regardless of how bad it is. It's easier to edit the whole thing when you've got the bulk done than it is to try and write it perfect from day one.

[boardtabitz]

I know I'm being difficult and you are being extremely patient. It probably is a type of editing since I do the same thing you are talking about with planning what I'm going to write in my head for weeks ahead of time. That part actually kind of works - like when I have an essay test. Then I am able to go back and come up with an introduction paragraph and ending at the same time.

I suspected that the proposal assignment was a stupidly vague one. Her suggestion was to take something that we saw to be a problem on the campus and come up with a plan to fix it and propose it. Since my solution to most annoying problems is to just blow it up, I was at a loss. The other problem was that she was an extremely disorganized professor. She had three different sylabuses for us to go by and often they did not match up or make sense. I guess in her effort to be organized she had organized it to death. I took some comfort in the fact that the other "kids" in the class that were seniors and didn't take a ten year break were struggling too and getting angry I might add. It is a required english class for business and social sciences. The other thing that was really weird. We could redo a graded assignment and turn it in for a second time and better grade - in theory. What we discovered was that for many of us it meant a worse grade because rewriting it with the corrections meant she would have new things marked as wrong that she didn't before. I just sat puzzled and kept my mouth shut but the girl next to me couldn't stand it. She questioned it and the professor had a snotty answer about how we were to catch those things on our own.
The worst part of it all, I was seen as the teachers pet because I would go talk to her about my struggles and I was close to her age. I think she went easier on me and that was very uncomfortable since I got along with the kids and agreed with them on the stuff.

[SeaShelle]

Hello. I think he should definitely give it a go. If it makes him feel any better, most college students can't write worth a darn and put little to no effort into it and it shows. I know because I see their writing all the time, and the students are from a very good school.

As for me, I can absolutely relate. I was also an underacheiver with grades all over the place (mostly lower) in grade school and high school. I did not like school. I thought I was not very smart. Not true! I was bored. This may be his case as well. I actcually ended up an honor student in college and writing became my best subject. I still love to write.

For me, the biggest thing (as was said before) is just getting started. I have way too many ideas in my head and they all swirl and while I can see the the whole of my essay topic and the conclusion I am looking to make. Having to break it down into pieces with effective transitions making it a coherent whole. I learned some tricks along the way that I think can help him.

First, write all your main points on 3X5 cards. The smallest ones you can find, so you don't write your essay on them. Make sure you note the source of the information for your references. Then, put them in order that you would present then information. From there, you can add cards with connecting points and transitions until you have your main structure of the essay. Finally, you can start the draft body of your essay using these cards. The last thing you do is the introduction and the conclusions keeping it simple. The intro is saying what you are going to say and the conclusion is saying what you have said.

Make sure you having a second person read this draft, make their changes or suggestions into account and then re-read it one last time to make sure that it works. All colleges also have writing centers and you can take your draft reports to them to help with the writing. If he is truly remedial in his abilities, he should also know that all colleges and universities have remedial courses in english to start at the beginning. He might feel more comfortable starting out there. For me, I had to do that with math. I started out with basic math and finally worked my way through Calculus. Something I never thought I would be able to do.

Writing fears aside, he might find college to be a much better fit. It was for me. The broken up schedule and ability to focus on areas of interest was perfect and might be for him.

He can do this. I did. And I had no clue I was ADHD. If he is medicated, I bet he'll be able to do great.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by boardtabitz

I suspected that the proposal assignment was a stupidly vague one. Her suggestion was to take something that we saw to be a problem on the campus and come up with a plan to fix it and propose it. Since my solution to most annoying problems is to just blow it up, I was at a loss. The other problem was that she was an extremely disorganized professor. She had three different sylabuses for us to go by and often they did not match up or make sense. I guess in her effort to be organized she had organized it to death. I took some comfort in the fact that the other "kids" in the class that were seniors and didn't take a ten year break were struggling too and getting angry I might add. It is a required english class for business and social sciences. The other thing that was really weird. We could redo a graded assignment and turn it in for a second time and better grade - in theory. What we discovered was that for many of us it meant a worse grade because rewriting it with the corrections meant she would have new things marked as wrong that she didn't before. I just sat puzzled and kept my mouth shut but the girl next to me couldn't stand it. She questioned it and the professor had a snotty answer about how we were to catch those things on our own.
The worst part of it all, I was seen as the teachers pet because I would go talk to her about my struggles and I was close to her age. I think she went easier on me and that was very uncomfortable since I got along with the kids and agreed with them on the stuff.

That's definitely an issue with the professor.

A good professor will point out all the errors they see in your paper, whether they mark you down for them or not. She's apparently only putting down the corrections for what she's docking you for, so she can hold back on other errors for your resubmission. It's hard to do anything about this, unfortunately. If you can lay hands on two copies of the corrected materials, especially if you can get it from multiple people for the same assignment, you in all honesty may want to take it to the dean. Unless the professor made it clear at the start of the class, or in the syllabi, that she was going to hold the second submission to a higher standard, she can't be marking it harder than she marked the first. For the same reason that you can't mark a first year student's paper with the assumption that it will be Masters-level in quality. And like I said; if it was an error in the first paper, it should have been marked as such with an explanation.

I've had professors like this before; they became professors for research and graduate students, and hate teaching undergrads, so they try and make their undergrads as miserable as possible. It's not right, and while they likely have tenure, the dean can still reprimand them and take them off teaching a required course if they're bunging it. If you do take this to the dean, don't go in argumentative and hostile, go in concerned that you and your fellow students aren't being treated fairly, with evidence to back that up.

[boardtabitz]

How old is he? Non-traditional students usually do better because their motivation is different than kids straight out of high school.

[bekahboo714]

Thanks, everyone, for all your responses!

My husband is great at doing research and retains probably 90% of what he reads one time.

He's about to turn 28. His desire is to major in Art because that's always been his greatest love. (besides me. ) Fortunately there aren't as many essays required in art but nonetheless there are those English classes and papers in other courses that I remember all to well from my days in college.

He says he has no idea even how to begin a paper. He can't even write a paragraph or a formal e-mail. Today I had to help him do the reviews of his employees because he's completely unable to do the writing portion. He gets very anxious and ends up having a panic attack. I understand that he doesn't know the proper way of crafting a term paper but why is there still some kind of block about doing other simple kinds of writing?

He's tried college twice before and had to drop out because of the fear/inability to write. Of course, that was also before he was diagnosed.

Thanks again....

[boardtabitz]

maybe he will have to start with one of those classes that you don't get credit for to refresh. I had to take two algebras like that.

Like I said I understand how he feels completely. I have to write something to the college asking to be released from the foreign language requirement because it wasn't required when I started so many years ago. I'm less than twenty credits away from graduating. I need to write that request but I'm too freaked right now. My biggest fear? They will see me for the idiot that I am from my writing and say no.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by bekahboo714

He says he has no idea even how to begin a paper. He can't even write a paragraph or a formal e-mail. Today I had to help him do the reviews of his employees because he's completely unable to do the writing portion. He gets very anxious and ends up having a panic attack. I understand that he doesn't know the proper way of crafting a term paper but why is there still some kind of block about doing other simple kinds of writing?

He's afraid. He, somewhat rightly, thinks people will judge him based on what he writes. But that's okay; everyone's afraid. It's like public speaking; everyone gets butterflies, even the guy who tours around the country giving speeches.

The cure to fear, of course, is practice and courage. Practice means doing it and not dying as a result. If it's not that bad, the next time it'll be easier to get over the fear. Courage, unlike movies, isn't about not being afraid, it's about acting in spite of fear. Being not afraid isn't courageous, it's stupidity. Being terrified and still going ahead is the mark of a true hero. It doesn't matter if you're charging into enemy territory, or getting up the courage to squish a spider with a newspaper; courage is working through your fear, and it's just as great an accomplishment regardless of the fear you work through.

My suggestion; get him to write you letters. They don't have to be love letters, just get him to write a letter to you about his day. The only person who will read it is you, someone he knows cares about him, so there should be less fear. And you'll be able to be supportive of his efforts, so he gets positive feedback. I'd even avoid doing any corrections for the first while, if there are any glaring spelling errors all through it, then suggest he uses a word processor with a spellcheck, or get you to proofread it for him.

Hopefully that will get him writing a bit, seeing that it's not as bad as he thinks, and he can start to work through his block.