Join Me On This Journey

Hi.

My name is Rhia, I'm just your average 19 year old uni student, trying to get through life. Well, kind of. I guess I'm not really that average.

Let me tell you a story.

March 2020:

I'm struggling through my second year of college (school from 16-18, for any readers who are not familiar with the UK education system), wondering why I constantly felt like I was behind my peers. I was predicted decent grades, but every mock exam or assessment we did, I never reached those standards. No one seemed to know why. I didn't know why. Or, not exactly.

Through my whole school career, there was one thing I struggled with: Revision. Or studying. Doing work, of my own accord, at home. I just couldn't do it. I could do homework fine, because I had a specific task to do, by a specific time, for a teacher, who was relying on me to do this work. So I could do homework fine, even if it was only hurriedly finished the night before.

But revision, I couldn't do. I just couldn't. I never really knew why it was so hard for me, while everyone else seemed to get on fine. Others would come in with their cue cards, tons of essays and practice questions completed. Meanwhile, I had nothing.

I couldn't do work, when the only guidelines I was given, was "go study". To me, that meant nothing. I'd ask for guidance as to what exactly to do and all I'd get in response is "well, everyone studies different, so you just have to study in whatever way works best for you!" And so I just stared back in confusion, and was thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim.

I was given no exact tasks, no deadlines to do it by, no one relying on me to do this work other than myself. And this means that I was practically set up for failure.

I managed to make it through my GCSEs with decent grades despite barely studying for them at all. Not to toot my own horn, but I've always been the "gifted student", the smart one. So I could get away with it. But as I went up to the next step, to A Levels, you can't really get away with it as much.

I couldn't study for exams, and so rather than coming out with the As and A*s i was predicted, i left with Cs and Ds. It was frustrating.

Everyone else around me was studying hard, had mountains of paper and cue cards, and I had nothing. Why couldn't I just study? Am I just lazy?

That's what I thought for a long time. I thought I was just lazy, just needed to "work harder".

I don't remember how, but ADHD came into the conversation. It came in and out of my mind several times throughout my life, but I never settled on it until now, now that it was the possible reason for the falling of my grades.

And somewhere along the way, autism also came into the conversation. Like ADHD, it had crossed my mind a couple times, but I'd never fully settled on it until now.

March of 2020, is the earliest date that i can discern, when I started looking into ADHD and Autism more deeply. I slowly started to come to terms with the fact that this was me. This is me.

It all makes sense now.

I'm autistic.

And now here I am over a year later, and I'm much more certain about my own self diagnosis (more on self diagnosis another time...).

I'm still not able to get a diagnosis yet, for many reasons I'll go into in future posts, but I am going on a journey to get that diagnosis, and this is what I hope to document through these blog posts. I may also do some other blog posts that aren't as relevant, but I'm just taking this blog to be my chance to rant, and to share my experiences with the world in hope it could maybe help others, if they happen to read.

So yeah, subscribe if ya like. Who knows if I'll keep this up.

I wouldn't be surprised if it just turns into another project that gets swept aside, because, well, if you know anything about ADHD, you'll understand. But still, I would appreciate it if you could subscribe :)

Join me on my journey.