an ADD moment at my conference

I had an “ADD moment” at my conference over the weekend.

By some misfortune, I was scheduled to present a poster at 8 a.m. Sunday morning. This is the *worst* presentation slot, and I’ve now had it two years in a row. I’m a good sport, however, and prepared in advance so I wouldn’t have to scramble on Sunday morning.

I didn’t know about daylight savings time until I arrived at the conference on Wednesday afternoon. But, I still prepared in advance, set several clocks so I wouldn’t sleep in and miss my presentation time, etc. I even woke up on time, had a cup of coffee, and made it to the poster hall early. I was really, really proud of this, because I am not a morning person.
Five minutes after I put up my poster, I realized I hadn’t taken my medication. So on top of being really, really tired, I could barely string sentences together because I was sans-ritalin.

The punchline: I still didn’t remember to take my medication, even though I’d carried it with me to the poster hall! The 1-2 times I remembered I needed to take it I ended up getting distracted. The bottom line… I was too tired to remember to take something that helps me function like a normal person even when I’m tired.

I’m not beating myself up about this too much, and in fact, I’ve been laughing about it ever since. Fortunately only a few people came to the 8 a.m. session (my supervisor was not one of them), and I didn’t need to do any real deep thinking at that point of the morning. Plus, I could joke about not being able to think straight because I was so tired, just like everybody else at the session.

I did experience a cool “first” at this conference: multiple people recognized my name! I was greeted enthusiastically at one poster by name (“Dr. Addled! It’s so nice to meet you! I really enjoyed your article on French pastry techniques, and would love it if you attended my symposium later on croissants!”), and another person purposely found me to tell me how valuable they found my research. This has never happened before, and it’s pretty darn cool!

afraid I bombed most recent phone interview

Argh….. as the title suggests, I am very afraid I bombed my most recent phone interview, and unfortunately, it was for the job I want the most. I was nervous beforehand because I’d recorded the time incorrectly in my PDA, and was ready to talk with the committee 2 hours before the scheduled call. I’d also ended up taking my 3 pm dose of ritalin 20 minutes late which made my nervousness worse. By the time they called at 3.40, the noon dose was gone, but the 3 pm dose hadn’t really kicked in yet. Not a good start!

They asked 4 “scripted” questions and invited me to talk as little or as much as I’d like about each item. These included:

1. Why apply to Small Midwestern Liberal Arts College?
2. Which advanced seminar courses would you like to teach?
3. What types of problem students have you experienced in the past, and how have you dealt with them?
4. 1 other question I can’t remember at the moment…

Interestingly, there was no question about how I bring faith into the classroom or my research, which contradicts the warning posted on the Chronicle’s discussion forums.

I answered the four questions rather briefly, and had trouble formulating sentences ( hope I won’t end up kicking myself forever over a late dose of ritalin). I then had quite a bit of time to ask my own questions. This part of the interview was more conversational, and I tried hard to put my best foot forward throughout this section. At least by then the medication had started to work and I could form complete sentences. Toward the end, however, I admitted that I thought I was too brief/vague in my responses to the original four questions, and asked them if they had any follow-ups for me. They did (about the advanced seminar courses), and I stumbled through my answer on this. After that, I thought I’d better call it an interview, and asked about their search timeline, which is a standard cue for “I’m done asking questions.” They then asked me to write a 1-page response to the college’s 70+ page mission statement within the next 48 hours. It will be tight, but it can be done if I drop some other tasks. I just don’t know if it will be enough to keep me on their list. At least I’ll know if I totally bombed the interview shortly after thanksgiving; if they’re still interested, I’ll go there to interview before the end of the school year.

I’m trying to stay positive about my chances. I thought I did badly on another interview earlier and was still invited to do a follow-up presentation. Also, despite my nervousness/awkwardness, I still felt like I connected with the faculty on the other end of the phone. This is as important as how I answered the questions at some institutions. They seemed impressed by my materials, and I know my letters of recommendation are strong. Knowing this might not be enough to keep panic from setting in.

how not to manage an early-morning flight

Last Friday I traveled for a friend’s wedding, which occurred in a rural location on Saturday afternoon.

My flight was scheduled to depart around 6.45 a.m.; in order to have time to park, get through the nightmarish security line, make my way to the gate, etc., I need to leave my house at 4.30. Unfortunately Friday morning was one of those times that I decided to turn off my alarm in my sleep. I rolled over and woke up at 4.59 a.m.

Somehow, by 6 a.m., I’d made it and was waiting in the looooooooooonnnnnnngggggg security line. All I can say is that the hour between 5 and 6 wasn’t pretty, and nor was I on Friday morning:

• I left the house 15 minutes after I’d finally gotten up (had washed face, brushed teeth, put in contacts, and thrown last few items into the suitcase. No chance to say goodbye to the kitties, who were pretty freaked out by my frantic behavior!)
• I drove 70 all the way to the airport, which is about 20 miles away. I kept my fingers crossed the entire time that I wouldn’t run out of gas.
• I parked in a closer, more expensive lot than my normal economy lot. Had I not done this, I would not have made the flight.
• I got stuck in lines at check-in and at security.
• I ran all the way to my gate once I’d passed security. In my hubby’s words, “You’re not running late unless they’re paging you to your gate.” They were paging me and 4 other delayed passengers at the gate.

Naturally there was a witness to my embarassment; a co-worker from my lab was seated in the row behind me!

All my flights made it on time. I met a high school friend at the destination airport, and finally got to take a shower later that afternoon before the rehearsal dinner. The wedding itself was great, and I’m glad hubby and I decided to make the trip!

There is a moral to this story for ADDers, naturally. Here are some travel tips for ADDers who are challenged by early morning engagements:

• Set 2 alarm clocks, or arrange a wake-up call. Lay out the clothes you plan to wear.
• Don’t stay up late the night before, even if you’re not done preparing. Start preparations earlier rather than later.
• Don’t put off preparations until the morning of departure. If nothing else, this is recipe for distraction!
• Make sure the car has a full tank of gas. Get it filled the night before if it doesn’t.
• It’s worth it to pay a premium to park close to the airport if you’re running late. A few extra bucks in parking is still less than a new ticket, or the hassle of missing flights!

peer review

 

I love icanhascheezburger.

 

I wish my peer reviewers were cats.

stuck on the teaching philosophy

My emotional batteries are completely drained after the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to recharge them by gently working at home today. I can’t take the day off, but I can take it a bit easy. This won’t recharge my batteries entirely, but holding out until that happens is an exercise in futility.

Today I’m working on my teaching philosophy, which is more than half-finished. At the moment I’m stuck on the section about critical thinking (why I value it, and how I support it in the classroom).

Why I value it is easy: From my perspective, the primary purpose of a university education is to develop the ability to form and defend logical conclusions, particularly in the face of incomplete or conflicting information.

How I support it in the classroom is harder to define, particularly since lecture-oriented classes typically don’t support it. I know mine certainly haven’t.This means that a) I need to ‘fess up and tell the truth in my statement, emphasizing that I’m currently still developing this aspect of my instructional style, and b) I need to come up with concrete methods I plan to try first. This is where I’m stuck. Oh, and I need to tie it to clear written & oral communication, too.

I’m going to read a relevant chapter before proceeding any further. It should spur some ideas, I hope!

Another sticking point: it’s rather ironic that critical thinking is so important to me when I have to work really, really hard to keep my critical thinking on track when I’m having an ADD moment. I don’t know how, as an educator with ADD, I can facilitate my students’ critical thinking if/when I have an ADD moment in the classroom.

I also must power through revisions to the rest of my teaching portfolio today, which means I’m probably in for a long night.

The first batch of 30 applications should be ready to go sometime next week!

scattered updates

Some miscellaneous updates & thoughts midway through my day of working at home…

irst, I haven’t caught up my checkbook yet, but I did manage to sort my receipts into envelopes. Maintaining this as a system seems to be the best option for the time being, while I’m trying to accomplish so much else. I will catch up once the applications are submitted, and will spend my evenings chipping away on the thank-you notes instead.

econd, despite not reaching my checkbook goal, I ordered that much-desired piece of clothing anyway. This was mostly because the company sent a discount code. I’m posting about it here not to defend my decision to give in to temptation, but because I think I’ve found my ideal source for academia- and ADD-friendly casual clothing. It takes a while to get here from India, but it’s comfortable, cheap, easy care, and is figure-flattering while still being appropriate for casual days on campus.

I ordered two casual, work-appropriate cotton blouses (pictured at right; the dark blue one is being made in a lighter grayish blue). I also ordered two summer travel-friendly salwar kameez suits, in slightly different color combinations than are pictured at left. The aqua-pink one will instead have an aqua kameez trimmed in creamy off-white cotton, an off-white cotton dupatta with aqua trim, and off-white cotton trousers instead of salwar (baggy cuffed pants). The turquoise & white will be cornflower blue with white decorations, a white silk dupatta & white cotton pants instead of churidar (gathered stretch pants). Both kameez will be shorter. The aqua-cream one will have elbow-length sleeves. The cornflower one will have shorter cap sleves and a slightly deeper, round neckline. I don’t know that I’ll ever wear these while working, other than the days I work at home.

Grand total with shipping, less 15% discount: $83. No matter how much I bargain-shopped, there’s no way I could ever get 4 tops, 2 pairs of pants and 2 shawls (1 silk!) for that price in the USA.

I’m excited about my purchases, as comfortable & appropriate work and travel clothing can be hard to find locally. My goals aren’t so high, really, so it’s odd that what I like has to be custom made & shipped from India.

• I have established which colors suit me and wear them instead of other colors that don’t suit me, even if it means I’m unfashionable.
• I like natural fibers & must be comfortable in my everyday clothes in order to function well. Like other ADDers, I have some tactile issues. If my clothing isn’t comfortable, I often can’t focus on anything else! Female ADDers, take note… one of the best things about clothing from S2 Fashions is comfortable tags.
• I don’t like being overly dressy, and I like being able to coordinate my casual tops with jeans or chinos.
• For the last few years, I’ve found it extremely difficult to find casual clothing that is appropriate and suits 30-something me. Kurti fit and flatter without being too revealing, which is great because I don’t like to show skin at work. Apparently it’s a no-no to show cleavage in India, because kurti consistently have higher, non-gaping necklines. The longer-length tops help me feel more comfortable when I wear lower-rise jeans around the office. The longer, curvier style tops suit my shape, too (I’m normal weight & average… not big but not model-thin either). The tops nip in at the waist and flare above & below. Overall, I can avoid showing skin that doesn’t need to be seen while I’m at work without wearing a potato sack, and still feel attractive in the process.

When it comes to travel, I refuse to fly in anything made from synthetic fabrics, that has any constricting design elements, or is difficult to clean. Who cares about how cotton wrinkles? Nobody comes off of international flights looking freshly pressed, anyway!

P.S. I cut my hair this weekend for the first time since the wedding. 4 inches are now history, and I’m happy to be short-haired Dr. Addled once again.

dealing with the dreaded checkbook

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So, I have this problem…I posted about it over at ADHD Forums but wanted to extend this query to others as well.

I stopped keeping track of my checkbook in March, which happens to be the time my husband started working at a real job (i.e., we had more money all of a sudden). I really want to catch up with it but naturally find the task completely overwhelming. It doesn’t help that I know there was a $30 mistake prior to March, and that I’ve bounced some checks in the meantime. But I digress…

My default coping strategy is breaking a task into smaller pieces, and then tackling a piece at a time (i.e., one month per day for a week = 1 hours’ work each night and a caught-up checkbook by the end of the week). This doesn’t seem to be working in this case.

About 2 months ago, I sorted the debit card transaction receipts into neat piles by date. They are still sitting in my office, and have been joined by 2 months’ worth of additional receipts. Plus there is the mess at the bottom of my purse.

I have been telling myself for two days that I’m not allowed to buy a certain item of clothing I’ve wanted for a while until I’ve done this.

But other than setting conditions for task completion, and breaking a big job into small pieces, what will help? Has anybody else been able to dig themselves out of this type of situation? If so, how did you do it?

the vital importance of routines

Typically I take my ritalin before I walk out the door in the morning, around 8.30 so it will have started to work by the time I reach my office at 9.00. The bottle’s home is in my backpack so I can then take the next two doses while at the office.

My hubby and I went out of town for the weekend. Naturally I took my ritalin with me. As I left my backpack at home, I carried it in my tote bag. We arrived home early yesterday afternoon, and I only partially unpacked my stuff. We had a crazy morning at home, mostly because I had to take my hubby to the airport and then sit in 6-mile-long traffic jam on the way home. By the time I made it out the door for work, I felt like I was racing…

..once I made it and sat down at my desk, I then realized that a) I hadn’t taken my ritalin this morning, and b) that it wasn’t in my backpack, meaning c) I’m going to have to work the rest of the day without it. It probably goes without saying that this is not good.

Moral of the story: small changes in routine can be supported by routines that are set in stone. Taking my ritalin out of my backpack was a bad move. I probably could have made it the rest of the day had I not chosen to do this, or if I’d strictly reminded myself to put it back where it belongs FIRST THING last night when I’d arrived home. I didn’t, however, and this could make today extremely interesting as a consequence.

I’d just go home and get it, except that I drove in and already paid $4 for parking (no unlimited in-and-out, alas).  I’d planned to go grocery shopping after work today and wanted the car for the trip.

Should I even try to do the tasks I’d scheduled for today? I’d planned to submit a paper (after I’d completed a few small revisions on it first) and finish revising my research statement. These tasks are writing-intensive and require some precision. It’s a lot harder to write unmedicated vs. medicated — will I end up having to redo everything I do today if I press forward without the support of meds? Last but not least, is it worth the frustration? Probably not.

Maybe the best ad-hoc routine for today is just to eat the $4 in parking and go home to work after my short meeting this afternoon.

the master task list

..is also known as how I know what I’ve done and what I need to be doing. This is an invaluable tool, and is something I’ve done in various forms ever since middle school. Back then, I’d make a homework list every day so I’d be sure to bring home the right books at night. My master task list system is a more complicated version of my old homework list.

I wouldn’t be an ADDer if I wasn’t preoccupied with HOW to organize my list. Consequently, I actually have three “master” lists, listed here in the order of “used least” to “used most”:

1. A small notebook for research ideas, since I know I won’t remember them for long. This travels to work and home in my backpack.
2. A composition notebook for meetings. I prepare notes with my progress, questions, etc., before going into meetings with my supervisor. During our meetings, I take notes about our decisions, future directions, and assignments. This is handy because all the notes are in one place, and a notebook tends to last for at least a year. If I ever forget when something was decided or the chain of decision-making altogether, I can just flip back through the book. This tends to stay at work during the week, but might come home on the weekend. I have a tendency to tuck active drafts into it whenever it comes home.
3. A legal pad on my desk in which all big tasks are broken down into intermediate steps. I check things off as I do them, and add new tasks as needed. I start a new list each week, carrying over last weeks’ unfinished tasks and adding new ones for the week.

I also have a PDA, which I essentially treat like a paper calendar. It has the added benefit of alarms. I don’t use it for task lists because I find it too cumbersome & slow to add them, and I get annoyed with how the task items interface with my appointments calendar. Tasks only end up in the PDA if an alarm is necessary.

Most of the time this structure is sufficient to help me be productive most of the day. Instead of having to determine which tasks need to be done, prioritize them, and then stick to them, all I have to do is figure out what’s the top priority and get going. It’s certainly not foolproof. Sometimes it’s hard to stick to the list. I have to WANT to stick to it in order to do it. All bets are off if medication isn’t right or if there are big stressors.

Let me stress that what works for me won’t necessarily work for other academics with ADD. Others might benefit from just one of my three lists, or might require an additional one of their own. It’s all about finding what works for the individual and not getting caught up in the stimulation of setting up a new system.

This may be easier said than done, however. Last year I attended an Adult ADD group at my local psychiatric outpatient center. Based on the groups’ experiences, simplicity seems to be the most important factor in finding & sticking to an ADD-friendly life-organizing system. Group members who tried to implement more complicated systems generally became frustrated at some point of the process and gave up.

In particular, I recall that one member was determined to make his hand-held voice recorder “talk” to his computer’s calendar software so he could print a daily schedule each morning before work. In theory it sounded like a great, very ADD-friendly idea. Say it, transmit it to the computer at night, and print it. In a practical sense, however, it was a total nightmare because there were too many steps involved in making it work. It was relatively simple to set up the hardware and software. The big obstacle was training the user, as getting the appointments and notes in the right places required that he speak a type of computer code before the actual appointment entry (something like “Open calendar. New appointment. Monday, 30 July, 2007. 7 am to 8 am. Dentist appointment”). Miss a step and the entry didn’t make it into the calendar. He worked on this for almost a year before giving up in frustration.

The bottom line… an academic’s time is limited, and adding ADD into the mix makes it harder to productively use that limited amount of time. Keep your system simple, and it should help you stick with it.

a missed opportunity

Two years ago I received a set of 4 Katabuki kitty plates and 2 matching teacups. I’d kept them tucked away because we didn’t have room for them in the kitchen. Recently I’d remembered them and wanted to buy two more cups so I’d have the complete set.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I found that they are permanently out-of-stock at Stash Tea. What’s more is that nobody else in the world seems to carry this design.

I am entirely heartbroken. They are just cups, but they are great cups.

I so wish that I’d taken care of this months ago when I’d initially remembered it. I think they cost around $13, but at the time, it seemed like an unnecessary purchase.

If anybody happens across a set of these cups anywhere, please buy them and tell me. I will naturally pay you for the purchase and the effort!