For anyone who is in school, I would highly recommend exploring what formal accommodations your school does have, because they are legally required to provide accommodations for people with disabilities, very much including developmental disabilities and neurodivergence (such as ADHD and autism).
Now, if you’ve gotten all the accommodations you can get and it’s not enough, I very much relate and it sucks and I remain pissed that they don’t offer things I need. I’m sorry, you can’t adjust your absence policy for someone with a debilitating chronic illness? For someone with severe depression? It feels like they want us to fail, but in reality the schools don’t us to fail - they want our money, they want us to graduate. They just haven’t invested the time and resources to properly support us.
Many people who work at schools (and people in general) also simply do not understand our limitations, cannot fathom how someone might need to miss so many classes, might need so much extra time on assignments, might need to attend virtually some days. Or they feel it’s not their responsibility to help, without considering that often no one else sees it as their responsibility to help either and we’re left on our own, without being able to get a degree, and often without being able to get a job. And that means we’re vulnerable to poverty and poor health outcomes (including, you know, death). Like, people don’t understand that if they don’t help us, maybe no one will, and we need that help to get by because our society is set up for us (disabled people) to either depend on other individuals for assistance with things we are unable to do or access, or wither away in isolation.
So please, let yourself do things “wrong.” Whatever you need to do to get by, if it isn’t harming others, you are absolutely justified in doing it. Submit a half-completed assignment. Take a test without having done any studying. Go to your professor’s office hours and beg for an extension. Go to your school’s Accessibility Services (or the Dean of Students, or the principal, or whoever has the authority to help you) and beg for help getting your professors to be more flexible. Beg, or demand it. Do your research if you can, cite the Americans with Disabilities Act, tell them you’re thinking about suing if you think it’ll get you anywhere. And yeah, don’t feel bad about crying, especially when you’re in an impossible situation the person in front of you is refusing to acknowledge or actively making worse. Know that if you do the normal things everyone else is allowed to do once in a while, like showing up late or missing a shower or eating junk food or skipping an assigned reading or staying up late, or whatever it is you’ve been told you can’t do because you’ll somehow fall apart if you don’t overcompensate for your disability - know that if you do those things, it’s actually not a big deal. Everyone does them. The only things that are a big deal are the things that get in the way of your health, your goals, and your survival. Try not to self-sabotage, but absolutely cut corners, and absolutely allow yourself to be human.
Do fun things when you’re “supposed” to be studying. Take a relaxing bath or text a friend or watch a movie or go to a party or whatever, instead of spending hours creating a strict plan for schoolwork and other items on your to-do list or otherwise trying to be “productive.” And if you missed something/didn’t take care of some responsibility you feel you should have, on purpose or not, and it is stressing you out and you feel like you’re not gonna be able to accomplish something you wanted to, that is okay. That is normal. Things happen. You can only do so much, and taking breaks and having fun is good and okay. Your happiness and well-being should be priorities over artificial deadlines and grades. Sometimes there are serious consequences for doing something poorly or not getting something done, but most of the time there aren’t. You’re okay. Ask for help, beg for help, demand help. Talk to people on here for help or advice. Just get through it however you can, and shut out any advice that you know will make you miserable or won’t work for you. You got this.
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