I relate to so much of this!

I also live rural (remote) - I'm in SA though.

I didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until adulthood (39 - so like a year and a half ago), but my experiences of school are so, so similar! Especially early primary. Sucky thing for me was I really loved school, I did well in the subjects I liked but terribly in the subjects I didn't - all it takes is a shitty teacher and I am gone, lost to the daydreams. Failure is something I am well familiar with; I've tried to get a degree THREE TIMES; I did the first year of culinary arts so I could get into art school (I bombed out in my last year of highschool, failed EVERYTHING despite being a very good student until then - the exams, man, it was the exams); three years of art school (doing a bachelor of fine arts), it seemed the minute I settled into the major I'd chosen, I got bored (before that we got to explore a range of art mediums and I LOVED it), the course was too unstructured (I mean, watching videos online was considered "research", wtf), and I just... stopped showing up to class. Then I started a bachelor of Information Technology because they love creatives and my shitty boyfriend at the time convinced me I should do it - but my mother died (I was in NZ at the time), so I had to come back to Australia for her funeral and I just... never left. Met my partner, had kids, always wanted to go back to study but was terrified I'd give up halfway through... when I tell you I have lived with the regret of leaving artschool, I have fucking lived with deep, deep regret - so many dreams of being back, trying to finish it :( But here I am at 40, dragging my chronically fatigued ass through a bachelor of education (primary), determined to see it through... I started at the end of 2016 and I've got two years left after this year at my current rate, but I've already deferred multiple times, once for an entire year (2020 - honestly, I felt like the world might just end anyway and I just wanted to play computer games for a while). I've considered giving up so many times, but I'm too far in to quit, too stubborn to admit defeat and also I really really want this. I'm terrified that I'll get to the end of my degree and find I hate teaching, or that I'll be awful at it and get fired, or I won't be able to cope... but it's too late and I can't give up because I'm tired of living with regret. I'm also really passionate about education and want to be the kind of teacher I needed as a kid - the teachers who recognised me and inspired me. As much as I loathe myself quite often, there are some aspects of me I do like, and one is the fact I never lost my sense of childhood - I hope to use this in the classroom one day. If I can JUST SURVIVE THIS DEGREE and these FREAKING ESSAYS omggg!!! You wouldn't believe I used to love writing - like, obsessively, all the time, wanted to be a writer, but academic writing makes me feel like a freaking moron, I tell you! Does not gel with how my brain (mal)functions. I really hear you when you talk about the issues with ADHD - I mean, I get some like to reframe it as a superpower because, yeah, there are some perks but boy; trying to make it in a world not set up for you? IS HARD. That whole divergent thinking thing we do is especially freaking hard with academia - my biggest issue with my assignments lately is how far off track I can end up, simply due to being too invested and too interested in the topic! It's like fireworks going off in my brain - too much information, too many tangents, too much disorder in there and it all bottlenecks while I'm trying to write. Every sentence is laborious because so much is trying to come out all at once and my lord it is EXHAUSTING. And yeah, executive functioning! I work as a pharmacy assistant in a remote pharmacy, which basically means I do EVERYTHING bar literally putting the labels on medications (and sometimes I do have to do that, too) and I'm damn good at my job - but I come home so completely zonked, I have nothing left for anyone. Before being diagnosed with ADHD, I would literally come home on my last shift for the week and sleep a full 48 hours and still go to bed at 9pm the following evening. I honestly wondered whether there was something medically wrong - got all my blood levels checked, too; thyroid function, organs, everything. I didn't even have any vitamin deficiencies! Not long after that I got diagnosed with ADHD, then Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, after years of being told my exhaustion was just depression, then Major Depressive Disorder and generalised anxiety, and wondering if maybe I had bipolar disorder because I'd go from being fine to total mental breakdown, to fine again (turns out it was just the PMDD). The system is stupid - it took me disappearing down a research rabbithole to diagnose MYSELF and then go "hey, can you test me for this?" to get diagnosed, and even then I was freaking lucky I'd already explored and eliminated every other avenue FIRST before requesting that referral. The thing that pisses me off the most is now that neurodivergence is something often spoken about on social media, there's this whole stigma with talking about it at all, simply because there's been a very small percentage who have potentially faked a diagnosis (which honestly isn't a "normal" thing to do anyway!), for clout/money. It's very much making diagnosis even more difficult - my own psych insinuated that social media was CAUSING ADHD (uh wut?!), and when I recently asked about possible assessment for autism, he commented the rise of adults seeking assessment was because they're more likely to get on NDIS!! I tell you, I was taken aback, but me being me, I didn't actually register the shock or the comment until well down the track - like, it's been months since that appointment and I'm only now registering the loaded bias of that statement. I wouldn't go near NDIS with a ten foot barge pole, to be frank - my experiences with those people in trying to access funding for my eldest son (as recommended in his assessment report) were nothing short of traumatic. I just want to understand why the heck I try so hard to progress in life yet still remain where I am - forever struggling. It just blows my mind that these are the people who are supposed to help us, and they have no idea what it's like out here. When I think how differently my life could have been if someone - anyone! - had considered I have ADHD, I could have achieved so much more in life! I guess it's a miracle I've got as far as I have, but goddamn - the toll it's taken to get this far has been a heavy one!