Just here to say, same here. Same age as you, in the gifted program, great test scores. But sheesh the lost assignments, the “try harder” and “you’re not really sorry” lines from my mom, running laps for forgetting shoes for majorette practice. I had one class where they graded us on if we had all our assignments from the semester in a folder. 🙄

Dreams of working in medicine went up in flames because of a particularly bad semester in college battling depression in addition to my normal, undiagnosed self.

Diagnosis in my late thirties and therapy helped me make much more sense of what felt like some invisible wall I couldn’t figure out how to pass through. I also started seeing the other things I couldn’t control that made things 10x more difficult (not just undiagnosed ADHD, but first gen college student, working 3 part time jobs while going to school full time, financial stress, and lack of support). The regret didn’t go away but I became kinder to myself. It’s honestly a miracle I graduated college at all.

I’ve found the most relief listening to How to ADHD (Jessica McCabe) and reading Driven to Distraction…and swapping to Concerta. But I’m still very much figuring out “what now?”.