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Going Back to School Online

Make no bones about it: there is nothing normal about our back-to-school experience this year. Whether you’re heading to college on campus or distance, you and your ADHD are no doubt impacted.

We have four strategies for you this week, ranging from organization to time management, and even a little hint of wellness from the avoid-news-of-the-world-on-fire camp. Whatever your situation, however you’re tackling your studies, we want to make sure you have the tools and the strength to move your degree forward. This week, we’re talking all about going back to school online.

Links & Notes

Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.

Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.

Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki Kinzer. We realized that this, I know it’s late for us here in Oregon, but we realized that last night that this would have been day one of school for our kids, or at least our high school kid. And we just found ourselves, my wife and I are laying in bed last night thinking, “Oh my goodness. It is upon us.” Now it’s two weeks later, but we have to figure out how to do this, and my daughter goes to college online in a whole new way in about three weeks.

Nikki Kinzer:
Now, I have a question about that. Is she going to stay home or is she actually going to go to where the college is?

Pete Wright:
You know, it’s pins and needles for us right now. In fact, as we record, tomorrow we have a Zoom meeting with the administration. It’s not, I mean, not with us. The administration is doing a presentation on current status of the school and what’s going on and what we can expect. But, at this point, we were given a choice that if you check the catalog and all of your classes are online because that’s the model they’re doing right now is like, you have a choice, or it’s that some of your classes will be online, some of them will be campus-based, there is a better than odds chance that you’re going to look at your schedule and all your classes will be online because so few classes are available on campus. If that is the case, they give you the option of waiving the first-year residency requirement.

Pete Wright:
You put in a little form and say, “I still want to go to class, but I’m not going to do it on campus. I’m going to stay home. I’m going to do…” There’ll be a lecture, they’ll be at the regular times that are on the class and then you’ll have the rest of your day to do your schoolwork, research, et cetera, get a job.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right.

Pete Wright:
You know, it is a real puzzle. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about transitioning back to school, especially for our adult listeners and adult students. What does it mean right now? And what are you going to do with your ADHD on the way? Woof.

Nikki Kinzer:
Woof is right.

Pete Wright:
I mean. So, before we dig into that, head over to takecontroladhd.com. You can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show on the website, of course, or subscribe to the mailing list and we will send you an email with the latest episode each week. Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook at Take Control ADHD. And, I got to say, as I was looking through our Patreon this morning, I’m filled with such joy at the people who are continuing to subscribe, even as we come back from our silence and our hiatus, and so, special thanks to Vicky, and Whitney, and Julia, and Shea, and Jeremy, welcome, and Jason. Jason’s brand new. They’re just a few of the names of folks who are subscribing and joining our show community over on Patreon.

Pete Wright:
I hope that all of you new folks jump in, join us for the live stream of this very podcast. You can watch Nikki and I screw up royally every single week. It’s a beautiful opportunity, and you get an ad-free version of this show that comes to you by way of your very own Patreon RSS feed if you haven’t checked that out. I find even our old, long-time subscribers forget that they have their very own podcast feed that gives them their very own unique and special gems of podcast from us. For just a few dollars a month, you join the community, you can get access to our online community on Discord or on our Facebook group. This is listener-supported podcasting if there ever was one that your contributions help us stay afloat and continue to grow what we are doing. So, thank you. We appreciate you, every one of you. Visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more.

Nikki Kinzer:
Before we go into back to school, I do want to talk about Study Hall.

Pete Wright:
Which is the perfect thing, right? If you’re going back to school, you’re going to need a study hall.

Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. You’re going to need a study hall. That’s right. And even if you’re not going back to school, but you just need four hours of good, hard, core, productive time with people like you that are trying to get things done, Study Hall is a great thing to do. So, we are starting up our next sessions. They will begin on September 17th and I have an early bird special that is going to be good up until September 17th. So, if you would like to subscribe for those 10 sessions that are coming up, you will get a discount. And, for our Patreon members, the Supreme level actually gets this for free and so that’s a little benefit to them too. So, to learn more about Study Hall, please visit the website at takecontroladhd.com. And it’s under services, I think, right? You’ll put the link on the show notes.

Pete Wright:
Coaching. It’s under coaching.

Nikki Kinzer:
Under coaching. Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. We’ll make it easy for you to find. But, yes, we are also now going to be talking about back to school because it certainly has a whole new meaning than it did last fall, right?

Pete Wright:
Yes, it does. Yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
There really is no back for many people. And one thing I do want to talk about, just to be clear is I do not work with high school students, or children, or kids, whatever you want to call them.

Pete Wright:
Small humans.

Nikki Kinzer:
Under 18. I have my own I have to deal with. But I work with college students. And so I just want to be clear that I’m coming from a perspective of college students. And so if people are having questions about how to manage school, and work, and young kids, I am not going to be the best person for you to refer to. Now, our Discord people might have some great ideas. So, if you’re in Discord, if you’re a part of our Patreon community, I certainly want you to reach out and ask those questions.

Nikki Kinzer:
But I just want to be very clear that it’s not an age group that I work with. I don’t have enough knowledge to even really give you advice because I don’t want to give you the wrong advice.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Nikki Kinzer:
But I can talk to you about college. I can talk to you about adult learning and I can talk to you about this whole weird thing that’s going on. And I’m telling all of my college students that I currently work with because just as you explained, Pete, some of them have online classes, some of them have to go to lab that’s on campus, some of them have… I mean, it’s just every college is a little bit different and I keep telling them to just expect the unexpected because, really, at any time the school could shut down.

Pete Wright:
Right. Right. Yeah. Well, shut down, change models. This is the reason this conversation I think is so important is because it calls on all of us as students, teachers, living with ADHD to be supremely adaptable. And that is not a thing that we are noted for in our bouquet of skills. It’s hard to do that. And so I think getting distracted by circumstances, which we’ll talk about and having difficulty making transitions, that’s the real anchor for the world we live in right now.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, today I’m going to share with you four of the common issues that I’ve seen in the last few months, and what I hope to do is give our listeners a little bit of inspiration, some hope that they can make this work. It is possible. One of the biggest, or I would say hardest parts that I’ve seen clients struggle with is the transition between work, and school, and home life. So, here, it’s all kind of combined in one because you’re in the same spot, right?

Nikki Kinzer:
So, we recently talked about transitions just like a week ago, two weeks ago.

Pete Wright:
Right. Right.

Nikki Kinzer:
So, I’m not going to go into great detail because it’s kind of the same advice, but there are a couple of things I do want you to consider in regards to school and making that transition a little bit easier. So, the first thing I want you to think about is how much time do you think you need to transition from one thing to another? And that is a really hard question to answer. And so what I want people to do is actually practice, and time themselves, and do some different activities, and really go into it with kind of this investigative type of persona of how much time do I need to transition? What kinds of things do I like to do that will help that transition easier? And then you can answer that question. Does that make sense?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, totally. And I think keeping a schedule, not a schedule, but like a schedule diary, right, to really figure out. We’ve talked about the importance of time tracking. These situations, we’re not asking you to track every minute of every day forever, but pick some sort of increment, like, “This week, I’m making a major transition or I’m gearing up to go back to school, I’m going to time these major activities in my life so I can start to figure out how to put this puzzle together.”

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Absolutely. And make it easier for you.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, especially because it’s not just going back to school online, but for those who are having some sort of in-person cohort relationship, that can be incredibly difficult too, right, because now you’re mixing an online environment and you have to figure out how to leave your house on time. Build in travel time just to get to your living room is one thing but now you have to start thinking about something you haven’t had to think about in potentially a long time. And that is, good lord, traffic. Who knows? Everything, all of those things that we haven’t had to deal with.

Nikki Kinzer:
Parking.

Pete Wright:
Yep. Parking. Absolutely. So, complications.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. So, one of the things I do want to give you is just some examples that I tell my students that can help the transition too, and this is again where that kind of time tracking is. Maybe this week, you say, “Okay, for 15 minutes, I’m going to take a walk,” or “I’m going to do some kind of exercise,” or just play with your pet for 15 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever you think you need to do to kind of wind yourself down. A lot of people lost their commute, right. And a lot of people lost their commute to school. So, this isn’t just work, but it’s also to school where you could have had some downtime. So, now we have to create that. So, maybe it is playing a couple of games on your phone, shutting down the computer, and just letting yourself play something without feeling any guilt just for that kind of transition. So, those are some things.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. I would totally add that your perception of 15 minutes is going to be wildly different from somebody else’s else’s. Right. That’s all time is, is perception of the passing of events. And it may feel really, really fast. It may feel interminable, but don’t judge that. Right? all we’re trying to do is to habituate you, this is what this feels like, this is what 15 minutes feels like playing with the dog kind of thing.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Okay. So, the next thing that I want to talk about is scheduling. So, it is really hard to keep straight what class you’re supposed to be in, on what day and time. And this is where I’m going to kind of throw in my 2 cents if you’re a parent juggling your kids’ schedules, it gets even more complicated, right, because now you have a child in elementary school, middle school, high school. It can be really confusing of where everyone’s supposed to be, what everybody does is a little bit differently.

Nikki Kinzer:
So, one of the things that I would suggest in just keeping the schedule straight, and I did do this for my college students too, is to get a big wall or desk calendar. And what you want to do is, and this is especially true if you have a lot of stuff, if you have like several schedules to manage, right, because you really want to be able to visualize what’s happening with each person and get a large one so that everybody can see it.

Nikki Kinzer:
So, if you’re a family of four and you’ve got two kids that are in school, you could color-code each kid. So, they each have a color and it shows like where they need to be, when, on what day. Now, if you’re a college student and you’re by yourself, you could color-code your classes if you’d like. Whatever resonates with you, however your brain will look at this calendar and see right off the bat that it’s Monday and this is where I need to be. I know with my kids’ schedules, they’re in high school, and they have an A day, and they have a B day, and then they have Wednesday off, and then they have an A day, and then they have a B day. It gets really confusing.

Nikki Kinzer:
So, we’re going to have a big calendar that just says A, B, off A, B, right, and just be able to see that. So, you just want to have something in front of you. I would not use the calendar as your to-do list. Right? We’ve talked about this before. I think if you do this, you’re running the risk of it being way too cluttered, especially if you have more than one person, and then it will really stop meaning anything to you. So, this calendar is just for you to see your weekly schedule, and you can look at it as often as you need to. But I suggest looking at it every day because it’s really easy to forget if it’s Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Saturday. You may think it’s Saturday, it’s time to go to school, and it’s not.

Pete Wright:
Right. Right.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right.

Pete Wright:
Tech tip that just, it just occurs to me that this feature, it’s been around for a long time, but a lot of folks, I think haven’t discovered it. In Google Calendar, it used to be if you wanted to create a calendar with a different color, you’d have to create a separate calendar, right? So, that you’d have my personal calendar, my work calendar, my kid’s calendar, and they’re all shared, whatever. Well, if you don’t want all those calendars, Google has for some time given you the option to color-code by event on your own calendar. So, you can say, “I’m going to right click on this event and make this meeting purple, even though the main color is blue so that I can look at my calendar and see there are meetings there.”

Pete Wright:
Well, you can also do that obviously by class. So, if you want to create a repeating event that is your bio class, you could make all your bio classes green, and they’ll just pop up on your calendar. They’ll show and stand out from the rest of your calendar. I am with Nikki. I’m the whiteboard fan for just big planning events, but from day to day scheduling, if you happen to want to move online, consider color-coding big blocks of events in order to help you keep it straight, visually.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Choosing the right space. So, what I let my college students know is that there is this statistic in the world that says that if you study in different places, your retention rate is actually higher because you will remember where you learned something depending on where you were when you learned it. So, I always think that that’s good because I think it’s good that we retain information, it’s good that we have variety because the common ADHDer doesn’t want to be bored. So, I actually suggest that you identify a few different places in your home that you like to work. What I would avoid though is studying in a place that would make you fall asleep. So I would suggest, not-

Pete Wright:
Under a shady tree.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Or on a hammock, in your bed, on a really comfy couch.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Gently rocking. Maybe on a boat in the middle of a quiet lake to the sound of loons.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. That’s not going to work. So, we got to be smart that we want to make sure that we’re setting yourself up for success. If you don’t like quiet, then definitely have some white noise. But if you do better with quiet, then have a quiet space, whatever works for you, but definitely identify a few different areas that you can move around. Right now it’s still pretty nice in lots of areas of the United States and in the world. So if you can go outside, great, go outside. But I just think that’s something to think about is where do you work that is a good balance of being focused, but being engaged in enough in the material where you’re able to walk around, or write, or do whatever it is that you need to do.

Nikki Kinzer:
But one of the things I’ve got to tell people, and they know it, and they understand it, but they still don’t do it, and that is eliminating your distractions that you are very clear are distracting you. And that’s social media, that’s the phones, the iPads, the people. So, we do have to be really I think mindful that if your phone is distracting you, if email or social media, Snapchat, whatever the kids are doing these days, Pete.

Pete Wright:
It’s all TikTok, Nikki.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, that’s true. It is.

Pete Wright:
It’s TikTok all the way down.

Nikki Kinzer:
It’s all TikTok. Yeah. If you need to study, you got to get those things out of your sight and be able to focus without having them distract you.

Pete Wright:
Well, this would be a good time, I think, to interject a little bit about just specifically school, the pandemic, and the media because I think this is so important. If you want to find it, you’re all living in the same world I am, you could get weighed in to just some truly awful sources of information and non-information about what it’s like to go to school right now. I have a couple of sources that I follow, I guess I fear-follow them. Right? They’re professors, they’re educators, they’re statisticians, they’re epidemiologists, and I read that stuff, and I realized as I was preparing notes for this, that is fundamentally counter to my objective in life is following that stuff. It’s doom scrolling, right?

Nikki Kinzer:
Right.

Pete Wright:
So, you got to ask yourself, “Does what I’m doing right now, scrolling through my phone at midnight before I go to bed, does this help me move my degree forward? Does this help me learn in the subject area in which I am studying, or does this help me plan for my immediate to midterm future?”

Pete Wright:
And I’m talking about super practical stuff, right? It might not be academic, but knowing how your school is handling housing and quarantines, that might be very useful for planning your living and transportation arrangements and all that. Right? The ideological part is likely not useful. So, the vast majority of day to day reporting and sharing about the world we’re living in is a distraction. If there was ever a time to buckle down, take care of yourself, and ignore these unhealthy incoming signals, it’s right now. So, focus on sources that tell you what, not why. What, not why. Find the buses will be leaving campus every two hours this week instead of every four hours so that you can plan your day. Right? But that’s just a clear what. Don’t look for sources that are now saying the buses will be leaving every two hours because the Liberal Conservative Green Pirate Bus Union is shaking down the criminal administration for an extra buck an hour. Right?

Nikki Kinzer:
Right.

Pete Wright:
That is incorporating ideology that is damaging to you. You don’t need those kinds of things. So, when you’re focused on your education, getting that degree, you need precious little why in your brain that leaves you more what you need in your life to get the job done. So, I also know that everything I just said is really hard to ignore most of the time so I would just throw in find a decompression activity. Don’t go to sleep with any of this stuff on your brain. Don’t even watch John Oliver. It’s a comedy show, Last Week Tonight, but it’s not funny. It’s just more… Pick something, a show, or a podcast, or a book that’s light as a feather to blast the bad stuff out of your brain before bed.

Nikki Kinzer:
Totally agree. And I just have to say on a side note, the last two weeks I have taken a break from watching the news in the morning because of the… We had the Democratic nominations-

Pete Wright:
Yeah, the convention.

Nikki Kinzer:
… and then we had the Republican nominations and I didn’t want to watch any of them so I just didn’t watch the news. And I haven’t for the last two weeks in the morning because that’s usually what I do. It’s kind of my routine. And I’ve been listening to music instead, and I have to tell you, it feels different when you are listening to music and you’re enjoying what you’re listening to. It’s just like it actually puts fun in the morning, whereas when you watch the news, there is no fun. It is. It’s a very different mentality. So, I agree. I think you got to take care of yourself, and yeah. Don’t get into that.

Pete Wright:
You know what? If you play an instrument, don’t forget that you play an instrument because I’ll tell you, for me, sitting around and noodling around on the guitar or the piano is an amazing way to clear your head and activate some neurons that might not be firing regularly.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right. That’s right. All right. So, we have one last thing that I want to talk about, but it’s a big thing.

Pete Wright:
It seems like a big thing.

Nikki Kinzer:
It’s a big thing. And it’s, probably, I would say outside of the transitioning piece because that’s a real struggle, it’s probably the second kind of biggest challenge that I hear from college students that I’ve been working with is staying focused. They’re really afraid of this. Not so much that they’re not doing it, they fear it coming up into this semester. So, I want to give you some ideas about staying focused. I have seen every single way that a professor can do online learning, and it doesn’t matter what university you go to, each professor in that university will do it a different way. There is no like, you go to University of Oregon or Oregon State University, and this is the way that they do it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Nope. Uh-uh (negative). Each individual professor is different. So, the first thing I suggest is that you get very, very clear about what your professor expects in each of your classes and really understand what’s going on here. Are they okay with you not being online live? Right? So, there are some professors that will say, “You don’t need to show up online when it’s a live lecture, you can watch the recording.” But then there’s other people that will say, “We’re not recording it. You have to come on. You have to be here live.” Is the lecture online but the lab is in-person? I’ve seen that a lot. Is the homework due online, but the quizzes are done during the live Zoom call? I mean, there are so many different things that can happen here. So, definitely, figure out each class and what they expect from you.

Nikki Kinzer:
I also suggest watching any live Zoom calls and treating them like a regular class on campus. So, if they’re scheduled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:00 AM, even if there’s a recording, I still suggest that you go at 9:00 AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and you put that into your schedule and just treat it like you were going on campus. It will keep your schedule consistent which is a good thing. It will add that structure that you need and you won’t miss any important updates because that’s the other piece. If you’re not really paying attention or you’re not listening to the whole recording because I know a lot of students think, “Well, I already know this. I can fast forward or I can skip this lecture,” there are a lot of important updates that are happening during those live calls and you need to know what they are and being paying attention for that.

Nikki Kinzer:
Plus, it is good for you to show up in case you need something later from that professor. So, now we’re talking about accommodations. Right? You’re working on something and it’s not going as fast as you thought it would, if you’ve been showing up every day and you’ve had that relationship with that professor sees you, they’re probably going to be more likely to extend or help you in some way that they wouldn’t be so excited to help you if this is the first time they’ve met you.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. That is an underestimated or an undervalued, I think, currency when it comes to any education relationship, but particularly online relationship. And I’ve been teaching online since the beginning of the 2000s. And so I think it is one of those things that students often forget that there is a human being on the other side of that online program. Even if they’re watching that human being on video, it’s still a layer of abstraction that clouds the personal relationship there. And so for you, the student, to go the extra mile and build goodwill and take that step, whatever step that is for you to maintain goodwill, to maintain a relationship, that will take you so far in just being successful in school with your individual classes. Don’t forget your faculty members will write you recommendations when you graduate if you need to get that job. So, goodwill can take you even further.

Nikki Kinzer:
Even further. That’s right. Now, in most situations, I do see that most classes are being recorded, whether there’s a live lecture or not. There’s only been a handful where I’ve had people tell me that they’re not. So, for the most part, you can probably rely on this and I say take advantage of it because if you do lose focus during the live Zoom call and you know you missed something or whatever, then go back and you can watch those recordings, and it can also help with the note taking. Right? So, if you know that the class is being recorded, you can kind of evaluate how well are you taking notes in class. What can you do to make that better? Knowing that you can go back can be a very positive thing because you don’t have that anxiety of feeling like you have to write everything down. But the downside of recordings is that they can be this great trap of avoidance.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, well, I can just do this later. I don’t need to pay attention to this, but we know, and I wish I had some study to back me up here, but I can just tell you as an ADHD coach for college students, we know that we don’t go back and listen to the recordings. It just doesn’t happen unless you absolutely have to for some reason.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right? I mean, so it’s something that you just don’t get into that trap of thinking, “I can do it later.”

Pete Wright:
I have a trick.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Can I tell you a trick?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
It’s kind of new to me. So, anybody can set up a YouTube channel. Right? Anybody can do that. You can all do it. And if you verify your account, which just means like, “Do you have a verified email address?” And there’s instructions to put that together. You can actually upload your own videos that are multi-hours in length. Right? They’re just very, very long. Right? And so say you have a two-hour lecture and you can take that lecture if the instructor gives you access to download it, upload it to your YouTube account, market it as private, and then using the YouTube app on your phone, you can listen to it at up to double speed.

Pete Wright:
So, you can reengage with the material much more quickly than when it was initially delivered to you, and you can keep an archive of your very own video lectures on your own personal YouTube channel. It’s pretty, super nerdy. But once you get the infrastructure set up, once you figure out kind of what is your routine to do this, you might create a nice library of online lectures that could really support your long-term studying. I might do like a mini-workshop on screen recording.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, that would be great.

Pete Wright:
You could record your own screen of a lecture, save the video, upload it to your own YouTube channel, and then you have an online access of your course lectures.

Nikki Kinzer:
I think you just zeroed in on our September workshop for the Supreme members. Really, honestly, write that down, Pete.

Pete Wright:
A little how-to.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s important.

Pete Wright:
Right. Okay. All right.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Write that down. Well, I think that’s great and I love the double speed. Right? Who doesn’t love that?

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right?

Nikki Kinzer:
So smart.

Pete Wright:
Especially if you’ve already engaged with the live event. Right? It’s so valuable to keep this archive of stuff, and YouTube is free. Right? You verify your channel and you’re good to go.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. A couple of last things that I want to bring up about staying focused, especially during lecture because that can be the hardest thing. Bring a fidget toy with you. So, when you’re listening to the lecture, you can do something. Right? Have your little prop.

Pete Wright:
And you don’t have a faculty member glaring at you because they can see you with your fidget.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, and it can even be loud.

Pete Wright:
Just go to Fidget Town. Yeah. Go ahead.

Nikki Kinzer:
Because you can put it on mute so it can be like-

Pete Wright:
Bring a vuvuzela, for all we care.

Nikki Kinzer:
Heck, yeah. Whatever you want. But, definitely, if you’re fidgety and you want that kind of extra movement, bring it to the lecture. Stand up during the lecture. Get a stand up sit down desk. Or just, like what I did for a long time before I got one is I just sort of made one up with boxes. Right? But do that because it does help you stay more alert when you’re standing up. We just know that. Ask questions. Keep yourself active and engaged into the conversation as much as you can. So, ask questions, take notes. Again, we want to eliminate distractions. Put those blockers on your computer. You know about those blockers, Pete, those things that will keep you away from certain websites while you’re on your computer.

Pete Wright:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. Self blocking.

Nikki Kinzer:
You have to put some of those in the notes. Yeah. Because that can be really distracting if you’re on your computer and you get these notifications or whatever. But this is the biggest thing is you have ADHD, and you will get distracted, and lectures are not usually fun and exciting. They will get boring, and you will lose focus, and that’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up. Just guide yourself back when you notice it, and put your attention back, and do the best that you can. And if you don’t get everything the first time around, it’s all right because you probably have a textbook. You’re probably going to have a recording. You’re probably going to have classmates that are going to help you study. I mean, there’s so many other things involved that don’t beat yourself up over it.

Pete Wright:
Like everything else, don’t forget, you have these skills. If you’ve been listening to this podcast from early on, you’ve heard us talk about this before, apply the same mentality to going back to school. You’re okay. You’re not alone. Everybody’s dealing with it. It’s going to be hard for a little while. You’re going to get better at it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And that’s something I want to say to all the parents out there. And I wish, I really do wish because you know I love helping people, and I love talking to people, and I love inspiring people, and I wish I had the knowledge that I know other people have that I want them to share, and hopefully we can get some of those people on the show to help share with the younger ones. But those people out there that have those younger kids and they’re trying to balance it all, man, we are there with you in spirit, hoping for the best, and like you said, it will get better. You’ll get into some kind of groove, and just stay positive because we’ll get through it, one way or the other. It’s all new to everybody.

Pete Wright:
Good stuff. Thank you so much.

Nikki Kinzer:
Just some iteration there, Pete. Just my heart goes out to you, you know?

Pete Wright:
Joy. Joy. Yeah. God, it’s so hard. We get it. It’s so hard but you’re doing great. You’re doing great, fam.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
Thank you everybody for downloading, listening to this show. We deeply appreciate your time and your attention. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll catch you next week right here on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.

Through Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright strive to help listeners with support, life management strategies, and time and technology tips, dedicated to anyone looking to take control of their lives in the face ADHD.
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