Listening to my Body by Isabella

Isabella's entry into Varsity Tutor's August 2022 scholarship contest

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Listening to my Body by Isabella - August 2022 Scholarship Essay

Standing up during tests and doing pirouettes while taking notes is just a glimpse of my scattered brain that hyper-fixated on a whim and loses steam just as fast. Despite my frantic, scatterbrained, nature, many have yet to realize just how my personality affects me due to the ways I have masked my inability to focus by excelling academically. From kindergarten to seventh grade, my hyperactive state was allowed to run rampant as I only had 5 other students in my classes, so my instructors provided individual attention for each of my peers, granting me the opportunity to excel with the means at my disposal. I explored techniques that could help me focus, such as well-developed learning habits that suited my various states of attention. When I finished 7th grade, my elementary school shut down, and I was required to attend a new institution to complete middle school. Now with thirty-five students in a class, I became aware of how my practices were not conventional but continued to find ways to tend to my growing mind. As the result of my tireless efforts, I graduated valedictorian and earned a full-academic scholarship to attend a private high school, with more tools under my belt to find ways to accommodate myself.
High school seemed to mimic my elementary school education, in the sense that small class sizes and great relationships with teachers gave me the strength and confidence needed to perform to my self-imposed high standard. The material I was learning in class came easy to me, and I was comfortable with the ways in which I chose to study. With only slight bumps in the road, I made my way through both of freshman and sophomore years and most of junior year, before the pandemic ushered in digital learning and my brain was thrown for a loop. The difficulties of the first few weeks of virtual learning were summed up by a “learning curve” I assumed my classmates were also enduring, but as the weeks became months, I realized my focus had become extinct. The many distractions at home such as my brother’s teachers’ voices and my dog's routine barks caused me to zone out for moments at a time. With the return to in-person learning, I felt a regained sense of control, but not without the presence of a diminished attention span. My high school career ended with a senior year that was divided into hybrid learning and the hope that the summer before college would give me a chance to realign my mental state.
At the end of that summer, I felt relaxed and prepared to take on college with a fresh mind that would be well-adjusted to a new lifestyle. Despite my best attempts to juggle academics and my newfound independence, the pressure of the multiple new variables I began to encounter made me feel hopeless. I sought out resources at the university learning center to explain my past academic experiences and undergo testing for what my family and teachers always assumed was Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The quest to find a center to formally diagnose me went on, as my school began to provide me with temporary accommodations such as extra time on assessments and low-distraction testing rooms. Due to the high demand for neurologists, I have been unable to receive testing until this present time, which brings me to devise the goals I have set out for this academic year.
I am setting out to find the best tactics for myself that will align with the diagnosis and suggestions that my neurologist will soon present. I have spent countless hours researching organizational strategies for young adults with ADHD to manage not only my academics but my personal life as well. Likewise, I have switched to using less technology so as to not be distracted in the same manner the pandemic posed, and hope to continue this at college. I will learn to work with my ADHD instead of stifling my instincts so that I work most efficiently. Despite the larger nature of my institution, I will work harder to forge close relationships with my professors, just as I did in elementary and high schools so that I can reinforce my learning. I will not allow my diagnosis to hold me back from embracing who I am and learning how to be a dedicated, lifelong learner.

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