great answer. im currently doing what you were doing all those years ago, procrastinating more school, so you and the other person’s response about getting a degree sooner rather than later are resonating with me. if only i knew what to get a degree in 😭 and great advice about health, especially dental hygiene
As others have stated here, CS might be a good fit for you. I don’t have ADHD, but I’m neurodivergent, above average intelligence, and easily bored. I also know that, for me, work is absolutely shit. CS has allowed me to have an endless array of related skills to veer off into side quests, projects, whatever you want to call them. It keeps me from stagnating and the pay can be enough motivation to show up.
As someone with ADHD choosing CS as a major was the worst mistake of my life.
i considered CS but went with IT for a less math-heavy focus, i am absolutely shit and way below average at math
Heh, I relate to this a lot. Went for CS a decade ago and bombed out because I couldn’t grok calculous. Now I’m working as a systems administrator and making 6 figures a year at an MSP. One thing I will absolutely recommend is if you go into IT, is to make sure you know how to use native platform scripting (bash/powershell) and work on keeping up with it as well. It will open all sorts of doors for you.
Knowing powershell as well as I do 1) is a decent part of how I got the job (pitched myself as being able to automate parts of their build processes) and 2) quickly made me indispensable for my team and within a year of starting I was already promoted to a senior administrator.
It’s tricky. Depending on what direction you take, CS can be very math heavy or not. If you get into algorithmic stuff, deep learning, data analysis, etc., that has a lot of math. But if you focus on, for example, front end development, there’s not that much.
I won’t lie and say CS has no math. At my university, you were able to avoid higher level calculus by doing a bachelor’s of arts instead of a bachelor’s of science. Calculus 2 is usually the highest level you have to take, which focuses primarily on integration. I was kinda in your boat of being hesitant to do CS because of the math, but I ended up minoring in it. The CS-focused math is mostly logic stuff and discrete math, which I feel is way easier than calculus. And honestly, calculus isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation would have you think (until Vector Calculus, that almost broke me).
Look into it, but I’ll say that while the math is there, it’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking. And if you know you’re not going into heavy algorithmic stuff, see if there’s a path that avoids most of it. And once you’re out of school, you’ll never touch calculus again (unless you do a lot of physics, maybe? Game dev, perhaps?)
My advice for picking a degree: pick something that you want to do, but also something marketable. The degree is useless if you can’t get a job in it.
If you’re worried about college being difficult, it can be, but 95% of your success is going to be based on motivation. I was a TA in college, and the best students were the ones that asked questions, came to office hours, and participated. I saw many a “smart kid” bomb a test due to overconfidence.
If you’re not sure what to do, you can start with general education credits or even do the first part of your degree at a community college to save money. A lot of times a 2 year associates degree will serve as the first 2 years of a bachelor’s.
this has been an eternal struggle for me as someone with ADHD. i cycle through hobbies weekly to monthly, i never stick to one thing. one month something can mean everything to me, and the next, i never want to touch it again. this is what makes it hard to pick a career to do for life, i don’t actually know what i like. it’s like i like everything, but actually nothing. i decided i need to just buckle down and pick something i can stand to do for life, considering IT. i think if i work hard and try to stay motivated and disciplined, i can make it through like you said. i def plan on doing community college for the first 2 years.
Something in IT is great, I think, and will be applicable to such a variety of fields and allow you to pivot in your career. Once you’re progressing in your career, well, I’ve seen or heard of people making surprising shifts. So much learning for various jobs is really institutional anyways and will happen on the job. Just make sure you learn to well, learn. Always be playing with and learning new tools and processes and be adaptable. For instance, you could start out a developer and find out you like managing projects on your team and finding ways to make things more efficient and wind up a project manager who also understands what your team is talking about and working on.
Community college is a great place to start, allows you to get your toes wet without too high stakes. Speaking as a software engineer, don’t worry to much about the adhd stuff, there are a lot of us in the tech field (being able multi-task well and hyperfocus on something we are somewhat interested in are actually pretty valuable in his field). I’d probably advocate for making sure you adhere to a strict schedule for a bit when first starting out, makes it easier to not burnout on school long term (it’s hard I know, but once you establish those little habits school stays more managable).
For IT you could do Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, etc. There’s a whole lot of angles you could come at it from too. Would you want to maintain systems or develop them?
If databases interest you, you could be a DBA. If networking interests you, a network engineer. If you want to do development, you can focus on front-end development, back-end development, full-stack, embedded systems, and more. Maybe hardware interests you, so you’d like to be a computer engineer. Computers/IT has a lot of components to it, and even if you find yourself a person that likes to bounce between different things, there’s a lot here that you can bounce between. School will have you touch a little bit of everything, and you can find that part you want to specialize in.