I have made a number of posts already with survival tips and tricks, including my post on How I Killed Writer's Block, and my post on The Art of Pulling an All-Nighter. I only briefly hinted at part of my goal in 'A brief introduction,' but there's a lot more going on than just that.
Over the years, I have read countless books on being productive, responsible individuals. I have also read many books on how to get organized. This doesn't even include the books I've read about ADD. This accumulation of learning has taken place over roughly ten years, and I'm guessing that it shows in my postings along with my personal experience. I've read so much over the years that a LOT of information has become intuitive - and as much as I try to reference what I've read and where I've heard things, there's so much information that I've known for so long that I don't remember where I heard it. I digress.
Over this same span, I have seen virtually NOTHING about survival in a crisis. What good is advice on planning ahead and being organized when you've got a 5 page paper due in 3 hours, and another assignment due 4 hours after that? It's absolutely useless and totally impractical once you're in that situation. Worse still, once you're in that position - it's nearly impossible to pull yourself out of it because you're always fearing the nearest looming deadline. The closest I've come is in my counseling centers (at college) who can help me a day in advance. Even so - they're done at 5 or 6 pm on weekdays, and take weekends off. Who will be there to guide you at 2 am Monday morning?
This is why I started the blog; it is meant to bridge the gap from the crisis zone into the area where you have a chance to use the advice from counselors and 'get me organized' books. With 1/3 of the nation's high schoolers either flunking out or dropping out, and even grimmer statistics for ADD/HD students, something needs to be done to help them pull through.
The ADD stats I'm referring to are a study that followed diagnosed children into adulthood (my assumption is that the data is from the 1980's, but I'm not sure) - 1 in 5 ATTEMPTED college, and of them, 1 in 4 graduated. That's 1 in 20 graduating college! Granted, I'll have to look at general college graduation rates (out of the whole population) to see how statistically significant that is [i.e. how different that is from the whole] - but that's still pretty alarming to me. It always saddens me to hear people say, "I just wasn't cut out for college."
I will be using information from a variety of sources and condense/consolidate it into usable, practical forms...whether it's information presented as 'how-tos' or explains why things happen, I would like every post to add to your survivability. I had previously considered writing a book on all of this, but a blog is a far more efficient way to reach the people it is meant to help AND still allows me to earn some income from my ideas (and interpretations of other people's ideas). In addition, I don't have to work against my ADD to organize my posts into a single burst. I simply post on whatever I'm inspired by at that moment!
That being said, I hope you take the time to share links to these posts with others. They can all be viewed as their own separate web pages, so if there's something you really like, PLEASE link to it (especially those of you on Facebook - profile shares are awesome)! I am relying HEAVILY on viral/word-of-mouth marketing to let people know about my blog, and I need your help. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them either here, or facebook me! I don't think I'll be accepting any friend requests, but I do welcome messages. And pokes. ;)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment