Intersectionality: Being a Neurodivergent College Student

Harvey and Pen talk about their experiences being neurodivergent college students, including the challenges, the hurt, and the occasional actual benefit.

Featuring: Being a model student means being beyond your capacity basically always; Community college deserves a better reputation, four years isn't actually realistic, and other things the university push won't tell you about; Trust us: college students are depressed and anxious; I can't focus on my homework and you freeze up in class, oh no; The fields we love can hurt us so much, but the passion we bring is an incredible thing; As much as this hurts, we really, really love to learn

Suicide Hotline & Resources for Trans People: 

https://translifeline.org/

USA Suicide Prevention: 

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

International Suicide Hotlines: 

https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Suicide Hotline & Resources for LGBTQ+ Young People: 

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/


Ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources:

https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatte

Resources to support AAPI (Asian-American & Pacific Islander) communities:

https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/

https://stopaapihate.org/

Resources for US Immigrants:

https://www.informedimmigrant.com/

Resources to Support Undocumented Immigrants in the US:

https://immigrationjustice.us/

Transcript

Pen: 0:12

Welcome to Beyond introspection, a podcast about mental health, neurodivergence, and how it impacts literally every aspect of our lives.

Harvey: 0:18

All of them.

Pen: 0:20

I'm Pen.

Harvey: 0:20

And I'm Harvey.

Pen: 0:21

And we are going to be talking about neurodivergence and being a student as part of our ongoing... series? on intersectionality.

Harvey: 0:33

Boy, oh boy, oh boy. I... ugh.

Pen: 0:37

Eh, for - for context, for people who listen to this in the future, and also, if you haven't been a student in a while, we are recording this at the end of November. So-

Harvey: 0:46

In 2021.

Pen: 0:47

Yeah, in 2021. So near the end of the the fall semester, and Harvey is still a student.

Harvey: 0:54

My finals are coming up in, like, two weeks.

Pen: 0:56

Yikes.

Harvey: 0:57

Not even. It's like a week.

Pen: 0:58

Yeah, I'm very... I'm very sorry. [Screaming] Yeah, I haven't been a student since May, 2020. Which is... weird.

Harvey: 1:10

What a weird time for you to graduate.

Pen: 1:12

Yeah, it was bad. People will ask me, like, "Yeah, are you still a student?" And I was like, "No, I graduated in 2020." And they were like, "Oh," and I'm like, yeah, it was a bad last semester to have

Harvey: 1:23

No kidding.

Pen: 1:24

Uh, anyway.

Harvey: 1:26

I do not envy that position.

Pen: 1:27

I don't envy you either. Wow, would you look at that? I told my psychiatrist about it.

Harvey: 1:32

About...?

Pen: 1:32

Like - no, about, like, way back, you know, in summer 2020, she was like, "Yeah, I really feel for everyone who's graduating going into it. And I also really feel for everyone, like all the freshmen going into it. I don't know which one... which one of y'all have - has it worse." And I was like, thanks. Me neither.

Harvey: 1:50

And it is not a competition.

Pen: 1:52

It - no, it's not. It was just... it was, like, yeah.

Harvey: 1:54

No, for sure, for sure.

Pen: 1:56

Anyway. Hi, Harvey.

Harvey: 1:59

Hi, Pen. Tell me...

Pen: 2:01

Mm-hmm.

Harvey: 2:01

...about your...

Pen: 2:02

Yeah...?

Harvey: 2:04

...Wahoo! Moment of the Week.

Pen: 2:05

They, like, sat back and prepared themselves to do that. I'm delighted. Well, mine's actually easy this time, and I thought about it beforehand.

Harvey: 2:14

Whoa! That's - hey, that's different!

Pen: 2:16

Yeah, it is! We're - we're switching things up on this episode of Beyond Introspection.

Harvey: 2:21

No, I already know what I'm going to say. We're not switching it up.

Pen: 2:25

Oh, oh, okay.

Harvey: 2:26

I can pretend to not know.

Pen: 2:28

No, I meant, like, we're switching up- we're just, like, making things a little bit different, not that you and I are...

Harvey: 2:32

Oh, okay. I understand now.

Pen: 2:34

Yeah, no, it's all good, it's all good. Uh, yesterday, I saw my family for family Thanksgiving.

Harvey: 2:38

Oh, yeah. I was there, too.

Pen: 2:39

Yeah, Harvey was there, too. Harvey drove because they're a good friend.

Harvey: 2:43

And I got very quiet and checked out for most of it, because, uh, I'm autistic.

Pen: 2:50

Yeah.

Harvey: 2:50

That's the whole reason.

Pen: 2:52

There was a quite a few of the people.

Harvey: 2:54

There were lots of the people and they were loud.

Pen: 2:56

There were like six less than we thought there were gonna be, though, so...

Harvey: 2:59

Yeah, if there had been the other six, I think I might have died.

Pen: 3:02

I, perhaps, would have passed away as well. Uh, yeah, no, it was great to see my family. You know, I have had a complicated relationship with family for - checks watch - my entire life, nut things have been really, really good with, um, with the family, who I kind of grew up with is the family that I saw. So my mom and stepdad and my younger siblings, and my step siblings. It was nice to see them.

Harvey: 3:29

Yeah!

Pen: 3:29

I like seeing them, and I love bringing friends with me. I was able to bring three whole people, and there was food... and...

Harvey: 3:39

Your mom was obsessed with my cranberry sauce.

Pen: 3:41

My mom really liked your cranberry sauce. And my little siblings showed us their knockoff Pokemon game.

Harvey: 3:47

And their Minecraft, which looks very similar to Minecraft, but I don't think it actually is.

Pen: 3:52

It's not technically Minecraft, but it's, like, basically Minecraft.

Harvey: 3:55

It gets so close.

Pen: 3:57

And we did not-Kahoot! but basically Kahoot!

Harvey: 4:02

And then we did this incredibly mean virtual escape room.

Pen: 4:05

It's BreakoutEDU.

Harvey: 4:05

Breakout - it was so difficult!

Pen: 4:08

It was very difficult. Mom loves that stuff.

Harvey: 4:10

I am a whopping 21 years old, and I was stumped.

Pen: 4:14

Yeah, it doesn't have very many directions, is the part of it that really gets you. You have to figure out what they want you to figure out first.

Harvey: 4:20

I want to know, who are the children that are able to solve this?

Pen: 4:25

Well, I mean, Rory did at least, and Merrick, so...

Harvey: 4:29

And Rory, bless her heart, was very, very, very proud of how quickly she figured it out.

Pen: 4:35

Yeah, she's seven, so, you know, social graces are not - are not always...

Harvey: 4:43

And I mean this with all the love in the world, I have

said this to Pen before: 4:45

playing games with seven year olds be like, they will make you draw half the deck and then get upset when you can play a singular card.

Pen: 4:54

Seven.

Harvey: 4:55

Yeah, no, and that - it's funny. It's so funny.

Pen: 4:58

And, broad strokes, she's actually a very good sport for - for her age.

Harvey: 5:02

It sure seems that way.

Pen: 5:03

But, yeah, no, it was great. It was awesome. And Mom and I talked about all sorts of wild things. And...

Harvey: 5:10

Then I went on Tumblr.

Pen: 5:11

And my stepdad and I talked about teaching history, and how it's fundamentally broken in this country, which has to do with education, so that's that tie-in. Hey, Harvey.

Harvey: 5:23

Hi!

Pen: 5:24

How are you gonna talk about your partners?

Harvey: 5:26

Ugh!

Pen: 5:28

Or, any - or something else, or another aspect of your life?

Harvey: 5:30

Ugh!

Pen: 5:31

It's nice that your partners make you happy! There we go. I fixed it

Harvey: 5:35

Better. Um, I submitted all of my graduate school applications over this past week.

Pen: 5:41

Whoa!

Harvey: 5:42

All three of them.

Pen: 5:43

Good job. Congratulations.

Harvey: 5:45

Thank you. And I have exactly one of my letters of rec in.

Pen: 5:50

Well, you know, you...[babbling].

Harvey: 5:50

Eh, no, it's time. I'm sure they'll get turned in. But it is nice to have one thing off of my shoulders, because, like, grad school apps were really stressing me out.

Pen: 6:03

Yeah, I... yeah, I bet.

Harvey: 6:05

I know you briefly went through the process before you graduated, and then you decided you weren't feeling ready for it.

Pen: 6:10

What? Oh, no, I didn't actually go through the process of applying at all.

Harvey: 6:12

Or, I thought you started an application.

Pen: 6:14

Nope.

Harvey: 6:15

Oh, okay.

Pen: 6:15

I looked at some of the requirements for applications, but I didn't actually start any. No, I decided after my, um... midway through the - the

Harvey: 6:21

Ohh. fall semester that I was not going to do grad school right away. I was gonna take some time off, which was a good decision. And I'm glad!

Pen: 6:32

That was a good decision before COVID. It's a great decision now.

Harvey: 6:37

Yeah, you know, the main reason why I'm going to grad school right away is because my career path - there isn't a whole lot I can do with a BA in Psychology. But I can do things with, like, either an MA or an MS in counseling, so, makes sense for me. But hey, the fun fact of the world in education is that everybody's different.

Pen: 6:59

No one is the same.

Harvey: 7:02

Yeah. Good job.!

Pen: 7:05

Thanks!

Harvey: 7:05

Yeah!

Pen: 7:06

So education. Ah, or - or being a student, and being mentally ill and neurodivergent,

Harvey: 7:13

As compared to not being a student, right? Like, I think we were going to touch on some of that, or...?

Pen: 7:19

Potentially about not being a student, but also being a student and not having those additional stressors on you.

Harvey: 7:25

Got it. Okay, okay.

Pen: 7:26

And, you know, how the school system fails, and the particular... the particular, um, stressors that come with it, and how it can make things more difficult. And also, like, some of the potential benefits. Not of being mentally ill, but neurodivergence, you know. Depression just sucks. But...

Harvey: 7:47

Yeah, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It sure does.

Pen: 7:51

Just to... just to hit it at the top, we're definitely going to mention some things and talk about some things that we have talked about before. I mean, we did an episode on gifted kid syndrome, we've definitely talked about the brokenness of the education system before. This is, you know, obviously going to be slightly different. But if there's some things that you've already heard from us, yeah.

Harvey: 8:13

Yep.

Pen: 8:13

We know. It's... it's still relevant, and...

Harvey: 8:17

It's our podcast! No, no.

Pen: 8:20

It's my podcast, and I can cry if I want to.

Harvey: 8:23

I think I - as it stands, I'm the only one who's cried on the podcast, but...

Pen: 8:27

You cried on the podcast? Oh, was it the one we talked about death?

Harvey: 8:29

Yeah.

Pen: 8:30

Oh, okay, cool.

Harvey: 8:32

As you might imagine.

Pen: 8:34

Yeah. So, Harvey, do you want to start off at all?

Harvey: 8:38

Well, there was a point that I raised before we actually started talking today, and it was - we've been trying to do a little bit more research for these episodes, and today, it didn't quite happen, because we're mostly just going off of experience, but I was sort of, like, yeah, you know, so I don't really have anything to offer as far as empirical evidence, which I think, in itself, speaks to the kind of stress that students are under, and it's that I'm a senior... credit-

Pen: 9:05

[Laughter] That sucks, buddy.

Harvey: 9:06

....is that I'm a senior. Technically, credit-wise, a super senior, although this is my fourth year.

Pen: 9:12

No, yeah, I get it.

Harvey: 9:13

I'm graduating on the quote, unquote typical track which is, you know, a myth.

Pen: 9:16

Garbage! Absolute- anyway, I won't.

Harvey: 9:19

Most - most people... it's not realistic to ask them to graduate within four years. I'm really more of the exception than the rule.

Pen: 9:25

Partic- specifically, not four years, eight semesters. Because summer semesters are not considered typical either.

Harvey: 9:32

This is true. I don't think I considered that. Thank you. But, so...

Pen: 9:38

I was an atypical student.

Harvey: 9:41

I know this, and I love you.

Pen: 9:42

That's - that's why I have strong opinions. That's not why I- about this specifically.

Harvey: 9:48

Okay. But as far as - I was - I was saying, you know, like, I felt like that really speaks to kind of the stress that I'm under, and it's that, uh, with me being neurodivergent y-you know, here's a fun combination that I've been dealing with over the past month: I've been in my final... my final sort of weeks of my second to last semester, which is already, you know, like, pretty challenging.

Pen: 10:11

Yeah, yikes.

Harvey: 10:13

All of my classes are 400-level. Like, we are... we're out here. And I'm getting through it. Like, I'm still passing everything. I think I have As in everything, actually, which is...

Pen: 10:22

That's pretty Harvey of you.

Harvey: 10:24

Yeah, um... I'm very...

Pen: Harvey be like: 10:26

hold themself to a high standard.

Harvey: 10:28

I'm working on it.

Pen: 10:30

I know! I love you.

Harvey: 10:31

I love you, too. But yeah, um, you know, I'm still managing. But in conjunction with all that, my cat got fleas. My cat got fleas at the beginning of November, when I was supposed to be caring for one of my partners who had gotten surgery, and he had to go home back to his dad who did not help him, because he did not feel safe in my flea house. Which, that's understandable. It sucked. Trying to manage the amount of things that I do, between academics and the other things that I do at school, and this, like, extremely... hey, if you've ever dealt with fleas, or if you haven't, they're so sturdy. They are so hard to kill, they are so hard to kill.

Pen: 11:17

The life span's really short, though. But they lay eggs like, uh... like a... like a son of a...

Harvey: 11:23

Yeah, they lay eggs like crazy. And we've got pretty much all of them, I think. It's just trying to get them all off of Oscar, my cat. But all of this to say, managing those two things has left me with very little energy for, like, anything else. And unfortunately, one of the first things to go this time was my social relationships. It's just- it's been hard to... and there's also just the feeling that everyone expects things of me. Like this is genuinely not to toot my own horn, this is to sort of talk about some of the stress that comes with being in school. Among my department, I'm a very well-respected student. I do... I do legitimately have a reputation, and I am known in

Pen: 12:13

Woo! that sort of circle. Yeah, you do a lot of things.

Harvey: 12:20

I do a lot of things. And that means that I get tapped on the shoulder for a lot of things, and that means that they... that a lot of people ask me to do a lot of things, often beyond my capacity, and they don't seem to ask or care. Um, care is maybe not the right word, but they don't seem to ask.

Pen: 12:37

Consider. Like...

Harvey: 12:40

Oh!

Pen: 12:40

To consider that this may beyond... may be beyond your capacity?

Harvey: 12:44

Yeah. Um, and that's... that's a specific challenge that I've run into. It's just... especially, and, you know, I recognize that I'm in a privy - pretty privileged situation, wherein I'm able to go to college at all. Like, that - that is incredibly lucky. But college is also challenging.

Pen: 13:06

Yes.

Harvey: 13:07

And the - the standard to which you are held, is something pretty atrocious. Like I - you know, I think... I think that the pressure was different in high school, right? Because it's - it's sort of that pressure of, well, you know, you need to get XYZ grades to get into college. But that's, like, almost a little bit deferred. And then there's also Community College, which will take most people if I'm not mistaken.

Pen: 13:34

It's certainly a less competitive situation.

Harvey: 13:37

Right. And in college, at least, my experience has been that there is so much emphasis on preparing you for your career. And - and the way that it has always felt for me, is that I feel like if I make one mistake, I am ruining my chance at doing anything.

Pen: 13:55

Which is... just... at... the education system doesn't consider the context it lives in.

Harvey: 14:02

No.

Pen: 14:03

And I'm mad about it in a lot of ways.

Harvey: 14:08

As you should be, frankly.

Pen: 14:10

The inaccessibility of it is one of my biggest... one of my biggest things. But also. it doesn't... it's plainly inaccurate, and there are so many implicit biases. Like, for example, community college is often looked on as lesser, because it is a less competitive environment. Get... get bent. Screw you. I went to community college. I didn't want to. Not because I looked down on community college, it just... my dream had been to go to a four-year, and to live there, but I- that was not what happened.

Harvey: 14:42

Sure.

Pen: 14:42

I went to community college, I had some - some teachers who were not very good. And I had some phenomenal teachers. This experience is exactly like what happened at the four year I transferred to. So, if you're thinking about community college as lesser in terms of their instructors, you are wrong.

Harvey: 15:01

Get bent.

Pen: 15:02

Moving on. Like, it did really well, and it also... here's what I really liked about community college, or at least the one that I went to, though my understanding is, like, I think they're all kind of like this. It is about preparing you for the next step, and in a way that felt a lot better. And part of it is probably, like, the next step is so much more tangible. Like, the school I went to, their motto was "Start Here, Go Anywhere."

Harvey: 15:29

Which is a pretty good motto.

Pen: 15:31

It is! It's great. And they actually had deals across the entire state of Illinois, that they had to take their transfer credits. Which is... if y'all have never dealt with transfer credits.

Harvey: 15:40

That is a hard sell.

Pen: 15:42

Oh, my God, that is an absolutely phenomenal deal. It was - I toured many college campuses, and my first question was always "What's your policy on transfer credits?" And it was nice with my community college, because it was basically like, if you're saying you won't take this, I want you to know, you're wrong.

Harvey: 15:58

You have to. I am not asking.

Pen: 16:00

But, like, the focus was, hey, so here are some associates that you can get. It was something that was set up, like, you can totally just do a general studies one. If you want to do something with an emphasis, so it'll help you get into your major more, that's awesome. No one's gonna pressure you to do that though. Because in the end, it's not really going to matter. You're basically just getting your general requirements out of the way. And there was also a side of it that was specific to, like, there was a mechanics part of it. There was for becoming, um... oh, what is it? Salon work? I can't remember what it's called.

Harvey: 16:41

Cosmetologist?

Pen: 16:42

Cosmetology! Yeah. There was that stuff. There was actually a hair salon there that you could go and get your hair cut by the people who were learning and it was very, very cheap.

Harvey: 16:51

Oh, sick.

Pen: 16:52

Cuz, you know, they weren't good yet. But there's also, like, place to... there was a whole building just dedicated to learning how to be a windmill tech. Which is... there were windmills nearby.

Harvey: 17:03

I was gonna say, that is highly specific, and I love it.

Pen: 17:05

Yeah, it's like, so you know, it was a situation where it was about preparing you for the next step, but the next step was a lot more tangible, and there was - I felt less pressure with it. Because the point wasn't, hey, you have to do perfect, the point was, we're going to get you there.

Harvey: 17:22

We're going to learn you some stuff.

Pen: 17:24

And some of that stuff is more focused on tangible skills, which is really not actually the emphasis in especially more liberal arts based universities.

Harvey: 17:35

Which is most of them.

Pen: 17:36

Yeah, so that part sucks. But, you know, all of that to say, like, education and the standards you're held to look wildly different depending on where your... your starting point is. And also, the more, like, typical or expected the environment you're in is, like a four year university versus a community college, like, for example, they're called four-years, even though that's busted.

Harvey: 18:04

Which... because most people do not graduate in eight semesters.

Pen: 18:10

Like, I went in, like, reall well. I was in... I transferred in the spring semester of summer 2018. Uh, of spring... spring 2018.

Harvey: 18:23

That was... that was, like, the semester before I got there.

Pen: 18:26

Yeah, and... and technically, I stayed a semester later than I strictly needed to, though, it meant I double minored.

Harvey: 18:32

Which was very cool of you.

Pen: 18:33

Yeah. And I like started community college with some credits as well. I still took classes every single summer, and I graduated with more credits than a strictly needed to. Also, if I hadn't done that, it... like, I would have had a much harder time reaching my requirements for my major and my minors. I was literally in school the whole time, I did not take summers off.

Harvey: 18:57

Which is so much.

Pen: 18:58

So I could have graduated a semester early, but not in... like, I still took more credits than an expected eight-semester college length.

Harvey: 19:12

Yeah, and I'll be over by, like... eight, I think? Eight credits?

Pen: 19:17

So like, mm, the eight semester, four year thing, it's not... it's not true, but that's still the expectation and that is so much stress.

Harvey: 19:29

And, again, this is not to toot my own horn, in many ways, I think I am perceived by people at my university as sort of a model student, in that I get ridiculous grades, and I'm super involved, and I work pretty much as much as I can. I work 20 to 25 hours a week in a given week. And you know, I do this, and that, and the other thing, and in many ways, that is sort of the model of, like, this is the most ideal college undergraduate you can have, and the pressure is immense, and I am doing too much.

Pen: 20:07

Oh, yeah, yeah, you are, buddy.

Harvey: 20:09

And I know. And I think the fact that that is the standard, the fact that we are actively encouraging our students to push themselves beyond what is healthy...

Pen: 20:19

Oh, yeah.

Harvey: 20:20

...in the name of being accomplished in something that, like, my employers aren't gonna care about all the things that I did in university!

Pen: 20:27

They're honestly not gonna care that much.

Harvey: 20:28

Like, it's gonna matter when I get into grad school. But like, once I have...

Pen: 20:32

Even then, like, not nearly so much as people try to tell you.

Harvey: 20:35

No, and it's like, when I get into graduate school, once I have that graduate degree, all my employers are going to be looking for is whether or not I have a graduate degree.

Pen: 20:43

Yeah, it's...

Harvey: 20:46

And then, like, my clinical experience.

Pen: 20:47

So, we didn't look up empirical research for this one.

Harvey: 20:55

Because sometimes research is dumb.

Pen: 20:57

And sometimes - here's another thing - I don't have the Again, I don't have a study, like, right here. There citations for this off the dome, I also genuinely couldn't tell you how many studies there are that have come to this exact are I feel comfortable saying dozens that - that have come to conclusion, college students, and high school students, but focusing on college because that's what you're currently experiencing, and what I most recently experienced, that point. And that's just baseline. That is not bringing overwhelmingly have depression and anxiety, and it is only getting worse with more time.

Harvey: 21:24

Yeah. in if you were already depressed, if you have had chronic anxiety, and not even considering other forms of And that's the thing. Like, yeah, like people often mental illness and neurodivergence. develop anxiety and depression in college. I have been struggling with anxiety since I was 5, and depression since I was maybe 11 or 12.

Pen: 22:00

And you're a model student, and it's, I say this from the outside, hurting you.

Harvey: 22:06

It is. I mean, the most suicidal I have ever been was the - was late 2019, and that was when I was a sophomore in college. Model student everybody. I was ready to kill myself.

Pen: 22:21

Yeah, it's - it's not good. And, ugh, it's so... and that's not even getting into, though, let's get into...

Harvey: 22:32

Uh-huh.

Pen: 22:32

...neurodivergence specifically.

Harvey: 22:35

Oh my God, the fact that I'm autistic makes, um, makes participating in classrooms, uh, interesting, I will say.

Pen: 22:44

Yeah.

Harvey: 22:45

There's a little cat off to the side.

Pen: 22:47

Yeah, that bell is - is Benji, my roommate's cat. She might still be high. Did a lot of catnip around. She got new catnip last night, and oh, Harvey. She went feral.

Harvey: 22:58

As she should.

Pen: 22:59

Mm-hmm! Good for her. But... so ADHD and school...

Harvey: 23:05

Oh...

Pen: 23:07

...don't mix! Especially when you're unmedicated, but even when you are.

Harvey: 23:11

I have heard very, very much about this over the years.

Pen: 23:13

Yeah, it's busted. It's - it's broken.

Harvey: 23:15

Say more about that, Pen, if you'd like.

Pen: 23:17

Yeah, sure. It's... and this is all you know, experiential, but I'm right, so...

Harvey: 23:24

Believe it or not, experiential evidence is important.

Pen: 23:27

It's... well, baseline, if you're unmedicated, then any form of, like, focus and self-regulation, and self-motivation ranges from very difficult to, genuinely, not a joke, impossible.

Harvey: 23:44

Do you mind if I briefly recap...

Pen: 23:46

Do it! Do it! Do it!

Harvey: 23:47

Yes, I'm going to tell you some stories about cells, Pen.

Pen: 23:49

Woo!

Harvey: 23:50

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter.

Pen: 23:53

Woo!

Harvey: 23:55

It's the happy, uh, it's the happy neurotransmitter.

Pen: 23:58

Play the hits!

Harvey: 23:58

Dopamine is... dopamine is - is responsible for the reward center. So the... so the- the internal processes that motivate you to do certain things, like, um... in the case of like, eating, eating is actually a really good example of like, reward and consequence. You experience a physiological sensation, which is hunger, and then you... and then you eat in order to sort of address that hunger. The act of eating triggers the release of dopamine in your brain, and it goes,"Oh!"

Pen: 24:37

"Good job!"

Harvey: 24:38

"Hey, I get I get this nice hormone whenever I... whenever I eat something. I should do that next time I'm hungry." And so there... and that is also the basis of motivation. In the case of doing- and this is something called executive function - executive function is - is, more or less, everything done by your frontal lobe. So, by the part of your brain that thinks.

Pen: 25:00

The part of our brain that separates us from the apes.

Harvey: 25:03

Correct. Exactly. And it's... in that case, it's a little bit more implicitly rewarding than, like, eating food is. Like, that when a satisfying a very biological urge. In this case, motivation to do executive functioning tasks comes more from the outside. It comes from more what we are conditioned to... to view as rewarding. And, like with more simple... with more simple motivators, so, too, is executive functioning controlled by dopamine. Because ADHD is associated with a really significant absence of dopamine, all of that becomes harder when you have ADHD.

Pen: 25:52

If your brain is not very good at motivating itself to eat, how difficult writing an essay is!

Harvey: 26:00

And that's actually... appetite issues are very common in people with ADHD.

Pen: 26:05

Oh, yeah, incredibly. And it's a very unfortunate thing that stimulants also can act as appetite suppressants. It's like, oh... oh, no.

Harvey: 26:15

It just feels like a cruel joke at that point.

Pen: 26:18

At that point it's like, okay, so I have enough dopamine production that, when I feel hungry, my body's like "You should eat." My body is now being blocked from feeling hungry.

Harvey: 26:29

It's like, gee, thanks.

Pen: 26:31

Cool. What's dopamine like to have?

Harvey: 26:32

Net - net zero information exchanged.

Pen: 26:35

Uh-huh. But, so, so that kind of, like, self motivation is incredibly difficult, and also incredibly necessary for being a student.

Harvey: 26:46

Especially in the United States, where - where most of our society hinges on this, like, highly individualistic sort of view of the self, wherein, like, regardless of how hard you try to pull away from it, there's always that pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality that means so that when - when students start to struggle, it is their fault.

Pen: 27:10

Yeah.

Harvey: 27:10

In the way that it's conceived. Not - not in reality.

Pen: 27:14

Yeah. And we aren't given the tools to help ourselves.

Harvey: 27:17

They tell us to study, and then they don't really teach us how to study.

Pen: 27:23

there's not... your professors aren't standing there like "And if you have ADHD, here's the way to study," like, no, it's not happening. It's hard to pay attention in class, it's hard to do the readings at home, it's hard to start yourself on the essay, it's hard to continue on the essay. I get no reward for my brain for going back through and editing, the things that I write, especially immediately afterwards.

Harvey: 27:50

And so you just submit.

Pen: 27:51

Yeah. I just hit submit, and because I'm lucky, because the way that I am set up, is it- you know, I'm... I'm a fairly good writer, I would say. Usually did well on my essays. At a baseline, I did not improve. I had a lucky base... I rolled good stats at birth,

Harvey: 28:18

Ha! Nerd. Cuz COVID happened.

Pen: 28:19

Thank you. And just didn't get better, so that's a thing. And then it was all online and recorded lectures, and even And the burnout was pretty incredible. Especially for like, you know, I didn't take summers off, even. So I was like... I was beyond burnt out by the time my senior year happened. I was like, gone and done. And I actually... I have here a notebook with some, uh, notes that I took during rhetorical theory, which I took in my last semester, and it peters out partway through unit two, which would have been around the time of spring break, because that's when we went all virtual, and though the way this class worked was basically just the when I stopped being able to pay attention to it. instructor standing at the front of the room and lecturing, so you'd think it'd be the same. Nope.

Harvey: 29:11

No.

Pen: 29:11

Zero motivation to do it. And I still got an A in the class. Wow, would you look at that, it's broken!

Harvey: 29:17

Woo! Yeah!

Pen: 29:21

And I think, uh... so I editorialized a lot, especially once unit one ended, it goes from, like, the occasional, like, mention in my notes to suddenly the entire page is filled up, and, like, the middle section is the actual lecture material, and then all of the sides of it just curling around in different colors of ink or the thoughts that I had, and me getting increasingly angry.

Harvey: 29:46

Pen had been doing that since I met them.

Pen: 29:48

It's... eh...

Harvey: 29:50

No, it's charming.

Pen: 29:51

No, no, thank you. It's... this is the - the other side, or... these are... two of the other sides of having ADHD and being a student. One of them is, just, we feel things a lot, ADHD folks. And we feel things very intensely, and that is part of why I got very angry with things, is because I was kind of burned out, and also because, like, I have passions in, you know, things being accessible. I have passions related to things, like, when theory is based on stuff from Greeks from thousands of years ago, and we never improve, and we also don't consider the fact that minorities haven't been considered, and maybe our basis of rhetoric and philosophy would be fundamentally different if we even so much as took in the context of why the voices that we continually go back to - Aristotle is interesting. Sure, cool. We have... I took so many classes on communication theory and talking about it and the fundamentals of it. Do you want to know how many women were cited?

Harvey: 30:58

My guess is gonna be maybe one.

Pen: 31:00

I think there was one in my interpersonal communication theory. But as far as rhetorical theory, it just was not the basis of rhetorical theory. Absolutely not. An ancient Greek woman being cited? That's something that just didn't happen! Wow! Do you think that might impact the bases of our entire system of this? So yeah, I got mad.

Harvey: 31:23

As you can see.

Pen: 31:24

Yeah. And that's... it's partially ADHD that does that, because I feel things intensely. And then there's the other side of hyperfocus. And when I love something, I really, really love something. And I, so quickly, just fell in love with communication theory, and that was one of the things that helped get me through, and also one of the things that I was, like, wow, I absolutely love my field, and I still feel - feel no motivation to be doing this. Ooh, I'm doing real bad, huh? So that's... you know, that's the dual nature of it. There - there are some ways that neurodivergence can actually be helpful as a student.

Harvey: 32:04

For me, one of my special interests happens to be psychology. So every psychology class I take is like, "Ough! I'm gonna devote so much energy to this!"

Pen: 32:14

And that's... I mean, that's a... this is how you can tell that the way that college is set up just is kind of busted and does not actually... the other part of it is just being ADHD, the way it's set up doesn't work for me. And part of it is just the way it's set up is bad. I would start every semester with like, "Oh my God, I am so in love with this textbook. Like, this theory is so cool. I would read this just my own pleasure." And then three weeks in, I was like, "I can't. I can't do this. I can no longer pay attention."

Harvey: 32:47

I was gonna say, in late 2019 and early 2020, we tried to get... me and a couple of our friends, like, all- the four of us, we would try to get together for, like, these study times, which either turned into family drama hour or us just hanging out.

Pen: 33:06

Yep.

Harvey: 33:06

Sometimes both.

Pen: 33:08

Yep. We are...

Harvey: 33:11

We were going through it at that time.

Pen: 33:13

We were - I mean, we were... yikes,we were going through

Harvey: 33:17

No shade to anybody who was you know, in that situation, but oh, man, were we havin'... we were- we were trying. We

Pen: 33:22

We were - we were doing our best. It's just that our best were trying. was set up to be a failure.

Harvey: 33:30

Yeah, our best wasn't that great, but we're better now.

Pen: 33:33

Yeah!

Harvey: 33:34

Relatively.

Pen: 33:35

Okay, yes.

Harvey: 33:36

Are you going to read some of your editorializing?

Pen: 33:38

Well, I was - I was going to see, because I tabbed some out.

Harvey: 33:41

Right, yeah, I saw that.

Pen: 33:42

That was going to be useful, uh... as examples, oh, here's one, and this is - this entire page is just absolutely covered. I wrote more on my editorializing than anything else.

Harvey: 33:59

And I mean, hey, that's actually a pretty good way to learn.

Pen: 34:02

Yes.

Harvey: 34:04

Psychologically.

Pen: 34:05

Let's see... so this is when I started getting really upset about, like - about the context of things, and how it's not discussed. And up here at the top I had "I'm gonna," uh, expletive, "...gonna mm-ing snap." And that is just how I felt in February 2020, was, uh, I am this close to just snapping at any given person in my class. I think I have somewhere else in here, "I am two minutes away from snapping at my classmates at any given moment," in a class where they didn't even talk.

Harvey: 34:40

Pen was ready to just, like, bite someone.

Pen: 34:42

I was - I was ready to throw hands. "How are we supposed to move on to other material if we're obsessed with the past?" Also, "Nothing is ever universally accepted." All caps, "I SHOULD WRITE A BOOK ABOUT ELITISM." A quote from my instructor, "Academics write for each other, we tend to push difficulty, or maybe density higher than it should be." I loved this class, and it made me so angry. That is exhausting. That's not a functional way to engage with material, and that's what I did every semester.

Harvey: 35:28

Yeah, and you know, I can't say I feel that in the exact same way. But you know, one of my experiences as an autistic person - or at least presumably, I would honestly be shocked if I wasn't - it's, um... I think whatever I used to think about myself, and the way that I went around the world, is I think I would frequently describe myself as naive. Naive and easily taken advantage of. And that is pretty common in people who are autistic, because we don't really understand social cues as well as a neurotypical person might. It becomes very-

Pen: 36:07

Well, they're nonsensical.

Harvey: 36:09

Yes, but our, you know, our society still abides by them.

Pen: 36:13

Unpleasant things.

Harvey: 36:15

Right. And so, because we don't understand those social cues quite as well, it becomes very easy for people to... the right people to notice that, and kind of take advantage of it, make us look foolish. And sometimes it's unintentional. Other - other times, it's just like, we are in a social situation that we don't fully understand. And for me, you know, like for a lot of autistic folks that I've known, it's just that they will say things that are not totally, like, socially appropriate, genuinely because they didn't know. For me, I grew up believing that I was not autistic. I was pulled out of therapy when my psychologist thought that I might have autism. So it's... I was raised as a neurotypical child, regardless of whether or not that was true. And I'm going to say it wasn't. So I've been masking, and by masking, I mean going through life trying to act as neurotypical as possible, for the majority of my life. That was true when I met you, Pen, that I was continuing to mask. And, uh, I am decidedly, quote unquote, more autistic now, but nothing has actually changed about who I am. It's just... the parts of myself that I am willing to share. But all this to say, because I've been masking my entire life, typically, whenever I'm not sure what to do in a social situation, I freeze. I don't know what to do. And here's the unfortunate thing about one of my... one of my majors, being psychology: psychology is a deceptively conservative field. Not always in ideology, but definitely in the way that they construct things, and...

Pen: 38:08

Well, Freud.

Harvey: 38:10

Yeah, I'll tell you what, we actually have moved away quite a lot from Freud.

Pen: 38:15

That - if that being the basis and those sorts of, um, like, even if we're not listening to Freud, that is the attitude if if a field is based on that.

Harvey: 38:26

Yeah. I mean, he wasn't the founder of psychology, but he was highly influential.

Pen: 38:31

Yeah, yeah.

Harvey: 38:32

And that definitely matters.

Pen: 38:34

If a conservative... person, not cussing, is what popularizes it, then those attitudes seem like they're going to, uh, insulate it.

Harvey: 38:47

I swear, I could record an entire episode just by myself on Freud. Because honestly, for his time - for his time, his stuff was actually pretty groundbreaking. It was just also nonsensical, and he also might have been paid off by pedophiles, so... it's, uh...

Pen: 39:02

If nothing else, it was, like, husbands who hated their wives, yes?

Harvey: 39:07

Uh, yeah. It sure seems that - there's a lot of implicit misogyny. But all of this to say, as you might not - you may or may not imagine this, but psychology is a pretty conservative field. And even when people are well-intentioned, sometimes they will just phrase things in a way that is really painful. For me, particularly, I remember I had a TA for one of my classes whose specific research in psychology

Pen: 39:32

I... we definitely talked about this before, uh... was about finding the autism gene, because she didn't want anyone to suffer with autism, and me, an autistic person sitting in her class, was incredibly hurt by that. Just sitting there like "Wow, so y'all really do think I'm diseased in that I'm suffering." Like, dude, I'm just vibing, and I'm like a little bit obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. Like, I'm fine.

Harvey: 40:06

Do you mind...[crosstalk] And also, with me being trans, because I'm interested in child and adolescent psychology...

Pen: 40:16

Oh, no!

Harvey: 40:17

Because I'm interested in child and adolescent psychology in particular, a lot of the way that trans identity and gender dysphoria is talked about in the psychological community is really inaccurate. They use some pretty rough terminology. And many of the professors are older, and not always receptive to feedback. And their tenured, so pretty much nothing can touch them. So, go on with what were you going to say.

Pen: 40:46

I was gonna say, um, I know we talked about this, especially in the episode with Demetrea on the DSM, these are so clearly people, like, you know, doing your research on finding the autism gene to end that suffering.

Harvey: 40:59

It's like... I'm going to find the gene that made you... bevermind, I don't have a joke for this. Go on.

Pen: 41:06

These are clearly people who have never actually talked to people with autism. These are very clearly people who have never actually considered that point of view, which is, can I just say, so broken as... like, you should be expected to do that in a field that is focused on other people's brains.

Harvey: 41:29

Yeah, psychology is fundamentally person-centered.

Pen: 41:34

And yet, do they talk to people?

Harvey: 41:37

Clinical psychologists do, ostensibly.

Pen: 41:40

But not, like, for the sake of understand - like.

Harvey: 41:43

Eh, it depends, honestly, on the person.

Pen: 41:46

It does. But like, as a field, it's so much less open minded than it really seems like it should be.

Harvey: 41:52

Yeah, the field is a little bit closed-minded, which, um... which is odd, because the brain, one of the things we know best about the brain is that it is incredibly plastic. And so expecting people and things to stay the same really doesn't make sense, especially for the things that we... that we know.

Pen: 42:14

It's... and these are the things that we are exposing ourselves to, and...

Harvey: 42:22

Paying thousands of dollars to expose ourselves to.

Pen: 42:26

And it's like... you and I love our respective fields, or at least, like in terms of interest level.

Harvey: 42:32

Yeah. No, I love psychology.

Pen: 42:34

And they are so harmful, in some ways, still to us.

Harvey: 42:38

And it sucks.

Pen: 42:39

So, yeah. Being a student and being neurodivergent and mentally ill is one of the most draining things that I've experienced ever in my life, and it also takes up a lot of your life. And as the baseline that you experience is as you grow, you are a student, and then you're pressured to continue being student.

Harvey: 43:03

Yeah.

Pen: 43:03

So, bad job.

Harvey: 43:08

Li'l bit.

Pen: 43:09

It's a bad job, and hopefully this has explored some of the... the ways of it, you know? Cuz I legitimately can't even fathom what it would be like to be neurotypical and go through school.

Harvey: 43:23

Yeah, could you imagine? I can't.

Pen: 43:25

No! But, you know, the hope is, the more people understand what it is like to be on the other side, to be this kind of drained, the more that some change can start to happen, or at the very least, a little bit of empathy.

Harvey: 43:45

Just a bit. That's... just a crumb.

Pen: 43:47

Just sprinkle some empathy like you would for ducks in a pond. And I'll bite your finger because I'm mad.

Harvey: 43:54

Or for seasoning chicken if you're white.

Pen: 43:59

Oh, God.

Harvey: 44:02

So, we should start wrapping up.

Pen: 44:03

We should, yeah.

Harvey: 44:04

Pen.

Pen: 44:05

Yeah, Harvey.

Harvey: 44:06

Tell me if you have any closing thoughts.

Pen: 44:10

That bit just there was - was primarily my closing thoughts. Though, also, I know we meandered a little bit in this.

Harvey: 44:16

As we do. It's our podcast.

Pen: 44:19

That's also what it's like to be a student.

Harvey: 44:24

If you've ever walked into a classroom with primarily neurodivergent people, it is a time.

Pen: 44:29

Oh, God, we just talk.

Harvey: 44:32

Especially if the professor is also neurodivergent, oh, my God, the vibes are immaculate.

Pen: 44:36

Oh, I mean, it'scool. And genuinely, like, for as much as it hurts, your divergence can just tune you into things in such a cool way.

Harvey: 44:46

Mm-hmm.

Pen: 44:46

Like it's - it's one of those, like, at the end of the day, I wouldn't trade away my ADHD, in part because of the passion that it gives me. And sometimes that passion can be hard, like for example, being so drained that it's difficult to engage in my, like, beloved field of study because it makes me so angry. But also, like, it makes me so, just, purely... just at my very core, delighted.

Harvey: 45:13

Yeah.

Pen: 45:15

And Harvey be like "I have so many fun facts."

Harvey: 45:17

I do be like "I have so many fun facts."

Pen: 45:19

And Pen be like "Tell them to me!"

Harvey: 45:21

I maybe have too many fun facts, one might say.

Pen: 45:24

No.

Harvey: 45:25

Okay. Yeah, what I was...

Pen: 45:27

You cannot speak.

Harvey: 45:29

I can- agh!

Pen: 45:29

No, one! The one who says you have too many fun facts.

Harvey: 45:34

Oh.

Pen: 45:35

That one cannot speak.

Harvey: 45:36

I understand now.

Pen: 45:37

I have silenced them.

Harvey: 45:38

They are dead. Uh-oh!

Pen: 45:40

Oh, they'll die.

Harvey: 45:43

Oh, they'll die.

Pen: 45:44

Anyway, Harvey...

Harvey: 45:45

I hope - I hope to God your mom listens to this episode, so she can just say hear that we are...

Pen: 45:51

Love you.

Harvey: 45:51

Yep! Mm-hmm!

Pen: 45:53

So you got any closing thoughts, Harv?

Harvey: 45:55

Yes, I do. Um, I was going to say, like, as challenging as being a student was, and continues to be, I don't regret it at all. There are some days where I want to kick my classmates' teeth in. There are some days where I want them to stop using male and female as nouns. There are days where I want them to shut up and listen to me about trans people. But at the end of the day, I... one of the things that has always been true about me as a person, is that I just adore the pursuit of knowledge. I-I love...

Pen: 46:32

Yeah!

Harvey: 46:33

I love learning.

Pen: 46:34

Woo!

Harvey: 46:34

I love... I love discovering new things.

Pen: 46:37

Woo!

Harvey: 46:38

It's that part of college that I don't regret at all. Not even a little bit.

Pen: 46:42

Learning stuff is so cool!

Harvey: 46:44

Isn't it?

Pen: 46:45

You learn it, and then you have it! And you can learn more of it!

Harvey: 46:49

And then you can see things and you're like, "Oh, it's like this one time."

Pen: 46:53

I know maybe this sounds a little bit sarcastic to some folks, but I'm being so genuine in it. Like, learning is so cool.

Harvey: 47:01

No, it really is.

Pen: 47:01

God, I wish school didn't hurt so much.

Harvey: 47:04

Yeah, no, because learning is super neat.

Pen: 47:06

It's so cool! You learn it, and you have it.

Harvey: 47:09

Like riding a bike. So, stick around for just a few more moments, and, uh, learn a little bit more about how this podcast is made.

Pen: 47:17

Oh, I get it!

Harvey: 47:18

Ah! Ah! Ah...

Pen: 47:18

That's good.

Harvey: 47:21

Beyond Introspection is an independently-run podcast by Pen Novus and Harvey LaFord. Music by Girl Lloyd. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at ByndPodcast, or you can email us at beyonddot - that's D-O-T - podcast@gmail.com. We publish on Buzzsprout, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find the links to our social media and email in the podcast description. Got feedback for us? Feel free to reach out on social media, or via email. We'd love to hear from everyone. Take care of yourselves.