Comment by tombert

Comment by tombert 4 days ago

> There's a saying that if you gave a scientist the job of designing a system to completely derail an ADHD brain, they'd come back with the typical public school classroom.

Doctors aren't sure if I have ADHD or Major Depression or Bipolar II (I've been diagnosed and attempted to be treated for all three), but this fits into my experience.

I was consistently frustrating to my high school teachers, because I was clearly learning the material, but I wouldn't do my homework, and I'd get bored during class, and as a result I would get bad grades. I don't think the teachers took any joy in giving me a bad grade, but they were kind of forced into it because I didn't really fit into the bureaucratic mold that they needed me to fit in.

This eventually led to me almost flunking out, and eventually dropping out of my first attempt at university. I did eventually finish my bachelors, but it was at Western Governors University (WGU), which feels almost tailor-made for the ADHD-brained people.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but the American GPA system still kind of gives me anxiety when I think about it.

abtinf 4 days ago

> Western Governors University (WGU), which feels almost tailor-made for the ADHD-brained people

I would very much appreciate it if you could expand on this point a bit. What makes WGU particularly suited for folks with ADHD?

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tombert 4 days ago

You pay per-term, not per class, and you can take as many classes as you'd like per term. You take one class at a time, and many classes can be finished after taking a test and/or completing a project.
I say it feels tailor-made for ADHD because it feels almost "gamified". It's addictive to see how many classes you can knock out in a week, and you can work at whatever pace you'd like.
Part of the reason I always did poorly in school is that I didn't like how slow everything went, but with WGU I can go whatever pace I want, and the faster I go, the more money I save. Since I'm an extremely impatient person, the fact that I was able to quickly go through the material while only having to focus on one course at a time was kind of game-changing to me.
I already had a decade of software engineering experience when I did WGU, so when I did the Computer Science degree on there I finished the entirety of it (having to start from scratch) in six months, for a grand total cost of around ~$4600.
WGU is hardly the fanciest school, but it's good enough, inexpensive, and most importantly it is fully accredited. If you always struggled with traditional universities, I recommend giving it a look.

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- pbmonster 4 days ago
  
  > you can take as many classes as you'd like per term. You take one class at a time, and many classes can be finished after taking a test and/or completing a project.
  Is it all based on self-guided learning? Because I can't see how this system could work with the classic system of bottom-up lectures accompanied by tutorials and exercise classes?
  
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  tombert 4 days ago
  
  It’s self-guided. There aren’t lectures or anything. They have reading stuff they recommend, and there are course instructors you can reach out to if you need help.
  Some courses do have recorded lectures, but nothing live.
  
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- brightball 4 days ago
  
  I have always loved the idea of a one class at a time model. I think Cornell has a program like this that I read about too.
  
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  tombert 4 days ago
  
  I think that there's a reasonably good chance that if school were like that by default, I probably would have done better. It's hard to juggle six classes at a time like you're expected to in American high schools.
  If I had a magic wand and could make the education system however I'd like, I'd make it so every student spends the exact same amount of time on the subject, but I'd make it so you only ever manage a single class at once, instead of trying to interleave everything.
  This isn't even that weird of a concept, even in the US; American summer schools will often do exactly this. Instead of doing an hour per day over the course of 180 days, you do roughly thirty six-hour days. That's how I took gym in high school, and how I retook calculus (even though I passed the AP exam first-try).
  
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- thirdtruck 4 days ago
  
  Oh damn, xe really want to look into WGU after this.
  
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  tombert 4 days ago
  
  It's definitely not for everyone, and to be honest I'd recommend a trying a traditional university first if that's an option.
  The reason I liked it is because I have always just been better at teaching myself stuff than being taught. I like working at my own (usually faster) pace and I really hate waiting to make progress. WGU is a perfect system for someone with that mentality, particularly since it's inexpensive.
  I think the quality of the education is "ok". I think you'll leave with a good enough education in computer science to be "useful", but I will acknowledge that the fast-pace does make it easier to get away with skipping the boring stuff than it would be with a traditional school.
  If you already have a lot of experience with software, WGU can work as a "legitimizer" if nothing else, though. I had a bit of a complex about dropping out and not having a bachelors. That pretty much went away once I got my bachelors from WGU.
  
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  thirdtruck 2 days ago
  
  Oh! Xir entire software developer career has been built on skills xe taught xirselves from childhood (never took a CS course in college; majored in fine arts) so this sounds absolutely perfect! Probably would have crushed it there back in the day, too. Thank you!
  
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