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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • A few people have mentioned this, but it’s worth reiterating: take advantage of your strongest skills and focus on a career that keeps things interesting. I work as an analyst (data and reporting), and I get paid to solve problems and dig deep into unique projects where the major structure of my tasks are defined around me. My job description is nebulous, and that’s how I like it. It means I don’t get bored. I thrive when I can hyperfocus on novelty, and there’s always something new to explore and learn at my job.

    As folks with ADHD, our constant cycling of interests tends to make us a jack of all trades, master of none. That is absolutely a marketable trait, and not only in the field of data analytics (though based on your interests you might do really well in it). I don’t think passion is necessary in a day job, though it helps. I believe the more important thing is finding an environment where you’ll never be bored.

    I also want to add, there’s no pressure to pick the right path the first time around. In fact, I think having a wide variety of experiences in life can be an asset. Heck, I have a wildlife science degree and experience with seabird research. While I’m glad I had those experiences, and my passion for wildlife is still as strong, I’m not certain that’s the best path for my career right now. Maybe that’ll change, but it’s okay to not have it figured out, especially in our 20’s.

    I absolutely consider ADHD to be a disability for me, but I’m always having to remind myself of the strengths I have because of, or maybe in spite of it.










  • Not OP, but I’ve asked myself this as well. I think it depends on where you live and what you want out of your language learning experience. If your goal is to learn something more useful in everyday life and you live in the southern US, Spanish is a great option. If you’re from Canada, French is probably the most useful. German and Mandarin are useful in the business world, but the latter is significantly harder to learn. If you’re not worried about maximizing the utility of what you learn, Norwegian is considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and let’s be real, Norway is awesome.

    It’s more important that you stick with whatever you choose though. That’s the part I’ve struggled with.


  • I have ADHD, not autism, but this is something I hear a lot, and I think this is a mischaracterization of what these conditions are and how they impact daily life. Most mental illnesses/disorders/etc aren’t just defined by unique and niche symptoms, but also by issues most people have experienced, but cranked up to 100 and present all the time.

    Take depression for example: we’ve all felt sad at some point, and maybe even had times where we had low motivation and felt empty due to grief or stress, but if these struggles are permanent and all-consuming to the point where you struggle with life, you may have a disorder.

    Some of the things listed in the image make sense when done in response to a certain stimulus, or in a specific context. But if you’re living your entire life in this way, something is clearly off-center.

    There’s also a lot of overlap with symptoms between different disorders, but understanding the source of these behaviors can be crucial in learning how to deal with them. Just because ‘hiding ones feelings’ isn’t unique to autism, that doesn’t make it less unhealthy.



    • P.S. edit: Looks like you probably won’t see this since I’m on kbin. Maybe someone on my side of the Fediverse finds this tidbit of wildlife knowledge!

    I’ve had some experience with seabird and waterfowl nesting research so this caught my attention. I haven’t come across anything like this personally, but I’ve only ever worked with larger birds with higher nest building costs and greater territorial behavior across seasons.

    Apparently this is a common behavior with some bird species, and it’s baffled scientists for a while.

    I managed to find a specific explanation for American Robins (excerpt below). I can’t guarantee the validity of this author’s ‘supernormal stimuli’ explanation, but it’s a compelling one:

    A. This is a question we hadn’t been asked before, so we wrote to Len Eiserer, the author of The American Robin: A Backyard Institution. Len answered:

    "Building multiple nests simultaneously happens every now and again with robins. One started 26 different nests on roof rafters of a garage under construction; another built 8 on successive steps of a fire escape. Support from underneath is the primary site selection factor for the female robin — it’s more important than concealment. Because some human structures provide repetitive sites with strong support, the female can get seduced into building multiple nests.

    This is an example of “supernormal stimuli” — artificial stimuli that are even more effective than those provided by Mother Nature (tree limbs). Animals have a hard time resisting supernormal stimuli. There are many examples. Your robin will probably settle on one site and just lay eggs in that nest, or else just incubate eggs in that nest after laying, say, one egg in one nest and two in the other. She won’t lay two complete sets of eggs and try to incubate both of them at the same time."