Has anyone done an arts/humanities degree? Advice wanted

[Hachi]

Or ideally, an English lit degree? as I am currently struggling through.

I'm struggling because there is so little support or understanding or will to help me from any of my professors or admin staff. Its really annoying because I am smart, I have good an unique ideas, and I am good at what I do.

However I am also forgetful (I forget things like how to write essays and how to revise, which is STUPID and ridiculous but it still happens and I have to start from square one every time) and I struggle with reading walls of text and understanding long and complex language. I have to take things step by step.

My disability service used an outdated dyspraxia test that focused on purely physical co-ordinatory aspects that I told them already I had had physiotherapy to get over struggling so much with. They also forced me to do a dyslexia test and then were 'amazed' at the results showing that I definitely didnt have dyslexia. As if that was helpful! So predicatbly the dyspraxia 'test' didnt mention any of the mental side of things, just the physical, for which I scored borderline (things like, "I struggle meeting my mouth when I'm eating food" and "I walk into walls" with the options "every time", "most of the time" "some of the time" on a points-based scale which I thought was ridiculous even as I was doing it as for adult dyspraxia many of those things you would already have put in a lot of work to overcome)

Anyway I am just struggling so much. A lot of the posts on here and other oplaces I've found show people with dyspraxia trying and succeeding at sciencey subjects but I never see any people succeeding at arts and humanities degrees. I find it hard because its not just a case of learning things and them being right or wrong; its always a balance of lots of different things youre doing at once.

I also am struggling a bit with money at the minute but I'm nervous about trying to get a part time job in a bar or a cafe because I struggle with learning new physical tasks quickly. I can see myself getting made fun of by bosses or them not understanding and then me getting fired very quickly and wasting their time.

I am quite sad at the minute you may be able to tell. I feel quite backed into a corner despite all of my best efforts and work so far to get to this point. Please help if you have any stories or ideas or advice. Thank you.

[Tom fod]

Hi there Hachi

Welcome to the forums or fora. Hoping someone else will be able to offer some more comprehensive and useful advice on study skills/essay writing.

I strongly suspect that the test for dyspraxia they used was almost certainly for use with children. Sadly it seems very little, or what actually seems to be nothing at all, is understood about the psychological effects of coping with dyspraxia and in some quarters the view seems to be "you'll grow out of it" which is unhelpful in the extreme. Yes in a sense you will in time be able to develop your own personal coping strategies which have the effect that it can appear that one has managed to outgrow it but it lurks in the background and can reemerge when you are hit by additional stresses/change. Many of us blame only ourselves for not being cut out for life but we can succeed with a hell of a lot of hard work.

I'm not surprised you were tested for dyslexia as there is a quite significant crossover with working memory. The key thing I'd be asking for is assistance in dealing with your stress as otherwise you will struggle to think straight and organise your thoughts/take in info. A speed reading course may be useful. Also mind mapping or other graphical representation techniques may be worth looking into.

As far as the employment goes, It works a little your way too, If they're not prepared to invest a bit of extra time in training you is it worth your while having a job there? Equally we can be very over afraid of what might happen rather than what actually will. We remember bad experiences all too well. It won't always be easy but we are persistent and determined people and make for hard working and reliable employees if our strengths are properly harnessed.

Sorry I can't offer a lot of help on the studying. I didn't go further than A Level History, and Chemistry AS and a U for biology. After that I did NVQ in business admin at levels 1 and 2. It's a long while ago now though!

Don't be afraid to seek out what works for you rather than blindly following the 'accepted' method if it only causes you pain.

[Hachi]

Thank you. This in itself helps so much in saying at least that I'm not crazy as can feel the way sometimes. Appreciated.

[randlepatrick]

Ignore this post

[randlepatrick]

Hey Hachi,

I'm in my second year of doing English lit at uni as well. Which uni are you at, if you don't mind my asking? I'm at Hull atm, and while the student union has been really supportive; they're in the process of getting me £800 worth of 'specialist equipment' or something ridiculous like that which is quite nice. The English department staff on the other hand are pretty insensitive, for example I got a 10 mark penalty for handing in an essay 10 minutes after the deadline, and when I met with my 'disability tutor' all he told me was that there was nothing he could do. I've not been getting amazing results, almost every piece of feedback I've got has said something along the lines of 'you could do better than this, you're just not trying hard enough', which I'm sure you must have heard a lot as well. The best advice I can give you is to not put yourself down, it's not stupid and ridiculous that you forget how to write essays and revise. Don't let yourself get backed into a corner, try to kick up a **** if you feel you're being treated unfairly. I know it sounds a bit whiney having to explain to people that you've got a disability and it's more difficult for you to do certain things than it is for other people, I've only been diagnosed this year so this is something that I'm still coming to terms with, but it's definitely worth mentioning. At my uni they advised me to write 'dyspraxic student' or whatever at the top of all my assignments, which I'm going to start doing, and I've got extra time in exams now as well which is good.

Reading complicated language is a pain in the ass as it takes forever for me to read something and understand it the first time, but what I've started to do now is skim a page/chapter, reading as fast as I can, and then go back and read it again. It takes more or less the same amount of time as reading slowly and trying to work out the meaning of a text sentence by sentence, but I find that it gives me a much better understanding of what's been written (might have something to do with short term/long term memory?), and it stops me from getting frustrated. Also, get a timer app on your phone and work in approx. 20 minute chunks with 3 minute breaks in between, and try and keep moving, pace around your room or whatever during breaks so you don't feel so bogged down. These http://www.amazon.co.uk/Macks-Plugs-Pac ... ords=macks are a ****ing godsend as well, I can't work if there's any kind of noise going on around me.

For essay writing, start off by writing out the question in the middle of a sheet of paper, and making a mind map kind of thing off each word, listing the different connotations/interpretations of each word in the question. For example, the essay question which I'm meant to be doing right now is "‘Modern writers are interested in exploring the inner life at the expense of the social world.’ Discuss", so I've drawn a mind map with all the differing connotations of 'interested in exploring', 'at the expense', 'social world' etc, and from there I was able to come up with 3 or 4 different headings for paragraphs. Then I did a load of reading, and any quote I thought sounded remotely relevant I would copy into a MS Word file named 'notes' under one of the headings. And then after you've got this skeleton/plan thing with all the quotes I usually try and write the whole essay in one or two sittings, which can be pretty intense because these sittings are usually about 7/8 hours long. Another thing which I've just started to do is write a ridiculously simplistic draft by hand, writing as fast as I can without giving myself too much time to analyse what I've just written, lest I get bogged down. This usually ends up being really conversational, e.g "lots of writers started to look at their characters psychology", but once I've got this draft it can be turned into a proper essay with the help of a thesaurus.

With the money thing, I've got a notes app on my phone in which I've started to write down every single bit of money I've spent, even if it's just 50p on sweets or whatever, and that's helped massively.

This year in particular I've learnt to stop relying on other people to make me feel better about myself, because it usually goes one of two ways. Either they see me as a clumsy idiot, or they're super patronising and treat me like a kid. That's not to say that I don't have friends, it's just that whereas before I'd kind of rely on my friends to look after me and give me special treatment, I've started to stick up for myself a lot more. Going to the gym and not being stoned 24/7 has given me confidence as well. I don't know about you, but it's difficult for me because I've realised that I've become so used to being looked after by other people that it's become second nature, but I think just being able to pinpoint the moments when I'm falling back into that kind of behaviour has made me able to stop it. Meditation has helped with that a lot, read this if you're interested in that: http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf2/Mindful ... review.pdf. Even if you're not into all the spiritual stuff it's a good read.

Dunno if that's helped, I didn't mean to ramble on so much haha. I'd better stop procrastinating now, best of luck.

[Hachi]

randlepatrick; Thank you so much for this post.

I forgot to check this forum for ages; sorry for not coming back off it. I just read your advice now. Will be copying it into a word document to look at when I start getting panicky.

This year did go okayish; but its annoying, I definitely could have done better on each one of my courses if I'd had a better support framework around me. Do you ever get when you just don't ask questions, sometimes, because you assume something will be the same as its always been and no-one tells you otherwise? I know (well, suspect) that this is partly a dyspraxia-related thing too, but...I don't know (don't think anyway) that I can challenge my department about it.

Basically, the way my course normally works; has worked for 5 of the 6 semesters I've been at university, is that at the start of the course, the professor gives you a reading list. On this list; ideally you're meant to read everything; certain books will correspond to each week; and then towards the end of the course you have to select multiple books from this list to write a combo-essay on, using the given texts, but from your own angle. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, write on another book by one of the authors in your list, with one of the books on the list. So one on, one off the list, kind of thing.

So this semester, the reading list that they give us, was only a 'recommended reading list'. The professor didnt tell us this; the info that this is what it was was inside the 'course booklet'. The course booklet is a pdf that can only be found online, and again, 5 semesters out of the 6 I've done, this booklet has only contained anti-cheating rules and where to find printers etc, and contact details for your professors, and the info in it doesn't change year on year except by changing the contact details depending on what course you're on. So I didnt check it; because on the surface, when it doesnt change every year, going to the trouble of looking it up at the start of the course when I've been here three years seemed like a waste of time, you get me?

Basically, lond story short, on this course, what we were meant to do was, completely different from other years; pick three or four weeks' work (texts, authors) that we liked, and go to class those weeks; the rest of the time, focus our reading on texts/authors that we personally liked, BECAUSE THE EXAM WOULD BE ON OUR OWN CHOICE OF AUTHORS and furthermore, THE TEXTS ON THE READING LIST DID NOT CROSS OVER SO IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO TRY AND WRITE AN ESSAY ON THEM. And we werent told this. We were told what was going to be on the exam, three weeks before it was time for the exam.

Of course, given that I hadnt known to read my own texts, not the ones on the list, I then had to rush-read a whole load of texts in time for the exam, so I had SOMETHING to write on.

It was the most annoying though, because I really, really made an effort to do well this semester, and go to every one of my classes. My professor seemed at the time surprised to see me at so many classes. I thought it was because she knew about my poor attendance record before; but I now realise its because we werent supposed to go to every single class and read every single text she set. She must have thought I was just a real nerd/goody two shoes.

Anyway I just needed to say this to somebody. I found it extremely frustrating. To this day I don't understand why neurotypical people DON'T make everything explicit, just to avoid misunderstandings. I still don't fully understand the concept of assuming things because it requires everyone be on the same wavelength which just isnt workable necessarily if someone happens not to be - and how would you know in advance?

I'd love to do something about it but I don't really think I can - they can always spin it back on me and say its all my fault for not checking; even though everything else leads back to that first logical mistake.

Sigh. It drains me thinking about it; in a way I'm just glad its over.
Ta