Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

 

- Donald Robert Perry Marquis

 

 

Chapter 6

SCHOOL YEARS

        

My ADD symptoms did not become apparent until after first grade, and, then, they subtly emerged throughout elementary school.  I was a low-average student who was not hyper­active or disruptive.  Children with predominantly inat­tentive traits, like me, tend to be diagnosed later in school than hyperactive kids, and then, if at all, only because of persistent school fail­ure. 

             

Preschool and Elementary School

             

In preschool, my teacher erroneously believed that I was depressed.  The evi­dence for her "diagno­sis" was the pic­ture of a house I drew with black crayons.  A preoccupa­tion with black was symbolic of depression according to an instructor, whose work­shop the teacher had attended.  With some amuse­ment, my mother explained that black tarpaper cov­ered our unfin­ished house.  As Freud report­edly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Prob­lems with reading, math and spelling marked my elementary school years.  Trouble in or­ganizing and articulating my thoughts inhibited me from par­tici­pating much in class discussions, a pat­tern that contin­ued through graduate school.  I was not an athletic, coor­dinated child—for example, I was never able to dribble a basketball well—and of­ten suffered the humiliation of be­ing picked last by peers for team sports.  I regularly day­dreamed about doing brave feats, earning the admiration of my classmates and becoming a hero in their eyes.

Kindergarten was uneventful, except that I was ab­sent a lot due to illness.  My progress reports show no portents of ADD that year.  The teacher had posi­tive things to say about my development and behav­ior.  The reports of my first grade teacher were glow­ing.  I was "co-operative, courteous . . . de­pendable" and "well liked."

My acquisition of reading skills was slow in first grade.[1]   A painfully shy child, who blushed easily when embar­rassed, I dreaded recognition in the class­room and feared being called on by my teacher.  I was es­pecially anxious about read­ing aloud, as I had difficulty reading smoothly and often stumbled over words.  Subse­quently, I took a remedial reading class in the summer.

In second grade, I still progressed slower than ex­pected.  My teacher reported that I was beginning to read grade-level material, but she identified another problem:

 

Bob's number work lately has been careless.  He has made speed more im­portant than ac­curacy.

 

The first progress report in third grade identified the full scope of my academic problems. The teacher mentioned an attention problem for the first time.  She wrote,

 

Bob has a good start toward bringing his reading level up to average for his grade.  An improved at­tention span and ability to listen as vocabulary is developed has enabled him to better understand and comprehend what he has read. . . . Bob will need much extra study to maintain his arithmetic combinations automatically.  He seems to have difficulty with them as he used them in the arith­metic processes and in problem solving . . . He is spelling cor­rectly a few more of the words from his spelling units each week. . . . He is im­proving the quality of his printscript and the organization of his papers . . . As he reads more independent ma­terial he will be able to con­tribute more to the class science and social studies discussions [emphasis added].

 

She did note two strengths:

 

Bob does clever, unique art compositions. . . . Bob is a good citizen within his group at all times.

 

A pattern was beginning to emerge:  my perform­ance steadily improved as the year progressed, probably be­cause of my mother's redoubled efforts to help me at home.

The comments of my fourth grade teacher were brief and to the point.  She rated my arithmetic achieve­ment for much of the year in the "lower quarter" of the class.  My oral language skills were in the "higher quarter" during the second half of the year.  She said,              

 

Bob is a cooperative and quiet worker.  We believe he could raise the quality of his work with a little effort for neatness and accuracy.  We would like to see Bob work a little harder to improve his spelling.

 

My sixth grade teacher described numerous aca­demic problems:

             

§        Concentrating on tasks

§        Reading at a reasonable speed

§        Organizing and expressing thought clearly

§        Applying knowledge of grammar

§        Speaking with poise and confidence to a group

§        Taking part in class discussions

§        Using correct spelling in written work

§        Learning required spelling words

§        Using a dictionary and other reference aids

§        Being accurate in solving arithmetic problems

§        Checking arithmetic problems for errors

§        Learning factual information in social studies

§        Participating in group discus­sions

§        Completing work on time

§        Drawing conclusions from facts observed

          

Junior High School

             

I was an average student in junior high school.  My worst grade was a "D" in wood shop, which was a personal embarrass­ment because my father was a cabi­net­maker.  He com­pleted my unfinished class project, a small wooden stool.

My propensity to procrastinate increased in jun­ior high school.  My mother, the valedictorian of her high school class, closely supervised my homework to make sure that it was completed daily.  She did not expect me to earn all "A's," but she in­sisted that I do my best work.  I devel­oped the habit of arising at 4:30 a.m. on the day of tests to cram. This practice, al­though resulting from my ten­dency to procrasti­nate, helped me com­pensate for short-term memory retention prob­lems.

            

High School

 

I took the minimum number of math courses re­quired for high school gradua­tion (one). Standardized testing re­sults confirmed my weakness in math.  The Iowa Tests of Educational Development, Sixth Edition, was adminis­tered in my sophomore year.  My per­centiles on the vari­ous tests exceeded the na­tional me­dian (50%) except for Correctness of Ex­pression (43%) and Quantitative Think­ing (40%).[2]

Deficits in English usage, reading speed, mathe­mat­ics skills and mechanical reasoning were evident from my scores on the Washington Pre-College Test ad­ministered in my junior year.[3]  I achieved the fol­lowing percentiles listed in Table 4:            

 

 

Table 4

    

I took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in my senior year.  My scores were 535 on the verbal por­tion and 425 for the math part—960 total.[4] 

             

High School Graduation

             

I brought my grades up in my senior year, gradu­at­ing in 1966 with a cumula­tive grade point average (GPA) of 2.92 (91st in a class of 381 students).  I en­rolled in a commu­nity college after my guidance counselor stressed that students with GPAs less than 3.0 would likely not perform well at a four-year institution.

My mother's concern about my academic future led her to consult surrepti­tiously with my high school English teacher, Bernice Schuh, who had completed college coursework in graphology (hand­writing analy­sis).  Mrs. Schuh said in ef­fect, "Don't worry, he'll do fine!"

 

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