I lived my entire life thinking I was mediocre. I didn't understand why it took me hours longer than my peers to finish my homework, why cleaning my room took an entire weekend or why I was so disorganized no matter how often I tried to keep it all together. I was convinced I would spend the duration of my life this way. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, I thought everyone was like me. That was until I took a class on students with disabilities and learned about ADHD.

There are three different types of ADHD. There's the hyperactivity, the inattentive and a combination of the two. The combination is the most common, hyperactivity is easy to spot, but unfortunately for me, it is very difficult to spot the inattentive type.

Children with the inattentive type are often seen as lazy and unmotivated. It goes untreated, and follows them into adulthood. I was never lazy, but any homework assignment, and paper and reading took me hours to start, and hours to complete.

I remember being in middle school, crying while doing homework. I've always struggled to explain how it felt, the only word that comes to mind is pain. It was painful for me to sit down and focus on one thing, because I couldn't. I couldn't read a book when there was the sound of wind hitting the window, or the sound of my mom in the kitchen. I couldn't focus at night with the flash of lights from cars passing my window, from the wind blowing my curtains. There are always so many things going on in the world, how could I possibly focus on one?

I used to make a joke of it, how I'd wash my hair three times in the shower because I kept forgetting if I already washed it. I used to laugh at how I had to walk into a room four times because I always forgot what I walked in there for in the first place. I'd call myself silly for forgetting what I was saying as I was saying it.

That was my life every single day. Until the day I found out why.

I was terrified to take medicine for it. I heard the horror stories of addiction. I heard how it keeps you up at night, how you don't eat. I didn't want to lose myself amid the prescription. My doctor reassured me that it wouldn't happen to me, that those things only happen to people who take the drug and don't need it.

I always heard of Adderall as a super drug. College kids take it to get ahead, to pull all nighters. Some people take it to lose weight.

I don't take it for any of those reasons, and I resent those that do. Adderall does not make me an exceptional student, it makes me an ordinary one.

Adderall changed my life. For the first time in my life I have seen my full potential. I am able to sit down and write a paper without feeling defeated. I am able to read an article once and comprehend it. My grades have risen, higher than ever in my entire college career. For the first time in my life I feel full, I feel complete, I feel competent.

Please don't tell me I'm "lucky" to be prescribed a drug that makes you feel invincible. It doesn't make me invincible, it makes me just like YOU. Ordinary, average even, and I could not be happier about it.

If two years ago someone told me I'd be a semester away from graduating with my bachelors degree I'd laugh in their face. After taking almost four years to complete my associates degree and final walking across my community college's stage, I thought I'd be thirty before I completed my bachelors. However here I am, one final away from completing my second to last semester of my undergraduate degree. I owe it all to my diagnoses, I'd be lost without it.