The University of California transfer application deadline was at midnight on Nov. 30, and my daughter hit “send” at 11:13 pm. It’s taken a lot—like, really, a lot—for her to get to this point, but until about 10 pm she was walking around without a care in the world, and when I gingerly mentioned that in my experience,1 completing the UC application takes longer than students think, she looked at me pityingly and said, “Come on, mom. Why are you panicking? There’s so much time left.”
My daughter and I both have ADHD. She was diagnosed when she was 15; I was diagnosed last year, after the workarounds I jerry-rigged in college started breaking down. One of the symptoms of ADHD is time blindness, which Healthline describes as “difficulties with tasks related to time, such as estimating how long an activity will take, sticking to schedules, and recognizing when it’s appropriate to start or finish tasks.” Another symptom is anxiety. Which means that when Mara was in high school and operating…
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