I have to take this math course before I can graduate next spring. It's almost the lowest level of math offered by the fine people here at Rutgers. Elementary Algebra - as if I was supposed to have learned this stuff before leaving the fifth grade. Anyway, it doesn't look good because I keep bombing my tests. It's not that I don't get the ideas, it's just that I can't seem to copy the problems onto my paper. Sometimes 6 turns into x. That's because when I think "six" I see the x. Sometimes 8 also turns into an x because there's an x in the middle of the 8. I also confuse plus and minus signs because there's a minus sign in a plus sign. There are many more that I haven't pinned down yet.
This is frustrating stuff because even though I know to a large extent what I'm doing wrong, I can't seem to slow down and focus hard enough to stop doing it. So I thought, that sounds like ADD. I called the psychological testing services here at Rugters to see if there was a test I could take.
Oh was there a test. "Let me break this down for you," said the grad student on duty, "because it's expensive. For $450, you can take the ADD test, but for only $250 you can take the ADHD test. Then there's the combined test, where we test for ADD and ADHD at the same time. There you're back up to $450."
Well, the clever pricing alone put a stop to my delusions of grandeur. But there's something strange about it still. Even if I had the money. It's not like you walk in and say, "hey there's something wrong with me can you help?" It's set up like they're selling a product.
I was telling my friend about all this and he warned me that insurance companies consider ADD a pre-existing mental illness. That means they can probably find loopholes to get out of paying for services should I ever need them. That is, of course, if I purchase my test results. I didn't fact-check that one. My assumption that my friend is right is probably tainted with bias. I'm really just imposing my belief that the insurance companies lack a certain pre-existing morality.
So, if you're struggling with a similar problem, there may be no actual resources.
This has been a public service announcement from the ADD Council.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I don't know how it works in NJ but here in NY State if you suspect you suffer from an educationally or vocationally handicapping condition like ADHD or learning disabilities you can apply to NYS VESID (vocational and educational services for individuals with disabilities) or NYS Office of Vocational Rehab. to see if you qualify for a free psychological evaluation to determine via objective testing whether you do or don't suffer from such a condition. NJ probably has a similar State agency you should be able to find via a search engine like Google.
Post a Comment