STEMMing the Leaky Pipeline: ADHD and Academia

Posted on by Luke Halpin

A silhouette of a person with scrabble tiles spelling out ADHD coming from their head

My name is Luke. I am 27 years old and from Blackburn (so home has always been pretty close by) and I am currently in the 4th year of a PhD in Computer Science and I also happen to have ADHD.

My time at 糖心视频 however, actually started back in October 2019 when I enrolled at the university as an undergraduate student to do a bachelor’s degree in software engineering. Despite my first degree at 糖心视频 being largely dominated by COVID, I would describe it as some of my best years and a time that truly shaped the person I am today.

糖心视频ing my first degree was a challenge at times, dealing not only with the global situation but also with my own struggles as a result of my diagnosis and the way it impacts my ability to think. Something worth mentioning also is that ADHD is misunderstood quite a bit sometimes. Despite the name, it isn’t just a deficit of attention or an abundance of hyperactivity. ADHD is best described as an inability to regulate executive function. Executive function covers a lot of things, but it does include things like focus and motivation, so that’s where we get the attention and hyperactivity aspect from in some cases. But it also includes things like emotional regulation, awareness of time, and quite a few other areas of our cognitive function. Also, the keyword is "regulation", so attention can be low, or we can lose hours due to focusing on something and not realise, or we might have a lot of energy one minute, and struggle to get ourselves to start even simple tasks the next.

You can imagine how such a condition can make academia a challenging place, and in fact, before university, I had often struggled in standard education. But despite the challenges- the days I just couldn’t get started on coursework or the times I was having to read something several times to actually take it in- I did quite well and got a first.

With how much I had enjoyed my time at 糖心视频 and the fact that I had found myself succeeding, I didn’t really want my time to end at the university. As a result, I was thinking about what else I could do next, looking at Master's degrees in the department and other avenues. The reason the PhD appeared on my radar was largely due to a friend of mine who was at the time in the first year of their PhD. As a result, I learned more about what was involved and what research actually looked like. The final push then came from a conversation I had about education with a friend and how COVID had caused learning and assessment to have to change and adapt. In this conversation, I talked about being frustrated that, despite all the things we had learned, most of the conversation in the news was about getting back to how things were rather than thinking about how technology could improve the system. During this conversation, I not only realised how passionate I was about the topic, but also that this was the kind of thing people researched and what a PhD could be like.

Thus began the journey of many meetings with academics in the School and people I knew doing research, which led to an application, which led to October 2022 when I enrolled on a PhD programme, which would have surprised a lot of my teachers from before university (and myself back then).

So now that I have talked about how I got here, time to talk about what I actually do.

My research started by looking at how technology could support students with disabilities in education. I focused on ADHD as it was something I understood, and I was also aware of the fact that there really isn’t much work to actually support it.

To clarify that, there is a lot of research around ADHD, but most of that is about how we manage the condition, so things like therapy to improve focus, or how tech can help reduce fidgeting, that kind of stuff. There isn’t really much research on how people with ADHD use digital technology. I have come to start describing it as the two levels of access.

There is visible access, which includes the things people need to physically get into the room - stuff like screen readers for people with visual impairments, a ramp for someone with a wheelchair. But then there is also a second level, the less visible one. For example, someone in a wheelchair might need a ramp to get into a building, but if they have any conditions which involve sensory issues, and the lights inside are too bright, they might get overwhelmed or develop a headache. They can get to the place, but they can’t really use it. The same applies to ADHD and digital spaces. Because the condition doesn’t visibly stop us using a tool or digital space, there isn’t really much thought about how we can use it, such as whether you have to keep track of a lot of shortcuts, whether the communication is clear, or whether there is a lot of activity on the screen which can cause overwhelm.

With this in mind, I started looking into it. I had a lot of ups and downs and eventually landed on my current focus, which is how we can design code editors to be better for students with ADHD.

So now you know a bit about me, and what I do and why I do it, let's talk about what it is like to do research with ADHD. Short answer: it isn’t easy.

A PhD is one of the highest academic achievements for a reason. You are doing something no one has really done before; you are in charge of your time and direction, and there is no clear mark scheme you can use to guide you. The bit here that is the hardest is that no one has done it. That means that while there are people who can give thoughts and suggestions on a PhD in general, no one can really say you’ve got the definite right idea or approach. This is made worse when ADHD can often mean I really struggle to get started, especially when I’m on my own.

In undergrad, I had deadlines and clear objectives, which helped a lot; they gave me structure, and I had lectures on the topics and labs and all kinds of things to help create a path of what to do and when. In a PhD, you are almost lost at sea, figuring things out, making decisions, and hoping they are the right ones.

While there is support at university, such as supervisors, and academic support in the faculty, there is only so much help they can provide when your brain is working against you. Trying to help someone understand an inability to simply make yourself get up and walk around the room to reset a bit is difficult. And it isn’t because people don’t try to understand, but it is difficult to understand the experience of someone who experiences the world in a fundamentally different way to you, which makes the isolation more intense. There are days when I am not sure if I will pass or finish my thesis and make it to that golden pedestal of annoying my sister who did medicine about how we are both doctors now. But I keep going, as even though the support is limited, it is still there. Knowing people want to help and want me to succeed and encourage me doesn’t fix everything, but it helps me keep going.

If I pass, I am not sure what I want to do. The PhD is probably the hardest thing I will ever do, and sometimes the idea of staying in academia after it just makes me feel exhausted. But at the same time, the idea of getting to do this work, which genuinely could make life a little bit easier for someone like me, and the idea of expanding knowledge and our understanding of the world around us, well, it certainly sounds exciting.

So, if you are reading this and you are like me or even not like me, and you are interested in research, here is my advice. This is hard; it is incredibly difficult, and there are days when you wish you had never gone to university and had just stayed at McDonald's. But you also have days when you talk about your work, feel like the expert you are growing to be, and are so proud of what you have done, and that feeling helps you get through the bad days. So, make sure you have people around you to support you, make sure you know what you will struggle with and when you will need help, but you can do it. Academia is not built for people who are wired differently, but all that means is it needs more of us to get it working so that anyone who wants to has the chance to do this.

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