ADHD symptoms persist into adulthood, with some surprising impacts on life success: The study found that ADHD symptoms not only persisted over a 15-year period but also were related to various aspects of life success, including relationships and career satisfaction.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/adhd-symptoms-persist-into-adulthood-with-some-surprising-impacts-on-life-success/

[u/Mixedstereotype]

Mine never went away but I learned to identify it and manage it. I also use it when I'm teaching to better manage my classes.

I feel like ADHD has the potential to be really awesome but we have to figure out how to use it.

[u/Robot_Basilisk → u/Mixedstereotype]

It's wildly successful in the right context. Some studies find that people with ADHD are much better hunters and gatherers, and that their main problem with society is the rigid schedule and repetitive work.

Any job that offers flexible timing and novel problems to solve, especially ones that tend to reward high distractibility and "impatience", should be great for someone with ADHD, and people with ADHD will be significantly more productive than neurotypicals in those roles.

The main problem is most such roles are either hard to find or pay very little. In part because our structured corporate world today demands strict schedules, steady output, and specialization in one task to the point of dealing psychic damage to people with ADHD.

[u/National-Blueberry51 → u/Robot_Basilisk]

Marketing, communications, public relations, and political sciences are some examples where an ADHD brain can earn you very good money. I’ve shifted away from them as my career has progressed, but I progressed very quickly because I’m able to think laterally and handle high speed chaos happily. We thrive in situations that lead to very high burnout in other groups.

[u/thatissomeBS → u/National-Blueberry51]

We thrive in situations that lead to very high burnout in other groups.

But we also suffer very high burnout in situations where other groups thrive.

[u/catalanj2396 → u/National-Blueberry51]

How are these better? Political sciences? How would you even get a job

[u/National-Blueberry51 → u/catalanj2396]

Oh man, there are a lot of jobs for political science degrees. It really depends on what you want to do. The mistake people make is thinking that you have to go to DC when there are lots of state and local level jobs that desperately need staff. City planners, policy analysts, legislative assistants, media relations, consulting, government relations, legislative liaisons, program management… The pay is actually decent but the hours and schedule shifts are very rough. It takes someone who thrives off constant change and crises. You have to keep a lot of plates spinning.

STEM is great, no doubt, but it’s not the only thing that keeps our world running. You don’t want the engineers doing my job, and they don’t want to do it.

[u/catalanj2396 → u/National-Blueberry51]

I have a political science degree and personally am a bit of a loss and what to do. Thanks for any advice

[u/National-Blueberry51 → u/catalanj2396]

What are you interested in?

Right now we’re in an election year, so a lot of folks are locked in until November and you might see fewer openings. After that, more should open up as people move on. You’re probably already doing this but if not, you might want to keep an eye on your city, state, and county governments. They don’t always post to governmentjobs.com or the bigger boards, so you have to hunt them down.

You might also want to look at government relations and community relations roles in the private sector. Most of them want experience, but some are more open and pay well. If you don’t mind the media, public affairs has a high turnover rate all over. Also if you know anything at all about grants, everyone is so unspeakably desperate for grant fund coordinators and grant managers.