A Gaffe To End All Gaffes

I diagnosed myself with ADHD after it was featured in an issue of Time and I crossed off all the symptoms on the checklist provided. I had considered getting a prescription for adderall but after bringing it up with my parents, they told me that only white people needed drugs to do well in school.

I didn't pay attention to the rest of my father's speech but the gist was this: If I couldn't focus in calculus without the aid of amphetamines, I would have to take this personal failure in stride and somehow live with myself for getting a B and shaming the family name.

In college I discovered the miracle of using my laptop during class. This actually did nothing to help me focus but at least I wasn't falling asleep in the middle of a lecture hall with my mouth open.

In fact, using a laptop only worsened my ADHD. I overstimulated my mind with sporcle quizzes and now I am completely dependent on them to stay awake. Without the adrenaline rush from trying to remember all the capitals of Africa in under 6 minutes, I feel impossibly bored and physically stifled, like my brain had become a black hole sucking every powerpoint presentation into a dark dimension and the intense gravitational pull was forcing my eyelids to close.

THE TRUTH IS I could have paid attention in my banking class. The topics are semi-interesting (somewhere between naked male celebs and the Huffington Post) and this is the field where I'm half-heartedly trying to get a job. But I stopped caring about all that after the first day when the cute boy sitting in front of me suddenly started to look like Paul Walker and then I HAD to Google all the films Paul Walker has been in.

Sometimes I will do things on my laptop so I feel like my lack of focus is in the name of productivity. Answer all my emails. Pay all my rent. Clean up ALL THE desktop icons. So last Monday, I was taking pictures from my desktop that I had made for the last post and putting them in my "Super Secret Blog Folder." I was dragging images carefully one at a time to the top of the folder because the pictures at the bottom of the folder are porn. After dragging the last picture, the folder miraculously scrolled down to the bottom, revealing naked pictures of Paul Donahoe and a huge penis next to a bottle of Powerade.

It was only open for a second but I was sitting in the second row (behind Paul Walker) so pretty much everyone in the class (minus Paul Walker) probably saw it. And the issue isn't so much that I am annoyed that everyone in he classroom knows that I am gay, it's the fact that they all know I am obsessed with gay porn. Subtle, I know, yet important.

Two days later I had a presentation in that class about asset-backed securities. Inwardly, I was terrified that somebody would ask me a question at the end like, "Why do you have gay porn on your computer?" or "Are you a top or a bottom?"

They never did.

I'm not going to bring my laptop to class anymore. It would be impossible for me to focus on surfing the internet while thinking about all the people behind me who know about my wrestler/large penis fetish.