Sleep Issues / Finding High School Valuable

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I am in my senior year of high school and I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was around 5. Recently, several other family members have been diagnosed with Aspergers or think they may have it. (myself included) Some of them thought I should ask about the issues I am having with school on this site, so here goes.

Sleep issues:

My sleep patterns have always been very irregular. Sometimes I will sleep as much as 20 hours, and I go nights without sleep on a regular basis. Not always because I just lay there awake, but because I don't start to feel sleepy until around 18 hours of activity or more. By then I have to stay awake because I will miss school if I fall asleep.
I have been through several different medications and none of them have worked too well, except the one that simply knocks me unconscious.

I have always had difficulties getting up in the mornings ever since my parents gave me the responsibility of doing so on my own at the start of middle school. However, over the past few years it has been getting progressively worse. (usually more so toward the end of the year)
I have tried countless techniques to get myself up out of bed, including: move alarm clock to other side of room, use up to 5 alarm clocks at once, really loud "sonic boom" alarm clock, sun lamp on a electronic timer, exc.
All of these things usually fail to get me up when I need to. For the alarm clocks, I just get up and turn them off, frequently without me being conscious of doing so. For the times when I am conscious, its like going back to sleep is on the top of my list of priorities; Nothing else matters. Sometimes my very irritated mother will come and get me up, but really it isn't her responsibility to do so. Not to mention I won't always have her to wake me up.


Valuing school:

Recently I realized that I do not find what school has to offer valuable. I have a commute of an hour and a half one way to get to school, and I don't feel that I am learning anything useful. I am told that employers will not hire without a high school diploma, however on a day to day basis I don't feel that getting a piece of paper is worth all the effort required.

That isn't to say that I am just some lazy free loader. I do lots of productive things on my own time. It's just that I am actually interested in these things, and therefore spend (sometimes) 10 hour or more sessions learning about and doing them. When I go to school I just am not interested because I feel that I already know what is being offered or that what is being offered won't ever apply to the career path that I am planning on taking. In fact, the things I am learning about on my own time right now will be far more useful than what school is offering. ( algorithms, perlin noise, programming, exc )


Both of these issues combined have made it really hard for me the past semester. I feel like I am stuck in life right now. The main questions I have, i guess, are:

How can I force myself to be more interested in the topics that school is trying to teach me?
Any ideas on how to get up in the mornings?
Any other advice?


Thanks in advance!

I have your problem. I did the same things in high school, in fact I was only saved expulsion because the school counsellor who was forced on me thought it stemmed from 'family problems'. Ninth grade I missed 463 classes. I also passed art.

There is no concievable way to switch into this ridiculous system of rules and regulations now that you have your own. Its all just more of guidelines, made up for the nine to fivers with families and responsibilities. You'll survive, you just have to bend your schedules around your sleep habits. In the end, you probably won't remember high school fondly. But you'll love university, when you're out of the 'system', and on to one you get to more or less pick yourself. Then, you can create your timetables, maybe you want to pull allnighters every second day; don't take classes tues and thurs. Or maybe take wednesday off; personally I'm in second year and I have no classes friday, and one class monday and wednesday. And I still have 21 credit hours this term, because I've used up some online options and I fill my workdays with things I look forward to doing.

Tough it out, invest in naps, anything up to 45 minutes doesn't initiate your deep rem sleep so you won't wake up feeling groggy, rather, refreshed. Theres science in that I just don't remember it. Also, a huge investment for me when I was in high school was working out; not only does it actually make you feel happier overall through natural body highs, (endorphins etc), if you do weightlifting you work tire your body out and create a naturally higher metabolism due to larger muscle mass constantly requiring nutrients. High to low intensity running/jogging/biking/swimming etc tends to also amplify the metabolism boosting factor by emulating sport activity, say you warmup 5, run fast 1m, 60%2m, top speed 1m, 60% 1m, fast 1m, then cooldown 5m. That is way better for you than just running at 80% for 10 minutes or 15 or whatever because it keeps your body working and your metabolism boosted longer. All of which tires your body out and helps urge you to sleep more often. Which is ideal.

You might also be interested in hammocks. Not the ones with the spreader bars, but straight simple hammocks. They've been known to help with insomnia, and tend to induce sleep faster than beds. People will say it ruins your back but most people also assume all hammocks have spreader bars, which in fact do ruin your back. The nest ones, that sort of look like bean pods or cocoons; those are the ticket.

Anyway in the long run, if thats your schedule, it'll be hard to alter. The fact is you know yourself better than anyone else knows you, so don't bother ascribing to any preconcieved notions of when you should sleep, how much or any of that other bollocks. Its been studied recently that there are actually different types of sleepers, who naturally tend to this style of sleep patterns and can get by on four hours or less on todays schedule without needing coffee or being at an energy loss.

Theres nothing wrong with you.

"What is so deceptive about the state of mind of the members of a society is the 'consensual validation' of their concepts. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health. Just as there is a 'folie a deux' there is a 'folie a millions.' The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make them virtuous, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make them sane"