Blake E.S. Taylor

I juggled ADHD—along with my math and chemistry equations—in school. Then I discovered that a Tablet PC, coupled with Microsoft OneNote, was the answer to my organizational nightmare.

Note-taking emergency

I sat in my 11th grade calculus class and wondered how I would cope with all the equations. My teacher was quickly writing on the board and naming the concepts. I frantically copied down the calculations with a mechanical pencil but ran out of lead and had to replace it. Later, as I erased some of the numbers, the pencil smudged on my notebook paper. I suddenly realized that my tried and true note-taking routines, for dealing with my ADHD and its characteristic trait of disorganization, weren’t working as well as they used to. It’s not that I found the math much harder than the pre-calculus or analytical geometry, but the pace was quicker, there were many more calculations, they were a lot more complex, and there was more room for error. This spells disaster for one with ADHD. One calculus problem, in fact, could take several pages to solve and my repeated erasures and the resulting smudges were making the problem — and its solution — impossible to decipher. My old system clearly wasn’t working, and I had to find a new way to get organized fast.

ADHD, briefly

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neurological condition that affects over four million young people and about three times as many adults in the U.S. It is characterized by distractibility and disorganization and oftentimes hyperactivity. If a person does not learn how to structure themselves and their work, it can make doing school work or other assignments almost impossible, regardless of their intelligence.

Tablet PC to the rescue

The following day, I noticed a classmate sitting in front of me actually writing his notes on the screen of his laptop computer! Who would ever think that possible? Using a laptop as a true notebook! I was captivated by the Tablet PC and the ease with which my classmate was taking notes.

I watched closely, and a little skeptically. What was the accuracy of the tablet’s pen-detecting capabilities on the screen? I was afraid that it would be like the grocery store credit card readers that you sign and your signature ends up looking like slash marks on a screen. But the clarity on this tablet was fine and accurate.

I gathered up my allowance money and rushed out to buy a Tablet PC and, like my classmate, loaded it with Microsoft OneNote. I couldn’t believe how it mimicked the natural style of writing on a piece of paper. It was that easy. And furthermore, I could use the highlighter to mark my notes in different colors and thickness. No more erase marks. No more smudges. No more failing mechanical pencils. Suddenly, I could take my Calculus notes, file and organize them. It worked especially well for my Biology and Chemistry classes with their diagrams of molecules and long chemical reaction equations. And I could just print all my notes out after I was finished. Now it didn’t matter how cruel the calculations were, I could write an infinite number of digital pages, and could always go back, edit, highlight, and cut and paste with no problem.

And so with the advent of OneNote on the Tablet PC, I not only defeated disorganization in the classroom but also became super organized. And so with the use of technology, I was able to turn the problem side of ADHD, disorganization, into its exact opposite: super-organization. Oh, and I got an A in the class!

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About the author

At 19, Blake E.S. Taylor, a UC Berkeley sophomore, is the youngest person to write about living with ADHD. Check out his memoir ADHD & Me – what I learned from lighting fires at the dinner table (New Harbinger Publications, 2008). Blake's personal Web site is www.youngwithadhd.com.