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> maybe I should find ways to spend my time (careers, hobbies) that work well with that

You're really close to getting it.

Students in school do not have this flexibility. They are required to be there, an 8th grader has no control and little influence over how their time is spent, or whether their tasks are a good match for their abilities.

So the only option in school is accommodation. There are some who continue to expect that into adulthood, but the vast majority of kids diagnosed with ADHD do not seek accommodation in their professional life.

Why? Because they do exactly what you propose. They find careers that match their disposition.

This is an important distinction. Indeed, many behaviors (ie attachment issues) that are maladaptive for an adult can be adaptive to a child and it is important to not change those without taking into account the environment a child is in.

An 8th grader may not have control over how their time is spent, but an attuned response from the people around them will help the child adapt.

A child experiencing: 'everyone around me can take this test, but i cannot, I must be dumb'

vs

A child experiencing: 'everyone around me can take this test, but i cannot, I must be dumb' and a caring figure in their life explaining to them 'you show traits of ADHD, this commonly makes it harder for you to focus on things like a math test. it really hurts when you fail the test and you wanted to get an A. Why don't you try again at the same problem at home, I believe in you. And maybe I will talk to your teacher about some extra time for the next test. We can't always get this, and even if you don't pass the test it's ok.'

I don't see how you spending time in ways that work well with your challenges is different from your job providing accomodations, except that if your employer is willing to work with you then you don't have to randomly roll the dice until you come up with an employer where things happen to work in whatever way you wanted.

It's not like one of the accomodations on the table is "not doing your job"

The difference reduces to:

1. The career I would like to have, and the life I desire to live, is my free choice. Once I've made that choice, the community's responsibility is to give me whatever I need so that I can apply myself to that career and live the life I imagine for myself.

vs

2. I have certain capabilities and limitations. The community has certain needs. If there's any way for me to do so, it's my responsibility to figure out how my capabilities can service the community's needs, respecting my limitations, and it's the community's reciprocal responsibility to make sure my contribution is fairly acknowledged so that I can live a secure and constructive life. I'll figure out the rest from there.

I see your point, but generally you don't need to roll the dice purely randomly. You generally do get some level of control over your career, your job and the people you work with. With white collar jobs employers are also generally relatively more willing to accommodate personal quirks as long as you get the actual job done.

The level control and flexibility is much smaller when you're a student.

Also, in school there's a lot of emphasis on how you get the job done. There's a prescribed process, and learning the prescribed process is more important (to some of the teachers apparently) than getting the actual job done. This is often where neurodivergent people struggle more in school and at work.

The difference is how you relate to the job providing accommodations. If you know certain employers are more willing and able to provide accommodations then you can consciously weigh that piece of information when considering a job/career field.

By consciously accepting who you are and how you work with the world, it lets you navigate better in it. For some people that is just feeling it out and ending up in a career that fits them. For some people, it might be getting a diagnosis. The end result might be the same.

What is your personal experience here?

> It also makes discourse hard because the (this is causing me to truly not be able to function) gets mixed in with the (this is a way that my brain behaves, but I can mostly live a life).

They're both two sides of the same coin though. You can get a neurodivergent person to a level that they're able to function in life, but they won't thrive or be happy.

Do we think it's enough for people do be a productive worker or do we actually want to give them the ability to live their life to its fullest?

> By pathologizing them, we(society) loose touch for what they mean in our life. It also makes discourse hard because the (this is causing me to truly not be able to function) gets mixed in with the (this is a way that my brain behaves, but I can mostly live a life).

As I recently learned, ADHD executive processing issues, rsd, and demand avoidance absolutely are a pathology and if you don't even know you have them it is like being hit by a truck when the requirements of your workplace (and your life) change under your feet.

There are situations in which I will use my accommodations in the future, but it has not been an everyday need for me.

Think of dyslexia. My dear friend is an all star aerospace engineer but he couldn't read his tests in college, so he used the extended test proctoring. In the workplace he needs to receive a report, then read it and meet after he has spent appropriate time on it. This is an accommodation. It is required.

Being diagnosed with a learning disability or other type of neuro-divergency does not automatically entitle someone to special treatment. The vast majority of that 38% are likely just "diagnosed" people who are asking for no special treatment at all.

Hmm ..the irony is that jobs that require the least amount of credentials have the least accommodations. White collar jobs, especially in tech, seem to have so many accommodations or delays and extra time. Think how often employees come in late or delay work. HR exists to accommodate these requests. College, and school in general, has far fewer accommodations and flexibility than seen in most work environments, save for low-skilled jobs where puantiality is necessary.

Saying blue collar work is "low-skilled" is probably inaccurate, I think the important distinction is that most blue collar work requires the person sitting at some physical location doing stuff, while significant amount of white collar jobs have a lower physical presence required.

Like if you work at an assembly line making widgets, the upper bound of productive work you do is proportional to the time you're physically there, so in this aspect it makes more sense for the employer to use that as a metric. In contrast a lot of tech jobs can be done remotely, sometimes if you're trying to solve a particularly nasty problem you don't even need an internet connection while you're thinking deeply about it.