Bipolar, ADHD, and my school woes.

School has been very challenging for me. It isn’t my intelligence or academic abilities. I get A’s in almost every class I complete. Rather, it’s my mental health issues. I live with a persistently difficult to treat form of bipolar. I am a rapid cycler with mixed episodes and psychosis. The best I’ve been able to do is partial remission. When I go to school, I either get depressed and fall too far behind, or I get manic and abruptly discontinue my coursework to pursue another project. My interests are always changing, and my motivation, focus, and organization are highly inconsistent. I have 15 withdrawals on my transcript, next to about a dozen A’s.

Thus far my favorite classes were the 200 level accounting sequence. I found it fun, fascinating, and challenging. I was very good at it; a natural. I never got less than a 90% on any homework assignment or exam. My average score was anywhere from 95-100%. I absolutely rocked those classes.

From what I understand, accounting can be a very lucrative and rewarding career. Working for the Big 4 is stress that I don’t need, but a small CPA firm or even being a staff accountant for a mid-size company would be great. I do have doubts about my functionality in this position. A manic tax season would be a breeze. Depressed would be another story.

What can I do at this point to get through school? How can I overcome these barriers to my success?

Thanks for reading.

Can you take your courses in a more compact setting? some schools have the block system where you do one course for 3 weeks. Others have online classes where you could do it that way on your own.