<p>I know a lot of people claim to have OCD now-a-days in regard to little things like wanting a surface cleaned or objects stacked in a line, but I actually have it pretty bad and it really has impacted my grades. Up until about 11th grade I would frequently have anxiety attacks in my classrooms over things such as seating arrangements, desks not all facing the same way, and most notably handwriting. I just can't do it. I would spend the whole period focusing on one sentence when I was suppose to compose a whole essay. Choosing words wasn't the problem because I had no trouble typing essays. I just couldn't get over the fact that if I wrote the same letter twice that they wouldn't look the same. This made me struggle in just about every subject because I couldn't take notes, complete worksheets, or show my work in math. In 8th grade I began bringing my laptop to school, which helped a little bit, but not much because the curriculum was not technologically integrated. Finally, in the summer before 10th grade, my parents allowed my therapist to put me on medication to help with this. Its results weren't evident right away, and granted it took a while to find the right dosage, but by the end of sophomore year I was no longer struggling as much. The medication along with the help of an iPad helped me obtain a 3.8 my junior year, the best grades I have ever had. I am a senior now applying to college and I want to write about this because severely affects my transcripts, but my parents insist that it would be unwise to mention this because colleges will consequently "label me" and not admit me. My therapist and I disagree with this because just about every teenager is on medication for something these days, and I really shouldn't be penalized for something that isn't my fault without even having the opportunity to explain myself. So my question is would colleges really look at something like this negatively, even more so than my 3.2 GPA?
This is primarily directed at University of Washington. I really wanna go there and I went and visited the campus last spring break. I met with and talked to a counselor in my intended major (industrial engineering) and I briefly mentioned this and she seemed to totally understand. This is especially important because I didn't discover my love of math until 10th grade when I started actually being able to show my work.</p>