College Life: 3 Tools to Help Students with ADHD
ADHD brains can make a smooth transition to college life with high-tech solutions that will help them wake up, calm down, and set limits.
College life beckons with its promises of independence, new friendships, all-nighters, and (depending on your meal plan) all-you-can-eat soft serve ice cream. Along with the perks come new responsibilities, expectations, and challenges that increase two-fold when you have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The following three tools are a must-have to help ADHD brains make a smooth transition to college life.
College Life Wake-Up Call
When a traditional alarm clock fails to lure you out of your slumber, consider using an alarm clock — with legs.
Clocky
(amazon.com; $39.99) (#CommissionsEarned)
Clocky is an alarm clock that runs away if you don’t get out of bed. When the alarm sounds, Clocky will wait for you to get up. If you snooze, the clock will roll off of your nightstand, around the room, and even hide to make sure you get up on time. Invented by an MIT alum, Clocky is sure to get even the deepest sleepers to their 8 a.m. classes.
College Life Calm-Down Solution
When you’re wired, tired, and can’t turn down the volume on anxious thoughts at bedtime, here’s an app to put your mind at peace.
White Noise
(iOS; itunes.apple.com; Android; play.google.com; $.99)
Well reviewed by users, the White Noise app features relaxing tracks from soothing “beach waves crashing” and “chimes chiming” to the louder “thunderstorm” and “extreme rain pouring.” With options ranging from the monotonous “airplane travel” to the ticking “grandfather clock,” college freshman with ADHD are sure to find a sound to their liking. You can download free sounds from the White Noise Market, create playlists, and mix tunes to maximize your relaxation.
College Life Distraction Blocker
It’s a way of life in college: Whiling away an hour or three or all night online when you should be finishing your U.S. history paper or reading a chapter in The Norton Anthology of American Literature. College undergrads with ADHD might be prone to procrastination, but one application can help end that habit.
Freedom
(Windows, Mac; freedom.to; starts at $2.42/month)
The goal of Freedom is simple — to free us from the biggest distraction in most college students’ lives: the internet. Freedom can block an online connection for up to eight hours. The timer runs via active computing minutes only, to prevent users from putting a computer to sleep in the hopes that the timer will run itself down. If social media is your Achilles heel, Freedom will also keep you honest by blocking connections to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites that take you away from your schoolwork. Use it and prosper.
College Life with ADHD: Next Steps
- Read: The College Survival Guide for Students with ADHD
- Watch: Help For College Students with ADHD
- Download: The Executive Function Questionnaire for Teens and Parents
#CommissionsEarned As an Amazon Associate, ADDitude earns a commission from qualifying purchases made by ADDitude readers on the affiliate links we share. However, all products linked in the ADDitude Store have been independently selected by our editors and/or recommended by our readers. Please note that all names, models, prices, links, and specifications were accurate and items were in stock at the time of this article’s last update on June 27, 2022.
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