16 Feb 2006, 9:30 am
Man, I wish I'd found this site before. My name is Greg (pretty obviously) I'm 17, living in the UK.
I've always been a bit isolated growing up. I remember as a kid I used to insist other children follow my 'rules' if I got them to play and when they didn't I'd often get frustrated or just cry. Dinner ladies and so on tried to get me to socialise but eventually they kinda got tired of it, and I don't blame them. I wasn't the easiest kid 
As a result, I only really had a friend after 3 years at school, at which point I moved school and started over.
At secondary school (for those in the US, that's around 11 years old) I maintained a friendship with one person I'd known from primary school. He was also quite 'different' compared to most, having a lot of oddities. Though, most lunchtimes in my free time I just sat in the library or classroom whittling away my time. I didn't make any other friends until around 14, at which point my friend managed to initiate me into a small group of around 5 people who hung around most lunchtimes.
Around 15 my mum told me she thought I might have Aspergers. I was pretty shocked, but she'd been looking into it since I was a child and apparently I'd never had a real diagnosis. I've had assessments since then, and although I'm not 'fully' Aspergers, I have most aspects of it. Most notably I take things less literally, I can understand other people's feelings more than 'full' Aspies. I have difficulty with socialising (until my dad made me, I'd never keep eye contact when talking to someone, it just makes me uncomfortable), I'm told my voice is very 'monotone' (just the other week someone said 'wow, you sound so excited 
') and a load of other things I forget/you've probably already heard a million times. I should also mention I have Dyspraxia, which results in my contempt for sports
To discard all modesty, I'm a pretty intelligent person. As a young child I read books obsessively, and I can write English a lot better than I can speak it. I always had a very high reading level, I recently found something I wrote when I was 10 and my standard of writing pretty much hasn't improved There's a point to this. I do really well in exams, but my problem is homework/coursework. I just can't concentrate on it. What I produce is of a high quality, but there's nowhere near enough of it. I had two weeks recently to do a piece of coursework, and though it nagged at my mind day and night, I couldn't get it done. I sat down with it and couldn't write, all that happened was that I got a headache. It's incredibly frustrating.
I started doing A-levels at 16 at my secondary school, and after a year I was kicked out with little warning. Though my overall results were good, they hated chasing me up for coursework and pretty much just said I was lazy (my Aspergers diagnosis was only going on at the time). This continues to be a subject of great upset for me, seeing as I left behind all the friends I'd made. I still don't have any friends at my new college. I managed to get into a different college to continue my A-levels, and the staff have been a lot more supportive, but I pretty much don't have any friends (let alone a girlfriend 
) and coursework is still a major issue.
So yeah, at the moment I'm studying Psychology, English Language and English Literature at A2 level (with Critical Thinking at AS). I'm hoping to become a Games Journalist (and secretly a fiction writer).
I've missed out a lot of stuff but I've also probably bored you stiff - I've been dying to find somewhere to write this for a long time (I really wish I'd found this site before). I'll finish by saying Hi. 
16 Feb 2006, 9:50 am
