One of the PhD students who was working in the lab as a demonstrator saw me doing something dangerous for the fun of it (as opposed to it being instructions from the lab book) and took it so seriously he told me to "get the f**k out!" and was dead set on me getting kicked out of the lab. I didn't do a very good job of explaining myself to him and ended up just getting in an argument and pissing him off but when I explained the matter to the lab tech he didn't even see the need to give me a warning let alone kick me out but this demonstrator was too angry to let it go especially after I told him to calm down. He was planning on getting the head of the lab to reevaluate whether I should be kicked out or not. At one point or another my friend told him that I meant no harm and that I have ADHD and the lab demonstrator said "he seems a bit autistic too" so my friend tells him that I have HFA and then the demonstrator said he wouldn't have tried to kick me out if he'd known. He even apologised to me about it. Since he was able to identify autism traits hes clearly researched the matter so I'm guessing hes on the spectrum too. I'm fairly surprised but at the same time I have a bit of an idea what might be going on here. Maybe he thought that I had a bad attitude due to the way I present myself but knowing that I'm on the spectrum he can see that I just appear to have a bad attitude because my motor coordination isn't the greatest and my social skills are terrible.
12 Apr 2011, 2:44 pm
