Why does this have to happen to me in college??

Post Reply New Topic

I am doing a one year course learning Photography, then hopefully going to normal college for 4 years afterwards. But even though it only for one year, I did think that it would be a good way of getting to know people my own age and make new friends hopefully.

But what do i have instead? A 38-year old woman, who is a mother, with a mind and intelliangence of a 10 year old who keeps hanging with me. :/
On the first day we just got talking to people in the class and I just sat beside her in computer class. But I had to show her EVERYTHING on how to work the computer, she could not open the laptop right, I had to show her where the on button was, she tried typing her password where her username was, and when I told her to press the "Start" button on the desktop (and obviously I meant to click) she actually tried pressing the button on the screen with her thumb, like a touchscreen. I just sat there thinking "WTF?" I would love to know what work she showed at her interview as she simply cannot work a computer. What's even more annoying is that she would nudge you with her elbow and ask you to show her what to do, and it annoys me because she wont even try to look around the computer to see if she can do it herself, and also I miss so much of mine own work then showing her what to do, because no matter how many times you show her, it never sticks in her brain.

It is just so odd the way she acts, she hates being on her own and looking like a loner, so she gets me to accompany her everywhere if she needed to get something, but adults her age can get away with that, because no one notices if a mature person are on their own. So she is always hanging with me as well as chatting with the other young people. One guy in our class is 35, but keeps to himself, because I think he knows that he can talk to us, but can't mingle really with young adults and teens so he just does he own thing. But the woman is always talking and feeling the need to voice her opinion, and I can just see the others getting irriated with her. Also the first few days she kept banging on about how she cant wait to get a cup of coffee for lunchtime, and It just became annoying because, I and others, do not care, and she keeps talking about other pointless stuff too.

She finds the most normal stuff funny, like she kept nudging me and giggling at this techno music we were hearing from someones car as they drove past us when we were walking to the shop. I feebly laughed, but I just did not get what was so funny. Also If you ask her something and she answered, and then u respended a typical response like with an "Ah ok then" or "Thanks" she kinda keeps looking at you, and it puts me off and just smile or nod just to get her to stop. :/ She laughed at this guy's paragraph from an essay in class, and he said sarcastically "Yeah..hilarious.." and people sniggered at that, since they know how weird that was that she laughed, since his paragraph was not mean to be funny.

I am just annoyed now tbh, like why does this always happen to me? I have enough adults who act like children in my life, and I really thought this course could introduce me to new different people which it did, but it just that fact that I had to get the childish one AGAIN in my life.


I dunno if I need help or not, maybe I just want to hear if anybody else in in a similair situation or something?

Because you are not setting reasonable interpersonal boundaries. Let's take a look:



Actually you didn't have to. Once you realized she didn't know how to use her laptop; you could have nicely told her that teaching how to use a computer from scratch is too much to do and focus on what is presented in class yourself. You chose to help her instead of setting the reasonable boundary. (It's her responsibility to seek remedial help during non-class hours.)


When I want to pay attention to a presentation and the person next to me is interrupting that, I quietly move to another area of the classroom. If they ask why later; I nicely explain that I need to pay attention, uninterrupted to the presentation. You can set a boundary like that too.


You played along with her which encouraged the behavior. You don't have to encourage inappropriate stuff, but in that instance you chose to do just that. Here is an instance where you might ask yourself why you chose to do that. Your own answer to this question should be illuminating to you.

You have your own reasons for not setting appropriate boundaries and you will benefit from discovering them. In other words, there is some payoff for you in not setting them. Once you have discovered and admitted to yourself what the payoff is, then you can weigh the payoff against the consequences of the non-boundary setting.

Actually you didn't have to. Once you realized she didn't know how to use her laptop; you could have nicely told her that teaching how to use a computer from scratch is too much to do and focus on what is presented in class yourself. You chose to help her instead of setting the reasonable boundary. (It's her responsibility to seek remedial help during non-class hours.)


When I want to pay attention to a presentation and the person next to me is interrupting that, I quietly move to another area of the classroom. If they ask why later; I nicely explain that I need to pay attention, uninterrupted to the presentation. You can set a boundary like that too.


You played along with her which encouraged the behavior. You don't have to encourage inappropriate stuff, but in that instance you chose to do just that. Here is an instance where you might ask yourself why you chose to do that. Your own answer to this question should be illuminating to you.

You have your own reasons for not setting appropriate boundaries and you will benefit from discovering them. In other words, there is some payoff for you in not setting them. Once you have discovered and admitted to yourself what the payoff is, then you can weigh the payoff against the consequences of the non-boundary setting.[/quote]


But the thing is with the computer I had to, because if I didn't she would have gotten annoyed with me, and also even when sshe doesnt ask for help, she becomes annoying by muttering to herself on wondering how to do this and that, so I end up showing her just to shut her up.

If she keeps nudging you, just ask her if she could please not do that again because it's hard for you to concentrate on what you're doing. I don't know how you managed to deal with that I'd have jumped out of my seat repeatedly if someone kept nudging me. Like what MountainLaurel said, don't encourage her by laughing along. Just make a non-commital noise like mmhmm while continuing to look straight ahead at the presentation, or at your work and do not look over at her. From experience, this makes people stop talking to you in class after a while. And if she keeps bothering you for advice, just tell her that it would be a better idea if she were to consult the instructor/teacher. But be polite about it; she probably doesn't know she's bothering people and just wants to not be alone.

Good luck with dealing with this. If all else fails, move.

Maybe she's a cougar and has you in her sights.

Before replying specifically to your last post I want to address the underlying theme of your thread; illustrated in this sentence:

As you well know, there are wildly immature adults around almost everywhere scanning for someone to attach themselves to. So why do they choose you? The answer is that they don't just choose you, alone. They try it on whoever they get to first. And then if that doesn't work out for themselves, they move on and try it on the next person. They successfully attach to you because you allow it.

The immature folks I'm referring to aren't bad people and they desperately need some help. You may be in a position to help some of them and sometimes you may be inclined to be helpful. But you don't want them attached to you like marsupials.

So how can you remain helpful without having childish adults attach to you? You can do it by setting appropriate boundaries. Here's an example:


OK. This is a good first step. You chose not to set a boundary with her in the beginning, about the computer, because the payoff for you is that then she wouldn't be annoyed with you. (Can you see how already, things are twisted?: She'd be annoyed with you if you hadn't been willing to teach her, during class, how to use a computer.)

So, you're in class and the woman beside you can't open her computer and is making a fuss. You helpfully show her where the on button is. That's fine. But when you saw that she also didn't know where to type her user name and pass word, then you knew that she does not know how to use a PC at all. That was the instant that you started to go wrong. That's the instant you could have set a boundary with her.

At that point you could have stopped helping her and saved your self a whole lot of trouble. You cannot teach Personal Computing 101 while attending Photography 101. But clearly that's what she wanted you to do. Conclusion: she is seeking inappropriate help. You chose to continue helping her inappropriately; in order to avoid her being annoyed with you. You made a bad choice and it cost you enjoyment of the class you were enrolled in and the good social interaction it may have yielded.

There are any number of ways you could have halted her inappropriate interaction with you at that early point. You could have:
- Told her; Not now, the class is in session. Then completely ignored her. Eventually she most likely would have (appropriately) asked the instructor for help.
- Gotten the instructor's attention by saying; There's a problem here (pointing to the woman in need).
- Said, I can't hear the instructor and then move to another computer station.

In continuing to teach the woman how to use her computer in class you demonstrated to her that you are available for inappropriate interactions and she attached herself to you because that's easier for her than learning to seek appropriate help at appropriate times. (Backtracking to take Personal Computing 101 to learn PC then taking Photography.) Instead she will stammer along in Photography annoying everyone because she has you to help drag her along. The instructor may have been able to assist her in the transfer to the remedial course but that never happened because you made yourself available as her personal in-class tutor.

I am not trying to make you feel bad about what you did. I am trying to illustrate how setting appropriate interpersonal boundaries works. I only know this because I used to get caught up in bad situations with confused folks and intimately it cost me a lot, just as it does you. A good therapist pointed this out to me and helped me step-by-step to see my alternate choices. It was infuriating at first that I was to somehow being made responsible for bad situations with impossible people. But the point was for me to learn how to avoid getting ensnared in destructive interactions by me bowing out of any interactions the moment they became inappropriate. And I had to learn that occasionally it's OK to appear unhelpful when dealing with immature folks. Always pleasing immature folks became a not-good-enough payoff for me when it entailed inappropriate and destructive interactions with them.

I have a slightly ambivalent take on this, based on the original post and the responses, so bear with me.

Firstly, aren't you judging and categorising the woman in your class based on your own expectations? Isn't this the way we don't want other people to judge and categorise us? Take a step back from your internal judgement for a moment and look at it objectively. If you don't want other people in the class or in fact, in the world to look at you and pass judgement on the way you act and deal with things, stopping judging other people on the way they act is one of the really first steps. People - autistic people and non - show only parts of themselves to the outside world. It can be very frustrating if you are in company with someone who you feel you have nothing in common with, but that isn't a reason to denigrate her as a person. On the contrary, maybe you're focusing too much on your perceived negatives and incompatabilities, and not seeing her as a "person" but as a "problem", hence it's got blown out of proportion in your mind.

Onto the second thing - the interpersonal boundaries thing. I think that this is one of the areas we as autistic people fall apart, and we really do. We either have this subconscious need for social interaction that we drop our boundaries to everyone, or we are so rigidly involved in our perception of the situation that we forget to take into consideration the other people at the peripheries.

So basically, I don't think you did anything wrong in helping the woman in class with her computer. I think it was a kind and responsible thing to do.

If she nudges you in the presentations and you don't like it, sitting away from her in future classes is a good idea, but it's also a bit...abrupt. You could simply ignore her actions. If she thinks you're so focused on the talk you're not going to be distracted, she'll give up. There's no point in doing something that gets no reaction, and maybe she'll start to focus on the class stuff instead. Or you could try asking her, nicely, to stop nudging you because you're really trying to concentrate and are easily distracted. You can set boundaries and rules without snubbing her or hurting her feelings, and I think if you ended up having an argument with her about it, probably you would wind up getting emotionally hurt as well.

If you want to talk to other people in your class, try and do so. It doesn't matter if she is there or not - she is not the barrier to you speaking to them. There's this issue with autism and speaking to more than one person at once, and the risk of forming patterns of speaking only to that person, but you are the only one who can break that pattern and you need to do it.

If you talk to someone else about something in the class, then that's a safe start topic in which others can respond. If you get involved in conversations with other people in the class, maybe she will do the same thing. It's also possible that she feels you're clinging to her, or she's reacting too much as a mother wanting to help a younger person, and not realising you're uncomfortable with it. I wouldn't advise taking it up with her directly since that could end badly - but a few small adjustments will improve things, I'm sure.

At the very final extreme, if its really bothering you and you don't know what to do about it, speak to your class convener. Maybe they can help you by putting you in separate discussion groups from her, or by doing some constructive seating that takes the "blame" element away from you. I would advise you try to settle it yourself, though, because otherwise it's highly likely you'll wind up in a similar situation in future.

MountainLaurel also has some really sensible suggestions in the post above

If you have a friend in that class, you should try to sit next to them. I had to sit next to this pretentious girl first semester who always asked me for help and browse the web when she shouldn't (on a school computer no less). If she tries to follow you, make sure the friend is sitting next to her and not you (power of the edge seat).

How about staying outside the class until everyone is inside and the prof. arrives.

That way you can go in and take whatever seat is open. Chances are it wont be near her.

My mom is seriously mentally ill with something in between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She often acts like this. At other times she's brilliant. I'll be the first to admit that she can be pretty irritating, but she can't help it when she's irritating. Like another poster was alluding, people with behavior like this have right to be themselves without being forced to conform to social norms, just like people on the spectrum. And I'm not saying that this lady is mentally ill. Who knows what her deal is.

It really is best to politely, but clearly, state that she is disturbing your concentration and should ask for help from the professor. And don't sit near her.

She has actually dropped out of the course now, so I don't have to worry anymore. I do miss her in a sense, because she is a nice person, but really it would have been a waste of a year for her, because she would have failed everything to do with computers.