Lectures and Homework are Poisonous

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I'm not going to explain everything right now but the first mistake I made was allowing my foster parent put me in a community college. Well actually it wasn't a choice; it was either that or stay at home all day and I chose community college because at least that place has internet, and at that time my choices were to either allow her to dictate everything that happens in my life or be cast out into the streets homeless (the latter was the choice I eventually made, and I do not regret it one bit). I have had high ambitions since high school to go to a decent university to study physics and maybe math and other science related subjects, but they did not even offer basic classes in such subjects (at the transfer into that field level anyway) at the school in the area. The only exception was a general chemistry class, but that was a total letdown. Everything that was taught in that class was something I remembered in high school (one big difference between NTs and Aspies is that our long term memory has the shelf life of bismuth, which has a half-life a billion times as long as the age of the universe by the way, but this is offset by our poor short-term memory). The only thing I learned all year was what a rubber policeman is. I'm serious. (Don't get excited; that's just a little spatula you use to scrape stuff out of beakers.) I was the only student to get an A in that class, despite having no textbook, barely paying attention in lectures and not doing the homework, ok it was an A minus but that is because my performance in lab exercises tends to be mediocre, I hate labs and the social hands-on element to it and the performing of pointless experiments that can easily be done in the head.

And then I was cast out into the streets homeless and I went to go live with a friend and very next semester I transferred to a four year school. But it was a four year school that only had physics minors, no majors, and the physics class was so easy I got an A (no minus) without even doing the homework. I could figure out most of the problems that I had never done before in the time it took to take the test, and I only got points off for not drawing diagrams (I was, as always, incredibly surprised that I didn't get the answer completely wrong by some ADHD error of some sort). They made me retake calculus I (the high school I went to did not offer credit or AP exams that my foster parent wouldn't have paid for anyway) and I only got an A minus because of said ADHD errors, it was too much trouble for me to get disability services approval to have extra test time and it seems unfair anyway; it's the NEUROTYPICAL people that are disabled when it comes to math.

I grew depressed over the semester, bored because of easy class material, yet too bogged down by it to study harder stuff or even the easy stuff I was given in my spare time. I burned out all my concentration attending lectures (never bothered to ask if attendance was mandatory, if not I would have skipped and just studied in my spare time) I very nearly quit with only a month or so of school left (my long-lost father on the other side of the country found me over the internet and I had plans to move over there to live with him after school was finished) sobbing and afraid my grades would be way worse than I later found out they were and requesting a medical withdrawal but I stayed because I took out a loan to go there (a loan for such easy material what a rip off!).

After I moved I was dismayed to find out that since I already had a year's worth of college credits I wasn't allowed to apply as a freshman at the schools in this state and yet I didn't have enough to apply as a transfer, so my only choice was to go to community college. So I did, but I was so busy worrying about other important things such as transferring the next year and starting a math competition and a physics club (which very few people wanted to join but I knew I needed to be president of a club in order to transfer into a good college because my transcripts came in too late for me to qualify for a transfer admission guarantee program and one a**hole even quit because he thought I was starting the club for the wrong reasons and told me so and maybe he was right...) and I was still new to the internet which also got in the way of my studies (did I mention I was internet deprived at my foster home?) and the material in the classes really WAS easy - but I got D's and high F's on the tests. Why? I couldn't concentrate on studying because the lecture periods burned out all of my concentration (I only have so much concentration in one day and I wasn't on drugs for it yet, and I was reluctant to try anyway), I couldn't get special ed services, who required more paperwork than I had, and I made lots of minor mistakes on the tests. Also the HOMEWORK. It was required for credit. That puts me into a mental state where I burn out my daily quota of concentration on getting it done before the deadline instead of learning the material. Which wastes what little bit of energy you have left after listening to a lecture, which makes me tired even though I didn't pay attention or do anything too tiring.

I don't learn well from lectures. A concept that is easily digested in a few minutes while reading it and thinking it over in a book will be made to seem SOOOO HARD when a human being is explaining it to you. The social aspect of lectures gets in the way. They are designed to clarify the main point to neurotypicals, simultaneously obfuscating it for Aspies, at least in my case; I can easily extrapolate the info from reading a book or looking at an already worked out problem, running the steps through in my head and overanalyzing it until I understand how to use it and what it's for and how to do it. If I listen to a lecture then it will pop up in my head and disrupt my thoughts and distract me, and my long term memory will come at a disadvantage because of how long it will take to unlearn bad ideas and dysfunctional, faulty info.

Speaking people does not encode well for me for math or science lectures. As a matter of fact I do not even see the point of giving lectures in such subjects. History can be fun to lecture about, but math, science... I naturally just figure it out on my own, when not pressured with other things on my mind. Lecturing only disrupts the deep thought process. I don't understand math in terms of English; I understand it visually, with the gaps in my limited spatial ability filled in by abstract logic (words and symbols are visual to me too; I am hyperfluent in English and have a photographic memory for words, but it takes a while to translate it into math and sometimes the way it is described in English doesn't translate well into my mind).

So anyway I was freaking out, especially with the counselors absent at a meeting (as USUAL) or something, so I did something that they thought was suicidal and they sent me to the nuthouse ER for two days. Then they told me they were going to withdraw me until I was 'stable', to which I said 'Good riddance!' since I had been wavering between dropping out and staying for the past month anyway. This was all two years ago, and since then I have studied way beyond what is taught at that school on my own.

I want to know, is there a way I can get credit for this, catch someone's eye and get a scholarship into a real school? Or skip straight to grad school? The entire thought of going through financial aid again and applying and registering and all that terrifies me, it's more stressful than school itself, how can you concentrate with that hanging over your head? Can I just invent stuff and make money that way to fund my ideas or will they just regard me as a fringe scientist if I don't go to a real school, or will I just not have enough money to patent stuff? I hate being around stupid people and condescending professors and having my thoughts and imagination disrupted and I am crying just remembering all of this and I am probably more talented at art and writing than I am at science anyway but I don't want to go to college for such easy subjects and I think science and math if done RIGHT is the highest form of art anyway, the other crap I only do as hobbies (I actually won a first place scholarship in an essay writing contest, but it was only $1000, I spent it on food and bills, and the website that showed it is deleted).