Academic difficulties with autism

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At least this time I can recognize that you are talking about math...

I have three children on the spectrum and writing issues have been significant. The fight to get the most simply of accommodations is unbelievable. Instead, the suggestion has been to move the kids into easier classes.

That's the kind of math I'm good at. I can use a visual model in my head to explain pretty much any abstraction. Even topological theorems in 4 dimensions that are supposedly impossible to visualize make some kind of visual sense to me.

In school I always had difficulty with writing stories and open-ended projects. I could only do it if I picked a subject that interested me. Otherwise I didn't even know how to start. I found work that had a definite right or wrong answer much less stressful than forced creativity. Not that I can't be creative. It just has to be on my own terms or I run into a massive mental block that brings me completely to my knees. In middle school I remember simply not doing certain projects and having zero marks.

I always hated summaries as well. A big problem I have with is that I'm slow as hell. Though I think with the time I've spend on internet message boards since 2000 or so I've improved a lot through shear practice.

I always have issue with the time limit on the writing portion of standardized tests. Luckily I was able to get time-and-a-half on some tests but I felt a bit guilty about it as most of the time they gave time-and-a-half for ALL sections of the test (which I certainly didn't need) rather than just the writing portion.

Just out of curiousity, has anyone experienced problems trying to get accommodations at a college level?

I ask, because I've been through a pretty bad time trying to get accommodations. I managed to go without any help for two years, until I reached a point where I couldn't cope any longer, and had to drop out for a year. When I came back, I decided that I needed some basic accommodations if I was going to make it through the remainder of the degree. However, there are some people who have questioned whether I am a disability student due to the fact that I have above average marks. It has even been implied that I am 'using' my AS to get accommodations, so I can get higher marks.

ADHD here... for me, the biggest challenge was staying interested in the subject long enough to actually study or do the work. If I liked the subject, I would do the work. If I didn't, I would do the absolute minimum.

I also have the classic "working memory" deficit. Anything that requires sustained attention is difficult, most notably mental math. I can do long calculations, but I am prone to careless errors and I also have a tendency to misread my own handwriting.

I only discovered recently that I have Irlen Syndrome which is very common with ASD. I always loved learning but hated reading because it was just SO tiring trying to keep the words from sliding off the pages. I knew I didn't have dyslexia (my spelling is awesome and I wasn't missing words/letters) but entire sections of text would disappear when I looked directly at it, or move up and down making it impossible to follow a line.

I have always been a very slow reader and so had trouble keeping up with school text deadlines and reading aloud in classes. The cognitive exhaustion from reading more than a couple of pages at a time was immense.

Last month I got a pink transparency to put over my pages as I read books, and for the first time in my life I am reading books by choice. Its amazing and exciting and now I can't stop

Isn't that kinda the whole point of accommodations?

Working in groups and being social with fellow students.

Not necessarily. My impression is that accommodations are supposed to be used to create a more equal playing field between the disabled and the non-disabled. That may or may not result in higher marks. For example, one of my impairments is that I process information at a ridiculously slow rate, which affects all aspects of my academic work. Without accommodations, I have had to work twenty times harder than other high achieving non-disabled students to achieve the same marks, which is not sustainable over an entire degree. If you add in the fact that I have GAD, have to deal with a university system not designed for someone like me, and a campus environment I find very overwhelming, you can see why I get burned out very quickly.

Accommodations (in this case, some flexibility of deadlines) allow me to complete papers to the same level without killing myself in the process to get things done on time. I think this is fair, but apparently, others don’t. The attitude I detect is that disability students are, by definition, low achievers, who should not aspire to do any notable achievement. Frankly, that sucks.

It has also been suggested to me that it is unfair I should receive any accommodations because other non-disabled students have ‘problems’ which may affect their ability to study. Sadly, we are not alone in dealing with this kind of attitude. I recall reading a fairly well publicised story in a newspaper last year, related to an adult with cerebral palsy. The guy explained the impact his disability had had on his life (which was significant). A large number of people (400 plus) wrote in to the media outlet in response, a number of them criticising this guy for ‘using’ his disability as an ‘excuse’ for his disability-related problems(!). Others basically belittled his condition by claiming that ‘everyone’ is ‘different’, and that ‘everyone’ has problems they have to deal with in life.

I can completely relate to this. I went for a meeting a couple days ago, and the person in the office was actually quite rude to me. She clearly has a bias against Aspergers students, and would have been more openminded if my official diagnosis was autism instead. I did manage to get a private exam room, but that is all. She said she doesn't see a need to accommodate me for anything also because my grades are quite good. Yes, my grades ARE quite good; however, they are not my highest potential. I score less than I could be because of my disability. I have a lot of sensory issues and need extra time on exams. She refused to give me that. I took a transfer credit at another school last winter. They, without hesitation, gave me time and a half. I completed the exam strongly, and it took me the entire 4 1/2 hours to do so. Had I only been given 3 hours I would have failed. This is because I was in a smaller room (rather than a private one), with someone who coughed incessently. I found it really loud, and could not adequately collect my thoughts until he left. If I hadn't had the extra time, I would not have even been half finished. I also sometimes need extra time on assignments, but not always. And I need considerations to be taken into account when evaluating my participation mark. The woman was very rude and denied that I needed anything at all but a private room. I am really very frustrated right now. I was planning on going to this school for my Masters as well, but if they cannot accommodate me, well, a Masters is only going to be even more difficult, so I may have to look elsewhere.

I was homeschooled until college, so learning was more tailored towards what I needed. In college I had the highest marks in my graduating class, so I can't say I had any real problems. But the sensory thing was annoying for the first two years, and that each class was in a different classroom and sometimes in a different building. I didn't like the change and the crowds of people going from one place to the other. I still don't like going on main campus much. On the business campus we had one building that I was used to because my dad teaches there, and a lot of the time the classes were in the same room.

I didn't do well in algebra, but I literally slept through Statistics and made an A.

Paying attention was hard. After about 30 minutes I was gone. Another thing I'm not good at is giving the professor the answer they want in areas that are subjective. Like I can see three or four possibilities and the professor only wants the one that he told us about in class, but of course I wasn't listening in class and just studied the book, so I know the subject matter too well and get confused that way. But I don't like talking so I never ask questions.

Talking to professors is hard, even when you know they are giving you an award or something like that. The parent's don't understand the difficulty and blame my one low mark on not talking to the professor, but they don't know how hard that would have been for me.

It took me a lot of work to get to where I could summarize sometimes. Most of the time I just go on and on. I have a terrible time writing reviews or bios.

Unless I have no energy, like I often do lately, in which case I write very short posts that are woefully incomplete.

I had so many difficulties from autism + ADHD. Throw in dysgraphia to make handwriting painful and slow and it was a recipe for constantly getting poor grades despite the effort I put into them. Plus sometimes even failing at putting in the effort and getting distracted by shinier things (like novels or games). Or getting into more abstract subjects and not understanding what I was hearing. Or as a teenager, not having the coordination to learn how to type despite working at it. Not being able to get started on my thesis in my senior year, which tanked my English grades.

And then after navigating this treacherous mess and ultimately dropping out of high school, I scored in the 99th percentile/top 1% on my GED.

I also eventually learned how to type really well.

I was supposed to go to an "alternative" high school, but my father decided that it was "too much trouble" to send me to school on the other side of the river even though the school district would have provided a cab to and from school, so I stayed in the mainstream and struggled mightily.

Not understanding the point of doing things the way that was instructed.

When I was in school, especially in math classes, I could often reliably come up with solutions to problems of a particular type and either not explain how I solved the problem(like it would just come to me) or I would come up with an alternate way that seemed to be a better way to solve the problem.

Some teachers accepted this, but that was not common. It was often better when they did not, because the method that was used to come to a solution was often expanded on in higher levels of math.

I actually took a typing course and I failed it in highschool. I've been using computers for eons and at work and I still finger type! I have a similar problem when taking messages from the phone and writing them down at work. I think I have a gap/memory block when switching from verbal system to motor system? It makes my work-life very difficult because I'm afraid of picking up the phone.