For the Aspies who can work and/or are highly educated

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If I could pass during my university years, it was only as an "eccentric, quirky, different, oddball, original" NT - I was tolerated because of my academic ability (other students came to me for help with hard assignments) and some academics were particularly supportive of my analyses which often brought fresh perspectives which earned their respect (an Asperger talent for sure). High intelligence and a profound memory were part of it, also Asperger qualities (for some).

Finding my feet at work took much longer. It was a process of trial and error for quite a long time, then I got a few big breaks. I didn't achieve full potential professionally until I was in my 40s. More maturity and experience helped then, allied to the qualifications and experience I already had. Also I knew my strengths and weaknesses much better by then, even if I didn't know I was on the spectrum.

Some workplaces which didn't suit me at all - apart from the obvious stuff like open plan etc, were the ones dominated by pushy Type A people who had the sensivity of steamrollers and often - seemingly - the same intelligence level. I don't suit large workplaces with lots of people.

I could never really pass as an NT, though some might be fooled for a while. Now I don't care. I like being me, and if any NT has a problem with that, too bad. Couldn't care less. At this happy stage, I like my life.

This is kind of a cop-out answer but I'd say it's a little bit of both. Once you're settled into a position, I'd say your competence matters more than your ability to pass as NT. If you're competent at your job, people that know you will overlook you're eccentricities. But it usually takes a decent amount of passing to get to that point where enough people respect you to value you on your skills alone. Also, experience plays a big role there. Even the smartest kid right out of college is still pretty "green" when they enter into a field. You can't count on being valued for your "smarts"

Imo, this is a valuable thread, so I am bumping it.

I want to tell the Autists in their teens and twenties something.....here goes....

IQ alone guarantees nothing in life. It is REALLY great to be brilliant but there are many challenges that IQ won't solve. To succeed you must have more.

All work environment are exceedingly complex with the politics, corporate culture, power struggles, hidden agendas, back-stabbing, etc....

In my view, you need to commit to a lifetime of studying social interaction. When you observe individuals interacting ask yourself questions as you watch, eg. Why is she smiling? Is he telling the truth? Why is her intonation that way? How do they decide when the conversation is over?

Analyze, compare, film yourself, watch the film, try expressions in the mirror, try different intonations, copy NT's, and so on.

This is what I have done for many years. I began doing this decades before diagnosis. I started when I was about 10 years of age. I have never stopped, although the subtlety of what I do now is very high. NT's can't tell and would be shocked if I told them.

It is hard work but the payoff is huge. Many Autists do not engage in this process. I encourage you to consider this approach.

Be well.

Colleges aren't "high-level education" centres. More like those universities are "high-level indoctrination-centres" and, for the/an additional record, the Diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome has been removed ever since the DSM-V came out, basically, that Diagnosis no longer exists now.

You are either "informed" (educated with facts) or "uninformed" (indoctrinated with propaganda).

I guess both.

I graduated from business school when I was 19.

I'm 32 now.

I did have some periods of unemployment, and definitely underemployment.. but I'm on pace to make up for lost time now.

The biggest key to my success the last couple of years, and the rest of my life to come, has been figuring out how to treat my ASD symptoms via diet/intestinal cleanses/probiotics. My brain literally functions at a higher level than it ever has and I've been living a second life for it. I've had more success with work over the last couple years than the previous decade. I'm in the black financially & going up.

I'm now able to "pass" as NT-ish all the time, but I don't have to make a conscious effort to do so. It's simply intuitively who I am now so long as I maintain the digestive balance that keeps my brain firing on as many cylinders as possible.

"The task of higher education is to turn men into machines." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"Higher education exists to take young men, and as efficiently as possible, make them usable, abusable, in service to the government." - Nietzsche

"The State is never concerned with the truth, but only with the truth which is useful to it, or to be more precise, with anything which is useful to it whether it is truth, half-truth, or error. " - Nietzsche

It's still in the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) and the name remains commonly used.

Wow! First I want to say, fantastic post. I can relate to your observing experiences. I am an engineer now but at around 8 or 9 I distinctly remember playing people watching in social situations was one of my obsessions. I would not only observe their gestures, movements, etc. But also their emotional reactions to different disturbances around them.

I have a good memory and good language skills, but pathetic executive functioning. That means that I did alright with minimal studying, but not quite alright when more than minimal studying was required, and wrote very literate but kind of poorly organized essays at the last minute. I got through my general requirements with a lot of B's and C's, and then I decided to change my major to my favorite foreign language. Here's where I got lucky. In language classes, participation and occasional larger projects were worth a much larger percentage than daily homework, so you could get far with enthusiasm and aptitude for the language even if your work was inconsistent. For the same reason, my professors liked me and even excused me when I got really behind on homework or gave an awkward presentation. My GPA went above 3.0 and I graduated and got a BA.

Unfortunately, I was constantly under a layer of anxiety due to the amount of work I was always behind on. I didn't really make friends despite talking often and certainly not being invisible in class, so everything I did outside of class was by myself, and doing anything recreational by myself made me feel guilty that I wasn't at home getting caught up (not that I got caught up when I was at home.) Most nights I thought about begging people on the internet to talk to me, but instead got up, washed my face and waited until that compulsion passed. I counted down to going home, where I wouldn't have to do errands by myself or go weeks without talking about anything other than classwork, and when I was at home, I dreaded going back.

I'm not sure about work... I haven't had many "real jobs." My last job was screening applications for a program part-time, and while living alone was difficult in some of the ways above, the job was much easier than my time in school. All I had to do was show up and do the same thing repeatedly for a large chunk of time, without talking to other people. Some of the summer jobs I had when I was younger included painting and cleaning, which were way easier than working in a restaurant, since the latter required taking a variety of instructions and figuring out which task was a priority.

I'm currently looking for a full-time job for the first time, but I'm nervous about how much I can handle. In my last job, just working two days in a row wore me out and made my productivity drop on the second day. And I don't have the best history of self-directing, working steadily despite distractions, or meeting deadlines. I'll never know unless I try, and I'm acting like I'm confident about getting a more office-like job, but I'm afraid I'll fail miserably.

Well as others have said I did not know I was Aspie-Autistic but consciously and subconsciously did some of the above to try and figure out what they were all doing and thinking. The doing part such as body language I learned a decent amount. What they were thinking not so much. Copying I did some. Then I burnt-out gradually, then I got diagnosed and had two seemingly contradictory revelations. 1. I was not what fooling them nearly as well as I thought I was and I was fooling myself. 2. But what I did manage to do and for how long I did it as a person with moderately severe Aspergers and totally clueless to that fact was damm impressive.

But the WP "millennials" in general are not clueless, they understand at least in general terms why they are different and all they are up against. If you decide that passing as NT is a must and you have that complete commitment, try and find time to be your autistic self and unlike me never forget you are acting. It will be best for your efforts to pass because passing is an exhausting endeavor and passing efforts do fail when tired and stressed. And yeah it will keep you somewhat sane.

This song resonates with me when I think about observing, this song was and in some ways still is me


Tony Attwood on masking starting at the 4:00 minute mark


While he is right about the cost he is well employed and thus does not have to get and keep a job in a NT world.

Have a nice day

Thanks
Human ethology
I pretend I'm on Away Missions studying the lowly Hu-mon(Ferengi pronunciation)....LOLOL!! !!

What was your major before that?

It was international studies, but like I said, I had mostly taken core classes and hadn't gotten very far into it.

I quite agree.

I have been doing this too, from an early age, often without consciously realizing it (at first) - this is part of the reason why I ended up going into two "social" academic fields (Psychology and Criminal Justice). It will put you way ahead of many NTs in some cases - you may figure out "why" they're doing what they're doing before they do.

If intelligence is measured by sucking at basketball, I'd be a super genius. Einstein was right!

My suggestion is for anyone who has STEM interest to pursue that interest intensely and try to get education and career in that interest and use both general intelligence and any special skills of autistic brain to shine in that one area.