Am I *always* going to be a screwup?

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I've posted a lot in the "School and College Life" forum about my trials at university, so I won't repost them here. Things continue to decline. I finally did have to drop a class again (the one with all the group work) just to keep what is left of my sanity. I also now have 9 credit hours officially considered "full time" for me. This all helped calm me down for about a week. Then the reality sank in that I would have to spend an extra year up here to get my bachelor's degree. With my husband still recovering and having issues from his near-fatal car wreck right before school started, we just don't think that length of time is realistic.

There are two kinds of "can't." The first kind is the one used as an excuse, by people who don't want to make an effort or enjoy playing a victim role or whatever. This is where you get the saying "'can't' never did anything." The second kind of "can't" is the one where the person's expectations of himself/herself are unrealistic. For example, I myself can't be an NHL hockey player or a NASCAR Sprint Cup driver or the President of the U.S., no matter how hard I try. So here's the problem: Sometimes it is very difficult to tell which kind of "can't" one is dealing with.

My ultimate goals are 1) to feel like a "real adult" and 2) to use my God-given talent to the best of my ability to make the world a better place. I keep thinking that I can thrive at university and go on to have a successful career if I just try harder. Well, I am completely out of "try harder-ness." I have nothing left in my personal "gas tank," not even fumes. I have pulled out every single stop I can think of. I am dealing with a therapist (psychologist), a voc rehab person, the disability person at school, and now a psychiatrist who is increasing my meds to mitigate the anxiety. All of these people have been fantastic, and I would not have gotten this far without them. I have tried and tried and tried to make things better here, probably long past the point where I should have said enough is enough.

I wrote a list of reasons I should stay at this school and reasons I should leave. "Leave" won, 31-17. When I weighted the reasons, the results were even more pronounced in favor of "leave." I can still get my bachelor's degree online at home from another school (Oregon State University, not one of those for-profit diploma mills that are always getting sued). It just won't have the prestige in my profession that my current uni has, and that will make it harder to find a job here, but at least I will have the degree.

Anyway, idiot me let my plans slip to my mom. I should know better after all these years than to trust her, but she has a way of mistreating people and then being nice to them until they lower their defenses again. She had been being so sweet and supportive. I should have known better. She told me that she saw this (my leaving the university) coming a long time ago, that I'm "not disabled, just discombobulated," and that I "need to stop listening to all those doctors because they are messing around with your head and making you confused." I told her that not all the people assisting me are doctors, gave her a definition of "disability," and told her that I wouldn't even have gotten this far without those people helping me. We ended the phone call on a civil note, but now here I am, awake at 1 a.m., on the computer because I am losing sleep over this.

I know that I am in for more of this treatment from everyone once I do leave this university. "Yep, I knew it. Here comes poor silly little (my name), slinking back from her latest crazy idea that didn't work out. She's a screwup and always will be. She's so intelligent; she should be able to do so much more with her life. I just don't know what her problem is."

This, on top of grieving the person I envisioned myself being when I first came to this university. A go-getter, happily attending seminars and volunteering to help others and being the confident pseudo-NT I was at the community college. I never dreamed that I would backslide so far and that my ASD tendencies would show so much once I got here.

Where is my place in the world? I really thought I would find it this time. I always think, "This time it's going to be different," and it's not, no matter how proactive and receptive to learning I am.

Am I *always* going to be a screwup?

If you are always going to be a "screw up" in your own eyes then you need to readjust your expectations. Sorry, it's as simple as that really. And anyone else that thinks you can forever not be good enough, doesn't deserve to be part of your life. That includes your mother. There are a few of my siblings (I have 10 to choose from) and my biological father that are not welcome in my life because they feel that way about me. I'll never be good enough for them because I will never be their religion or have the type of job that they think I should have. Career or educational success is much the same. You just need to decide what will really make you happy and go for that. Forget what other people may consider success, you are your own person. Those that truly care about you will celebrate in your triumphs and be there for you when you fail. I wish you luck, I don't think you failed by not being able to complete this phase of your schooling, you just learned more about who you really are and what you really want out of your life.

No. You're always going to screw up sometimes, but that's called "being human", and as far as I know, there's no cure for it.

+1

I've always been a "screw up" in the eyes of the world. In spite of my creativity and "intelligence," I've gone nowhere, achieved nothing other than finishing school, can't get or hold down a "good job" (although I do work and can support myself).

I'm am mediocrity...perfected.

In law school, I dealt with classes by accepting that my brain was "wired weird" and studied accordingly. Now that I know about AS, a lot of my past disappointments and failures make perfect sense to me.

The only way for me to be happy is to NOT buy into the definitions of "success" the world embraces. I can't live up to their arbitrary NT standards...nor should I try to.

Yes

Is there any way of putting your education on hold for a year, to give you time to recover? Things might look a lot better in a year's time.

Three cases:

#1: basically fluked out in Grad school, salvaged by going elsewhere where pressures were different.

#2: had a meltdown, basically dropped out, travelled a different path.

#3: managed to finish, but then got out of mainline academia into the library

#4: managed to finish, not wthout difficulty, moved into a pretty low pressure branch ofg the field.

#5: had a meltdown, finisghed and then dropped out, curreently contributing to the field from outside the university.

Only five cases from my files. You get further by climbing up the route wher you are not bombarded by avalanches. Don't have to give up on the goals - just concentrate on more than one way to skin a cat.

I felt like this 6 months ago when I effectively got fired from my last job. It didn't help that one of the guys I was working for was the same guy who laid me off when I got my license and, said I would never make it as an Electrician. However I know that's not true because despite being laid off a lot in the past 5 years I've worked for serveral contractors for longish periods of time. I may not be the best electrician out there but, I'm definately not the worst. I've seen worst first hand.

As for your situation. Don't let what you think other people may think of you effect what you know is right to do. Keep your eye on the goal and do what you need to get there.

so glad to see i am not the only one in this boat. all my life i have stumbled from one situation to another, never being in command of my fate but barely holding on for the ride. "STOP! i want to get off!"
by the time i got used to one thing it was yanked from me and replaced with something else which was uncomfortable for the longest time, until finally i got used to it and then it too was replaced.
in the military [yes, there are aspies in the military] i only made it through basic training because there were even worse f*ck-ups than myself, which distracted the drill's attention from my incomprehending mistakes. my saving grace was that one of my legs is an inch shorter than the other, so when i marched i bounced up and down- obviously somebody in the MEP station was asleep at the switch when they let me in the army, as i would normally have been denied a medical waiver to get in for this reason. anyways, because of my bouncy step during drill and ceremony [which looked bad in formation], i was usually sent for KP, which kept me out of the sight of the drills yet more. i copied as best i could what the other troops were doing, and prayed that i would not f*ck-up and that nobody would notice me, even though i stood a head taller than anybody else in the company, including the drills.
after 4 years of being looked upon with contempt by my fellow GIs i got to matriculate back into civilian life, where i lived up to the peter principal and got a civil service job in the most unlikely of places, a maternity ward. the only man there 'cept for the docs. i did baby paperwork, clumsily answered phones and scrubbed on C-sections, and i was always misplacing instruments and sponges. somehow i never got fired. but i eventually got laid-off thanks to RIF [reduction-in-force], so now i am an unemployed bum living off inheritance, which for the lack of it would be out on the street instead.
so the jist of my litany of ludicrousness, is that for all the posters who lament their failures in life, remember that just as there will always be folks better and smarter than you, there also will always be folk who are doing worse, and would look up to you as being successful compared to themselves. i see people here who describe themselves as high-level tech workers and college graduates, and can only wonder what it would be like to function that well.

I think that all of this thing with compulsory "groupwork" is becoming farcical.

Farcical and ironic because many of the teachers and lecturers I had said openly that they didn't agree with it, but said that they were forced to include it on the syllabus because the government and corporations had insisted that it be made compulsory.

This method of working can benefit some people, but not everyone.

Some of us would just prefer to be able to help by "working alongside others" rather than "with" others.

What if some of us were just never "designed" to deal with talking with large groups of people?

What if some of us were "meant" to do solo work or help others in a less direct way?

Where do all of the "lighthouse keeper" and "security guard" personalities fit into all of this?


What if some of us were meant to be "sentries" on the edge of the group, quietly keeping watch?

From what I've read about social and troop animals, I can't help but wonder.

If you have a herd of chatterboxes, who's going to look out for danger?

Who's going to find the important details and meditate on an issue quietly when everyone else is too busy to care?


This is what concerns me.

Thanks so much for all the comments. I know that I should be able to look solely to myself for validation, but since I haven't yet learned to do that, it's great to see the kind folks at WP backing me up. I know I'm doing the right thing here, just as I knew I was doing the right thing by going off to uni in the first place. Although things aren't working out as planned, I did learn some lessons that won't ever be found in any course syllabi.

And can I truly claim that I did the absolute best I could at all times? Definitely, that's a YES. Therefore, I should be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience and stop worrying about what other people think of me. That is extremely hard to do, but once I am done with this semester and back home, I will have time to process that idea while I am recovering (docs say I need to take *at least* six weeks off from school and/or work after the semester is over on May 8th).