From High School to College

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I am a high school special education teacher who works with ASD students. I have been especially involved with my students through our after school drama program. I've seen students who, over time, have become extremely comfortable within the peer group, delivered exceptional onstage performances, and even, in a few cases, developed a very publicly appreciated and recognized persona throughout the high school community. My assumption has been that this bodes well for ASD students in their futures.

So, I'm interested to know if the development of a comfortable, recognized, and public identity within in high school (not necessarily as a result of involvement with drama) does, indeed, make for an easy entry into a college community.

Thanks,

Kim
Minnesota

I can only speak from my own experience which is relatively limited.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was in college, and I didn't really get along with my classmates in high school, but I had a few friends in school and more in the local area from various other schools through the local BBS & gamer communities which I was a part of.
I developed a fairly strong identity and sense of confidence within the community of gamers & artists & geeks & techs & general weirdos which I suppose made leaving home & eventually going to college with another such community less jarring than it might otherwise have been.

I didn't end up getting a degree, but that had more to do with my physical issues & problems with executive functioning than social issues.
In fact I grew considerably socially in college, and spent much of my time attending social events & learning how to interact in those contexts effectually.
These days in most contexts many people have no idea there's anything abnormal about me unless I point it out as I've developed a sufficient set of response sets to most common interactions and practiced them in enough contexts to generalize & extrapolate & synthesize appropriate responses & behaviors for most common social situations & interactions smoothly & wuickly enough to appear relatively natural most of the time.

I would imagine that the earlier an autistic person starts getting comfortable with & developing their skills in terms of social interactions and behaviors, the better off they will be in terms of their ability to interact socially later on.
Given that this will tend to boost self-esteem & thus self-confidence and that these are essential to success in most areas of life, it's probably true that high school social success will translate into a less jarring transition to college.

However, that kind of drastic change in setting, environment, community, and social expectations isn't going to be easy for anyone, and especially for autistic students, since we deal with change poorly in general.
It's also important to remember that since the social rules in particular college communities can often be significantly different from those of any particular high school community, there will likely be a significant time at the start when the autistic person needs to start learning those rules one by one, while allistic students have a simpler time of picking up on them.

In the end, of course, no two autistic people are alike and each will have their own experiences.

It makes me glad to know that there are dedicated teachers out there like you helping the next generation of autistics do better than mine has.
Keep up the good work & welcome to WP!

Not in my case unfortunately. I was comfortable in high school, but had an absolutely miserable time adjusting to college and making friends. I did eventually make friends, but it took 5-6 months to meet people who actually seemed interested in interacting with me, and since I was ostracized by my dorm mates and have a horrible time adjusting to change in general (college = BIG CHANGE), life was pretty horrible until that point.

I think it's really neat that you've had such success working with ASD students though.