Did you have trouble understanding what people wanted?

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When I was younger, I was always told I should do better in school. After all, I was so good at zoology, so therefore I should be good at other topics too. Sorry, I never really had a say in what became my special interest. My mom was mostly supportive of my special interests, she was just glad it was meerkats or some kind of obscure animal instead of something like toilets.

But I was always told if I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up, I would have to study and work very hard at school. I had no idea what "study" meant. Still not sure actually. I think maybe it's one of those obscure terms that can apply to a number of things. I thought "working hard" meant pushing down as hard as I could on the paper...which I never learned from. If I'm supposed to memorize this, this isn't they way to get me to memorize it.

Anyway, I had no idea what was expected of me in school and defiantly did not learn. I didn't understand the concept of grades. Lots of good things start with the letters D and F. Oh, if I get an A, do I trade it in for something tangible? Grades were meaningless to me once I realized they weren't like the plastic chips I got for good behavior that could be cashed in for things I actually was interested in. Even the plastic chips didn't work. The things I wanted costed way to many chips and there was no way I was ever going to earn enough to get the thing I wanted and I was always loosing more chips than I earned. My mom stopped trying that method of using chips to use as currency for things I wanted because she saw that it was only teaching me to work for a tangible reward and nipped any sort of token exchange systems in the bud.

A lot of vets I knew basically were working towards it from the ground up since they were kids. Working AP classes, etc. I had undiagnosed dyscalculia and my mom was always telling me as young as third grade I should nip my vet dream in the bud too because supposedly I'd never be able to pass the college math requirements. (I also just stopped trying at anything school related not long after she said that. Yeah, so I got a bad grade on that test. I didn't even do the test. Why should I care? I can't be a vet anyway.) I've talked to dozens of actual vets, told them my story and every single one of them says if you major in something such as prevet, premed, zoology or biology, yes there is some math, but it is nothing compared to the math requirements of a physics or engineering major.

My mother always had this very weird aversion to the idea of me being a vet. I think it may be jealously because she couldn't be one herself. Oh she could have if she didn't let her abusive idiot father tell her she was basically to dumb to do anything.

I was homeschooled since grade 5 in the middle of no where and had no one else. There was a program at the zoo for high school kids that were interested in animal related careers. But my mom told me I didn't pass any of the courses they supposedly wanted you to have at the time. The school still exists and it's considered a charter school and they have a special ed teacher too. And if they really didn't allow someone with dyscalculia in, why didn't my mother take them to court for disclination or at least talk to them and maybe see if they would make an exception. At least talk to them?

Anyway, I really do believe I was not ready for school at 5. I basically got kicked out of kindergarten but I don't think I was ready at 6 either I've read in books that take place in Victorian times, parents did not send their kids to posh British boarding schools until they were at least seven or eight; most of these stories are fiction anyway.

Even seven and eight I still was not ready for traditional school. I didn't understand what the teachers wanted from me. I couldn't learn like everyone kept saying was the reason I was going there. I taught myself to read. And pretty much everything I know is something I taught myself.

Becoming a vet is my main special interest (meerkats are second) but everyone loves to tell me I cannot be one for this reason or that reason. I honestly fear I would commit suicide if I was not able to be one. Something I think about when people I thought matter to me tell me I can't be a vet. My mother no longer tells me I can't anymore...I think she knows. My ex boyfriend is still a friend and I've told him dozens of times NEVER to say that. We both struggle with suicidal thoughts and I think he knows that's a trigger for me...actually my only suicide trigger. I haven't talked to a so-called friend in MONTHS after she told me all the reasons I can't be a vet....which were reasons she couldn't be a vet...and the fact her only skill is complaining.

i believe you would make a fine veterinarian

Have you gone to college yet?

You do have to study hard to be a vet.....almost like human medical school.

You also have to keep your wits about you at all times. And try not to let little slights affect you.

People with high functioning autism tend to do well in professions requiring attention to detail. I work in healthcare and I'd estimate that there are many medical professionals who have autistic traits which enable them to diagnose and treat efficiently without being distracted by their emotions in sometimes difficult situations. I believe that you would make a very good vet. Just go for it.

Yes. It can lead to problwms and missunderstandings with knock on consequences. I need good instructions to follow when I am learning new tasks. Though now I have more experience in life so I am well equipped, in my younger years I made some major blunders due to this.
I am not too good at trying to find out what people want or need unless the tell me. Somehow certain people expect me to be able to read minds and get hints etc... (I have a neighbour who works on the hint system which I often end up upsetting her unintentionally).
Now I can give examples of missunderstandings with knock on effects. Where I first worked the boss sent me upstairs to clean the rooms. It was a lovely old bicycle shop made from a roomy victorian house. The type of building that has high ceilings and large rooms etc. The bicycles came either in cardboard sheaths (Dawes), or plastic wrapped mixed with card sheaths (Peugeot), or they came in boxes (Peugeot and most other makes). These bikes were often dusty as they had been stored in large warehouses in the factories or wholesalers that supplied them, so the upstairs shop store rooms needed to be cleaned quite often. As well as this, there was a new bypass road being built when I first started working there so in a matter of a few days we were having to clean the shop windows and the display bikes again.
Anyway, to this day I do not know what the boss wanted from me. I was sent upstairs to clean. The boss was sat on the stairs in the corner at the bottom where the phone was as he was phoning through an order. This often took half an hour of his attention so he was not available to give me instructions. So I was first starting to sweep the dust down the stairs a step at a time. He said "Don't sweep the dust down the stairs".
So I got the dustpan and with it now full of dust, I started to carry the dust down the stairs.
As I carried the dustpan down the stairs he said "Don't bring the dust down the stairs".
So ok. I assumed that he did not want me to carry the dustpan past him incase he got covered in it if the dustpan tipped, so I took it back upstairs, got a little box to put the dust in instead... He saw me putting the dust in the box and said again "Don't bring the dust down the stairs" and went back to his phonecall.
Now I was puzzled. The bin was downstairs. There was no upstairs bin. All the windows were locked and barred shut so it was not as if I could chuck the dust out of one of the windows, so what do I do with all this dust as there is a LOT of it to deal with.
The boss was also a deputy headmaster at a school so even when I had left there at the age of 23 he thought I was 16. I did look young for my age but I had worked there on and off since I was 17. So the boss treated me a bit like I was one of his pupils! And being a deputy headmaster who retired half way through me working there, he was used to discipline. (He was a nice guy and could be kind but you get the idea to how I was as his worker).

Well. I found a solution to this dust. It was a temporary one but it got me out of trouble. You remember me mentioning that the shop was an old victorian shop? Well... Their floors were constructed with very strong deep beams and there was this gap in the floorboards in one of the rooms. Uhmm. Well... I sort of made the dust dissapear using this gap which had about an inch wide opening and was a good 8 to 10 inches long at one point where some of the floorboard wood had been damaged, so it made the ideal opening...
I was sent upstairs on a great many occasions to clean so by the time I finally came to leave there, I was prodding the dust sideways to in either directionto get more to fin down this gap and there was a LOT of dust down there. There were even a few very old rear mechs I sort of put down there when the boss wanted me to chuck them in the bin but they were antique from the 1930's to '50's so I put them down there in the hope of saving them for some future person in years to come to find them and save them.

So anyway. By the time I had ended working there, I could hardly get any more dust to fit down this hole even though the beams were aboud a foot in depth and this dust must have spread a fair few feet sideways and a few feet wide inbetween each beam, so there was a LOT of dust.

Now I would occasionally visit. Christmas times were always the busiest times, and after Christmas there would be a quiet time until about march when the trade started to pick up again, so I would try to visit when the shop was quiet. I dare not visit at Christmas or I would be grabbed to help! Now I had left because I was stressed out and the boss wanted to modernize the shop so it was the right time to give an excuse to leave. So I left after the Christmas peak time as the boss had plans to do lots of building work in the quiet time during febuary.

It was in june when I next visited. I was there when the boss decided to have a go at DIY and while the customers were in a queue to be served with one of the workers, one customer saw that he was hacking away at an internal wall he wanted to remove from the bottom of the wall and this man happened to be a builder and he asked "How many floors does that wall go up?" The boss said he did not know. The customer who was a builder said "Stop. Let me go up and look". He wdnt to look and said "Everyone out" and phoned his mate to bring an acro prop to support the wall quick!
During another visit the enthusiastic boss was pushing a wheelbarrow full of cocrete towards the back workshop where they were laying a new floor. There was a skip out the front of the store with the earth, but the middle room had a pile of earth about two or three feet high, and he was pushing this heavy wheelbarrow up and over the earth inthe middle room to reach the back room. I asked "Jack" who I worked with who happened to be one of the bosses friends "Why doesn't he first move this earth so he does not have to struggle?" "Jack said quietly "I have told him but you know what he is like..."
Jack was taking down the ceiling in the middle room. He took one board down... Then another. Then he reached the third and as he lowered this ceiling board and angled it towards him this great pile of dust..... Well you get the picture. I knew where it came from! He was covered. His mustasche had an inch of dust piled high on top of it. His head had a few inches of dust piled high on it. Much of the dust was down his back or piled on his sholders! He was a sight to see! He simply said to the boss "John. I'm going home to have a bath", while I was trying to keep myself from laughing as I thought to myself "I know that dust!"