well isn't that ironic...

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this is another I-got-diagnosed thread. you have been warned.

I'm not going to give you all the details though. I thought I'll just share with you a tiny bit of my recent doings that seem all too ironic in the light on the AS-diagnosis. something I only realised today and had a good laugh about it.

today I discussed my thesis with my advisor and found out that I failed miserably. which is kinda strange, considering the fact that I always excelled at writing academic texts and wrote masters as well as bachelors thesi for all of my friends. I actually enjoyed it, big time, and they all received excellent marks.

(I know it's called cheating, thats not the time or place to discuss this issue though so whatever.)

anyway, when I chose the subject for my thesis a year ago I thought it was as easy-freakin-peasy as it gets. I study Swedish. I love films. I chose Bergman.

my subject was "Face close-up in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy".

I bet most of you get what I'm getting at right now (blind man writing about colours-sorta thing).

I did amazingly well with the technical parts- lighting, set design, pace, etc etc

when it came to analysing the actual films I found myself totally lost. for those of you who haven't seen Bergman films- most of them involve different types of face close-ups, with up to 4 characters eyeing each other for 90 minutes, with very sparse dialogue, most of it symbols plus loads and loads of all non-verbal communication.

damn. I onestly never realised I had a problem with this. I was sure that I'm just too used to the Hollywod type of film narration to get this bloody artsy-film idea.

so next week I'll have to defend a dissertation that's just as pointless as my attempts to socialise.

I wonder if those of you who got diagnosed in their twenties or later ever really noticed that it was the face expression interpretation that was the main problem? I always thought I was just a social idiot...

meh...

Why does your advisor think you will fail? I don't see a problem with the thesis, maybe not the best choice of Bergman topics for an aspie but still do-able. I think you have to talk about spacial relationships too, position in the frame and to the viewer.

If you can write essays for other people it stands to reason you can write your own, I wonder if the advisor is antagonistic towards you for some reason. I know I had lots of problems with them.

yeah, I have a feeling she is, she's been behaving strange and really bringing me down with it. must've been something I said... ;p

what I decided to do is to collect a lot of quotes from other sources and link them toghether in a logical way... that way I'll avoid having to interpret actors' facila expressions myself lol.

I can't say about the UK, but in the US doing such would get you a failing mark on your disssertation, as the entire point of a disseration is to write about something that has never been written about before or never written about in the same spin you are using Collecting quotes is more the thing of a bachelor's level

What is your degree in. Depending on the course of study, you could spin this paper so that its about how an aspie would have trouble interpreting bergen's work

Facial interpretation hasn't been the big problem for me. I'm not brilliant at it but I get by. Probably the aspie trait which has caused the most significant problems for me over the years is face blindness. I've come up with some seriously creative ways to avoid anyone noticing that I can't recognise the person I met five minutes ago.

it is bachelors level. it's unfortunately already too late to change it, I only have a few days left but I'm pretty sure what I did now would get me by, although with a very low mark- the part with quotes is no longer the main body of the dissertation, I focused on the evolution of the pictorial style instead.

hope that works.

I knew it in a way.

I thought of myself as socially well-educated, certainly not a social idiot but one who often knows what to say to whom but I didn't realise facial expressions were important. That people did that to express themselves and stuff.

It totally escaped me that others look at each other for a reason (to be able to see body language).

On the other hand, something your post remind me of is that I am awesome at interpreting texts, films regarding to context (though Bergman's a tough one!), but my ability of analysing the technical part is devastating.

I left all such parts of analysing direction style , film techniques etc. out in one exam and just interpreted the symbols which I got an A/1 for that was opposing the E/5 for the technical part hehe