NYT: Along the Autism Spectrum, a Path Through Campus Life

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/he ... llege.html

It kills me that there is no follow up after graduation. That's where the rubber hits the road.

We adults are mostly on our own.

...I'm going to put up how I bought ($6.00) that paper for that article (& more) & howled and cried in a closed shop's slightly warmer doorway and thought " But I guess I'LL never get that ! " . Too late for me~?

...I just lost a first attempt at posting more here - ASPa , you have spoken of " our generation " of Aspies...how , with no " Aspie " identity , we were forced to adopt a more " normal " life than modern times' AS-ers have done - This piece rather illustrates that .
On a certain level , I can feel " They got away with THAT ????? " - Maybe " they should have been knocked around , like us " - ???
After all , look at the wonderful , successful , life I've achieved after being forced into a " sink or swim " approach .
I got put away and stuffed full of Thorazine and Mellaril for acting weird !
Seeing at the end of the article ~ They had never bought anything on their own at a retail store before that trip to Walmart ? (And , implicitly ~ They had only used cards , never cash ?)
Love the sterotyping ~ We love Pokemon and video games !
But I cry ~ that people weren't a lil' nicer to me ! That I wasn't taught to , maybe , understand myself more (There , is it correct that I said that ?) .

If the students like video games and Pokémon cards how is that stereotyping? The journalist can only write about what he observes.

Also, the teachers in my child's school district have a horrendous time teaching money because so few people use paper money, let alone coins. Everything is debit card or some kind of plastic card. So yes, a middle class kid might have only used plastic all through school. My daughter is 12 and some of her friends have their own secured credit card now.

If you have sensory issues and hate shopping, I can also see never being in a Walmart. Order stuff online. Have your parents get stuff. Go to much smaller stores.

My husband at 21, had never made a doctor's or dentist appointment himself. Never had to fill a prescription by himself. Did not know how to wash clothes properly. Knew nothing about car care. A balanced diet was raman noodles, rice, and potatoes with mayonnaise. He had no clue how to buy fresh produce, what is ripe or not. Didn't know how to follow a recipe if it had a lot of measuring in it. Forget using a stove or cooking meats other than hot dogs.

This would have been around 1984.

It could have been my husband in that article. Swap out D and D for video games and miniatures instead of Pokémon cards.

The thing that upsets me, even this isn't enough support to fend for yourself. I know Aspies in my husband's support group than ground through high school, then ground through university in the hopes a degree would make this magical difference. HA! Now you are thrown into the deep end and trying to not drown, which is more or less what all Aspies over 30 have to do right now.

It was terrible the way you were treated in your 20s. I dodged a 90 day stay in the state psych hospital when I was 30. Scary s**t.

In the end, if things don't change, these students may be no better off than my husband is right now. While it's really cool this is happening, it probably isn't enough to make a huge long term difference in this moment of time. If the students don't keep all their learned skills actively in use, once they started back sliding there is very little help if any.

I don't know how to do any of this stuff either, but I always thought it was because my parents never taught me how to do most of it. Do NTs just learn these things without being taught? I don't understand.

One of my neighbors had their parents who come out to teach them about things like snow removal at their new home.

Looking back, what really made me special at first was the realization by those around me that I could fix electronics--nobody else could do that. I fixed a science teacher's ham radio set and oscilloscope.

I found this article infuriating. The Times really needs to stop sending people out on anthropological missions to write about groups they don't know a damn thing about.

This article is well-intentioned but feeds a number of incorrect assumptions. Maybe, just maybe, people on the spectrum succeeded long before therapists caught up to them and gave them a name. And their presence on campus wasn't always jarring. And the implied link with sexual harassment and assault? Holy s**t.....

This article is so problematic, I don't even know where to begin - I think I would need more words than the author himself used to dissect why it is misguided. Maybe when I have time I'll try.

Well, I managed to live in dorms and graduate with a B.A. in 1979. And I was too unjafrring for my own good.

People tried similar stuff with me in high school a bunch of times but I was too petrified. There was no concept of sexual harassment in the 70's, it was boys bieng boys.



This was not all that uncomman on campus back then, when it happened people wanted to know what drugs and how much. This even today is known as another day in the life of New York City.

On a serious note in most of the Aspergers support group meetings I attended unintenianal, unwanted sexual advances was an issue.

"Obnoxious" behavior wasn't tolerated in the 1970s-2000 at university. I was a chemistry major. Some guy (probably had ASD), would shout out or stand up with a rambling monolog. The professor would say loudly across the 300 person lecture hall..

Don't want to hear it.
Some variation of shut the hell up and sit the hell down.

Or

What makes you so special that you can hold hostage 300 people to hear your pearls of wisdom? (basically mocking them)

I remember one guy getting upset and slamming his head onto the lecture desk. The professor yelled, "If you want everyone to notice you, change your major to theatrical arts."

My own professor (I did work study for) got rid of two grad students, who were most likely on the spectum. Reason? They creeped him out, had no social skills and he didn't want their names associated with his group. That was 1990.

My husband was basically drummed out of the Physics department at his own university for being "weird" and a "creeper". That was 1978.

Sexual harassment is a problem. The ASD group my husband helps run has an announcement no personal information can be asked for on the building property at the beginning of every meeting. Too many of the women would get bothered by men who thought the group was a dating service/pick up place.

I think they know on their own but I have heard lot of stories about NTs not knowing how to mow the lawn or do the laundry or know that you are supposed to empty the dryer lent, not knowing how to cook, and of course there are NTs who don't even know how to clean. I will never understand this.