Should I tell my classmates at Uni that I have AS?

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From a conversation with a friend (borderline AS/NT) in my Med course, she said that lots of people gossip about me and think I'm weird/strange/unusual. She also said that lots of people (apart from a few) subtly reject me coz I'm different from them, something about sheep/herd mentality and pushing away the black sheep. She said that many NTs are like monkeys who can't truly think for themselves and just copy patterns off each other for conformity in social interaction and behaviour, and that having AS is a natural advantage coz I can analyze things from a more objective perspective.

Should I bother telling these people that I have AS so they can understand why I appear so different from them?

If you told your classmates and friends that you had AS, how did they react to you?

Thank you in advance.

If I told my classmates...they'd treat me like crap...I overheared a bunch of them in a conversation saying nasty things about someone else with AS and actually mocking him for having it.After hearing that, I sure as heck wont be even mentioning it.


FYI...Im in a paralegal course...

gee, I wonder how they would fare in a law office if they ended up working with a client with AS? I feel sorry for their potential clients.

Nice of your friend to tell you all the nasty thing people are saying behind your back... If you say she's aspie, then maybe she meant well, but watch out for friends who put you down deliberately, even if she appears to be on your side (I'm not saying she isn't, but if she's telling you that your classmates all hate you one second, and then how wonderful aspies are the next, I would be careful that she's not trying to isolate you from others).

I think telling your classmates that you have AS is a bad idea, sorry. They honestly won't care that you have aspergers, let alone take time to research it and understand you. I agree with your friend about the sheep mentality; it's very annoying and the best way to deal with people like this is to just be polite and distant; there's no point beating yourself up trying to 'fit in' with the in crowd.

Perhaps, instead of coming out as aspie, you could ask your friend for pointers on how to appear more 'NT', if that's what you want- although if she thinks AS is better, she might be reluctant to do so. You're also in a great position to learn social skills; practice taking histories with as many patients as possible and you'll pick up a lot.

If it's any consolation, there's a relatively high proportion of aspies in Medicine, and about half the hospital consultants I've met seem to have some form of AS.

Lene, I actually appreciate that she told me that most people (NTs) in my year think I'm weird or undesirable. Coz before she told me that she suspected I had AS, other people just said to me "Everyone knows you" (but they didn't say why) and "Everyone loves XXX (my name)" which is total BS.
I liked that she was upfront about it.
She doesn't want to socialize with the people in Med coz she said that by pattern observation, she could tell that they were sheep. She said that these "NT/sheep" are not worth her time talking to, and that I was an exception coz I had AS.

I know that the NTs laughing and getting along with each other well every day at Uni, but I couldn't tell what it was that made them sheep.
She said that you have to observe what they say very closely, that NTs follow social rules automatically without thinking about why they do so, and that they perceive me to be weird coz I don't follow the rules that often.

You say I should learn how to appear NT, yet you say I shouldn't bother trying to "fit in". I'm a bit confused.

I have much more trouble with chit chat (coz I don't have much in common with many people) and joking/banter which I don't get most of the time.

Personally I'd only tell them if they were being a problem. I'd rather be taunted for that than for no good reason.

Do not tell anyone.

Also, if anything related to your diagnosis becomes a problem, definitely do NOT tell them. They will think you are some pitiful attention-seeking ass trying to use a personality disorder as an excuse for acting at the expense of others.

Some people will be more accepting; some will shun you because they do not or can not understand the differences. Personally, I've been very open about it - my first exposure to the spectrum disorders was with the dx of my son, which led me to research and ultimately my own quasi-diagnosis. I shared the information with my friends and acquaintances, and asked for their input and observations; I asked them to take the same online tests to better gauge their accuracy. Some people have actually gotten closer to me due to their interests, while others have nearly disappeared. And in a way, I appreciate it... it has acted as a filter for people in my life who I may have had one impression of while the reality of them was quite different. But is it appropriate in all cases? That, I am not so sure about.


M.

No, no, no. Don't do it.

At my high school there is a student with autism or aspergers (not sure which) who sits alone and just lives life. He also is a "savant", his artwork is better than anyone else in the school and he's in year 8. Apparently a group of around 10 older students came up and started harrassing and bullying him just because he is autistic.

I don't want that, people just think of me as the "quiet kid" and leave me alone, this would change if they knew I had a form of autism.

So don't tell them unless absolutely necessary, just don't do it.

Hell no!! if they already are gossiping about you or have negative feelings towards you, that will just make them worse.

(the more i observe NT's, there more it seems they have no free will in terms of social cues n norms etc that come natural to them, its as if they have a social chip inside them and we dont, so i feel their more like robots than AS people....if u know what i mean.

Ok, that's cool. I wasn't trying to demonise your friend. The reason I said 'watch out' was because I have met people in the past who get their kicks spreading stuff like that; if your friend was genuinely trying to be helpful though, then fair play to her.



I meant that you should learn to fake 'NT' enough to keep people off your back and out of attention, and then just hang out with your own group of friends. You don't have to fit in with the sheeple all the time, but if you are forced to interact with them, it makes life a lot easier if they believe you're one of them.

Chit chat gets easier with time; like I said before, history taking is great for learning this skill. If your course is anything like mine, you're left alone for ages in clinics with the patient whilst the reg goes file-searching; I've gone from barely saying a word to 40 minute conversations in the space of a year- good thing to remember is that most people don't really listen to what you say, just the tone.

Never really got the hang of banter myself; I think if you just smile and laugh a lot, nobody really notices you're not commenting. Most NT 'jokes' are not funny; people laugh if the person saying them is higher up in social rank than they are (there are a few rare exceptions).

Bad idea, I would not tell your classmates. You don't know whose classmates is prejudiced against developmental disabilities or not.

Oh thanks Lene, where are you studying Medicine atm? Or are you an intern already?

I'm in 2nd Year at Melbourne Uni, it's a 6 year course and then we do 1 year internship afterwards.
I'm interested in doing research so it would be nice if I could skip the internship and go straight to the lab, but it's very unlikely that I'd be allowed to do so.

And I thing it's annoying how people laugh at things based on who said it (social rank), and not by whether it's actually funny or not. I don't get most jokes so I find it irritating when people laugh about it, I feel left out inside. But then again, I feel left out often everyday seeing that we are the minority compared to NTs.

I would advise against it. In high school, I was what you would call psuedo-popular, a lot of people knew who I was and and most everyone respected me, but as far as true friends that I hung out with on a regular basis, I had about five. Not a soul knew except these five or so friends that I could trust, and the faculty/admins. I had no reason to tell them. I'm HF enough to fake being social, even though people noticed I was different they put it down to mere eccentricity, and I didnt want to change the status quo by letting the cat out of the bag. The outcome was too unpredictable, and I was happy with where I was.

The same is true for my current life at uni.

The way I see it, if you can act at least somewhat social around others, even if you seem different, they wont bother you as much than if you tell them that you have a recongized disability.

But that's just me, you may have a different situation.

In the UK, it's a 5 year course (I'm in 4th year) and then one year as an intern (dreading this :p). Yeah, I'm also interested in research and pathology- I think live patients would do my head in...

I think it's important to realise that most of the others don't 'get' the jokes either; they have just trained themselves to laugh anyway. Most are as probably lost as you are!

Unless you trust them not to react negatively, I would only tell your classmates about your AS if it's relevant to the conversation if you know what I mean.

Thing is, I don't think it's actually altered anyone's perception of me. By the time I've told people I have this medically recognised condition, they'd already formed not-particularly-high opinions of me, observed all the characteristics of AS in my behavour. It also had no discernable positive effects either - no new signs of understanding or compassion on the parts of people I've told. Perhaps they're just not sufficiently interested to find out more about AS, or perhaps they're just not compelled to sympathise because they don't consider it sufficiently debilitating.

I've briefly mentioned it to a couple of people as an apology for my odd behaviors and habits.