Professor getting after me last week

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I have been school for over two weeks and I am taking a really cool class about animal behavior and psychology. I have lots and lots and questions for her and I was asking a lot of different ones until last week. She knows that I have Asperger's Syndrome and felt that I needed to tone down on the engagement part since I was dominating the time trying to answer everything. Today, she ignored me whenever I raised my hand to ask just one and that was it. She also seemed to give me a look of disgust whenever I would say something such as "Mmmm hmmm?" Do any other students with AS have problems with being the geeks who like to act like teacher's pets and dominate conversations?

Yeah, I tend to be either on or off. Either I participate a lot and kind of take over, or kind of not at all.

Okay, three areas I've learned from: writing fiction that has dialogue, political activism, and live poker games (recommend for social skills, do not recommend for making money).

In political activism, like someone giving a talk at the local democratic party, the format is that someone will give the talk and then open the floor for questions, and I have learned to use that format to my advantage (and I do realize that most classes are more free-form). During the talk I will take messy, sloppy notes primarily just for the purpose of staying alert. For example, a lot of just jotting down phrases of what the speaker says. And to the side, I'm writing down possible issues I might bring up, usually building on something I agree with that the speaker has said. I have found that is more effective that disagreeing with someone.

I guess what I'm trying to say is keep your powder dry and maybe limit yourself to only three contributions per close.

And in practice that might often be just one (or none) contribution per class, in that you're kind of saving in case a really juicy topic comes up.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 08 Sep 2010, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yes Ive had a terrible time in study situations for asking questions. NTs do not like being asked questions and react badly to it. Its important to try hard not to ask questions even if others are doing so as people will get cross with you.

I seem unable to control myself and always ask questions or correct teachers and get terrible flack for it

To me, it's all a question of how many. In approximate terms, a student who is often original can ask one or two questions every other class (and sometimes I am original and sometimes I'm not, and either way is perfectly okay).

I did not ask a lot of questions during class, but in retrospect my questions may have seemed "weird" in the sense of being too tangential to the topic being discussed. (Although in my mind, there was a connection between my question and the topic.) It is possible that it is both the quantity and content of your questions that is annoying the professor.

Please permit me to offer a suggestion. During class, when a question springs to mind, write that question down on a piece of paper. After class, see if you can find the answer by looking through your text book and/ or searching the web. You library probably subscribes to searchable electronic databases of published research abstracts, such as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Sci ... tion_Index > and PsycINFO < http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/index.aspx >. If not, there is always http://scholar.google.com/

Oh, and if you ever need to speak to your professors during office hours, try to keep the visits short. (In retrospect, that was another faux pas of mine.) Similarly, only contact them via e-mail (or other electronic methods of communication) if it is absolutely necessary. Faculty tend to be very busy people.

I learnt the hard way that I am usually better off when I keep my mouth shut. I suppress the urge to ask questions (and generally bother other people) by repeating certain phrases in my head, such as the classic maxim, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". C'est la vie.

I never participated in discussions in University for that very reason. I knew a guy who had Asperger's who did what you do in classes I was in with him and the prof did the same thing. The ironic part was that she passed him in the hallway a few months later and said hi. She expected him to say hi back. Instead, he ignored her as he was walking down the stairs. She was bewildered as to why he would do this. It's pretty obvious why he did it, he HATED the fact that the professor made him feel like an IDIOT in class.
I didn't speak in University because of that very reason. It bothered people. They want you to talk and then when you talk they don't respond to what you are saying. That made me hate University. I had anxiety and depression throughout most of University because I was made to feel inferior. I was intimidated really easily and I felt I was too stupid to be in University. Thank God it's over!! !!

She wanted everyone to have a chance to ask questions and then talk to her about something interesting during lecture time. All in all, it's a pretty cool class and I have so many questions in regards to a lot of those things that she puts up on the board.

She doesn't know how to respond. She's afraid of being caught off guard.

Okay, first off, take that as a compliment---you ask good questions. And then try and cut her some slack. And if need be, talk to her privately, like the day before class or via email. 'I realize I was participating too much at the beginning. I would like to participate again in a medium way,' perhaps something like that.

At preparatory school, I had an agrivating habit of becoming the teachers' pet. Now, that I am at secondary school, I am more the 'Nerdy*' kid that people avoid as it is common belief I have AS (The school councellor's fault, entirely !). Teachers' often speak to me in a manner that I am some severely Autistic child that cannot function. I preferred being undiagnosed at preparatory school.

This is why it is scary for a person with Asperger's to "come out of the closet." And it goes without saying that this is lousy on the part of this so-called school councelor. He or she certainly should have known better.

And this is also pretty lousy on the part of a teacher. For it seems to me that an experienced teacher would know, okay, so I'm been given this formal diagnosis, so be it. I primarily want to hold it in reserve and be prepared to give extra help, in a matter-of-fact way, if and when the student needs extra help.

Okay, this is might be where you need to make some strategic moves. Make a series of medium moves observing what happens after each one and taking that into account as you plan for the next one. And please understand that I am mainly preaching to myself. I sometimes have made one big clunk move. You generally want to avoid doing that.

In addition, young people are often told 'you need to handle this yourself.' Whereas if you read a book like Herb Cohen's YOU CAN NEGOTIATE ANYTHING, he advocates the position that often the mature, responsible way to handle a situation is precisely to get someone else to advocate or negotiate on your behalf. So, if you ask one or both of your parents to sit in with you during a meeting with a teacher, that meeting will probably be entirely different (shouldn't be that way, but probably is). And arranging it with you parents ahead of time, you can still do two-thirds of the talking if you so choose.

'I am of average intelligence' (even if you're smarter than average, the better strategic way is to probably do this! just think of some things you'd like to know more about that you currently don't)

'I sometimes laser-beam in, which means I'm focusing on this thing, but I'm missing some of the context'

'So if you see me missing some of the context, maybe just a single sentence, or a single suggestion of what I might also want to look at.'


Or whatever else feels helpful to say to a particular teacher, in terms of medium-disclosure. Unless and until a particular teacher starts coming through for you, don't disclose more than that, and even then, take it step by step.

And yes, you can talk to a teacher by yourself and it might well work out. I recommend just doing so with a medium-touch and being prepared to graciously back off. And then visiting with a parent(s) could be a fall-back position.

In High School it was a major problem for me. At the Christmas Party in my junior year, I was voted almost unanimously as the school's teacher's pet (why the school even had a vote on that for the party is beyond me).

However at college, and now at the university I've found that my professors enjoy my highly focused participation, and most of my classmates enjoy it as well. It helps strongly that I'm only taking classes that pertain to my major (Sociology).