Anyone really bad at studying ?

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Im in my final year of uni doing computer science and im finding it really tough.

i notice a lot of people here although have AS, also have exceptional intellect. Weill i think i have AS and im not particularly intelligent either. Am i screwed for the rest of my life ?

For some reason i find it incredibly hard to concentrate on my work. And i tend to do things right at the last minute, i told myself countless tiems not to do it, but i always end up doing it anyway.

Im fairly sure im going to fail this year, thing is i dont want to repeat, id rather kill myself than go back to uni. Also i dont want to disappoint my parents either cos they put in so much of thier hard earned cash towards my education. I know this sounds really selfish, but i have really tried hard to do well this year, it may appear as laziness to others, but i seriously cannot do academic work. Its not like i waste my time doung other things like drinking myself silly. I sit down for endless hours trying to work and end up staring into space. I was thinking if i fail or do badly, ill just work and pay my parents back and start my career the hard way. I see the importance or higher education, but i just cant do it, either that or im completely disinterested in computing.

I dont have much time left to catch up, my grades are really bad so far and only got like 2 months left of the year. Im dreading the look on my parents face when i get the results.

Just wondering anyone else like this ? is it linked to AS ? or am i just a lazy ass ?

I have the same problem. Every year I try to change, and I never do. It's terrible.

Jonny, I have the same problems that you speak of.
My mum has said that I always tried really really hard at school but never seemed to get the results to match. She was pleased with me for the effort I made not the results I got. Even know I find it hard to study and once I dont need to know what I have learnt...woosh...its gone.

I have studied to be a network cabler. OBCL to be exact, but the place where I was studying shut down a week before I had finished. I still had one electrical module to go. I tried to do it at home because my trainer said he would sign me off for it. I just could not do it. I could not stop myself from trying to learn the whole book when I only needed to learn about 10% of it.
Life moved on, I moved states and know I would have to do the whole thing again, because I have forgotten so much.
It cost me $3000 dollars to get nowhere. I love to study but I want it to mean I will get a good job, but I always have so many questions to ask that I would not feel I could do it on my own.
I have also done two years of Cabinet Making, but same thing. Too many questions still. I never seem to get the same concept of things that others do and I have felt very useless due to this.

I would say that I have a heap of learning difficulties as well as AS.

ElfMan

I know exactly what you are talking about, I've always had a big tendency to procrastinate and trouble concentrating. I've often worried it was laziness too, but I don't think that it is-we can't really help it, it's just the way it is. From what I've heard, this can be pretty common among people with AS. Do you really enjoy what you're doing? I often have the most trouble when I'm not really interested in the subject. One thing I do that really helps me focus when I'm having trouble staying focused is listening to music-loud enough so I can hear it, quiet enough so that it's not a distraction. Also, I guess I just sit myself down and make myself do it, and tell myself that there's no other option-if I tell myself that, I really believe it. Something that also works is if you tell yourself you're going to do something and give yourself a specific time, like 7:30, then it will really register with your brain to do something at that time. Also what I do is just stay in the student union or library and study there instead doing it at home, because there are too many distractions there. Since I drive a long ways to school, I know I have to stay there, and if I stay there, there's really nothing else for me to do but study. So just sort of forcing myself to stick around school helps. I took a class last semester that I just wasn't interested in at all, and I had a hard time motivating myself to study, and I was doing really poorly. Then I told myself I was gonna get an A on the final, and some of the stuff I mentioned-listened to music, got stuff done at school, just forced myself to do it-and I was able to do it, so I think stuff like that can happen. I hope everything works out for you, good luck!

I was never very good at studying for stuff in school. Of course I always got my homework done, but I was terrible at studying for exams, especially when I had to memorize things.

When I was in college, then, I REALLY hated studying. My parents gave me a little book in which I wrote down the date and how many hours I studied. I saw my parents about once a month, so Mother would read the study records and pay me by the hour for studying. It was about the only way to ensure that I would indeed study.

Yes, studying can be difficult. I never really had to do very much intense studying in school to learn. High school was pretty much sitting in class with my eyes closed, doing the homework, and taking the tests. A banal existence, to be sure. Now in college, I find the professors have TAs who actually go through the assignments with a fine-toothed comb.

Sickeningly, I've always been really terrible at studying too, but fortunately have never really needed to.... I got top marks in most of the exams I ever sat and hardly needed to study for any of them. I got a 2(ii) on my Maths BSc for a grand total of about 2 months cumulative study over the whole 3 years...... Sorry...

I'm pretty horrible at studying. It just doesn't interest me enough to care.

The only time I did any real studying, it was for world civ and it was an outside project that had almost no impact on my grade. I spent like 3 weeks gathering up information and reading reading reading, neglecting everything else.

Unless it interests me, I can't bare to study it.

I've been lucky. The only things I have serious problems memorizing are names and dates (which is why I almost failed history in grade 5 and never took it as an elective course in high school). The key for me is association. For example, I remember a list of radio transmitter frequencies by associating each one with a location on a map, so as long as I can see the map (either on paper or in my head) I can recall the frequency. For non-geographical items I associate using other tools like imagery, story telling, pseudo-decode or by breaking the list into shorter sequences and then learning the heirarchy (memorizing each sequence independently and then memorizing the order of sequences as a separate task). I used to be able to reel off about 50 places of PI using the divide-and-conquer strategy.

I made it up to my senior year in college without reading a single textbook. It finally caught up with me then when I had to drop out of Western IL Univ. Later I went back to Community college where I got my AA degree and will be resuming at Northeastern IL Univ in the fall.

I've been trying to make myself study my Hebrew for my Bat Mitzvah. I have tapes and I have Hebrew to learn by reading. The Hebrew I hear and the Hebrew I read, even though I'm supposed to read along with the tapes, seem like 2 completely different things. I have trouble connecting the audio with the visual. Maybe that is one reason why many Aspies have trouble studying. That also explains why I have trouble with connecting names and faces-I've seen "that person" or heard "that name" before but takes me lonfer to connect the two.

If I see someone's name written on a name tag at an event, I am much better at remembering their name and associating it with their face than if they tell me their name.

I almost always taped (audio) lectures in college so that I could concentrate on the overheads or other visual aids that were being presented. If it was a class where no or few visual aids were being used, I would either read my textbook or do something to occupy my eyes and hands, like knitting or making graphs out of random numbers from my calculator. I had a job doing technical typesetting once, and I listened to NPR (the Iran-Contra hearings one entire summer!) which occupied my auditory processing while my eyes and hands were busy with the typesetting. If I don't have these parts of my brain all occupied, my mind will wander. Lots of people don't like that I knit or do stuff when they're giving a presentation, they think I'm ignoring them.

I don't understand the meaning of studying.

Ironically enough, i often do worse on a test if i do study, i often end up studying the wrong material and do poorly. Last year in us history i studied for a test and got a 64, next time i did not study i got a 77

Studying is a huge chore for me if it's something that I'm not that interested in. I could spend an hour reading a lecture and still not remember the details afterwards.

However if I'm actually interested in what I'm learning, then I absorb the info instantly just after reading it once without any effort.

I was till they gave me a bunch of adderall.

I do exactly the same thing. I put of doing assignments to the last minute. I hate it. I try to do them, I really want to but for some reason I just always end up leaving it till later. I don't think the environment is right. When I worked I always pushed myself so hard. I guess I learn better when I have someone else there to obligate me to work but also answer any questions I have. Uni really doesn't provide that to nearly an adequate degree.