Aspergers and the genius/nerd stereotype

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I dropped science subjects before O levels . It took me two goes to pass Maths O level. I was especially poor at geometry.
I started off quite well academically but began to decline after the age of 9-9.5. I guess I was a slightly below average student as a teenager .
I don't think it helped that I may well have had a learning difficulty including executive functioning difficulties , slow processing speed and (visuo)spatial deficits .

Of course back in the 60s/70s children of above average, or average, intelligence tended not to be flagged for learning difficulties. It was long before the days of what Americans call 'gifted but learning disabled' or 'twice exceptional'. To my teachers I was just disorganised and messy; a mediocre student.

I have heard about these Asperger's syndrome stereotypes in the media, and I do not think any of them apply to me at all.



Here is the way I really am:



I am not a genius at all. I have never taken an IQ test, but I think my score would be no better than average intelligence.



I did poorly in mainstream elementary school, which my parents withdrew me from. They transferred me to a small private school for special-needs students at the end of my fourth grade. I attended this school until the eighth grade, when I was enrolled in a small special-needs high school. After high school, I attended a transition programme at a similar type of school. I did well academically, but I was never a straight A student or won any awards; at best, I just got passing grades. My schools assigned homework every night, and I would spend almost my entire night struggling to work on it, and sometimes I would not even do the assigned homework I was assigned for subjects I hated, like mathematics, literature, and biology. I was never the "teacher's pet." I detested mathematics & science, which were my weakest subjects. I did particularly bad in algebra, geometry, and physical science. I actually had to stay after school a few times to have my teachers work with me privately one-on-one to improve my grades.



I never went to college, and I actually got my first job with the help of the school I attended. I do not think I could get in to any college or university, and I never received any invitations or acceptance letters from any college. I do not have academic degrees besides my high school diploma.



I do not talk to people endlessly about some obscure subject that I have a fascination with.



I do not dress in nerdy clothes, but I do not wear any kind of "flashy" clothing either. I just wear average-looking clothing because it is comfortable for me, and I do not want to show off. I also do not wear glasses.



I am very unsophisticated with computers & electronics. I do not have much interest in science or technology.



I work a part-time job as a lowly library aide with a limited income.



If I had to name 2 things about myself which is true to the stereotypes, it is that I have trouble making friends, and the fact that metaphors & figurative language are confusing to me.

According to others that I work with, I fit the stereotype quite well as a "super nerd" among the other nerds in my department. C'est la vie.

I don't get sensory overload at parties. I just don't like parties that much because of being shy and not being interested in drinking or dancing. So I just end up sitting about, only talking when spoken to, and feeling tired or bored. I get tuned into the loud music, and the lights don't bother me and I don't even notice smells.
I get more overwhelmed in crowded shopping places, and noises like kids shouting and loud motorcycles or loud traffic does get to me.

I fit the info-dumping stereotype to a "T."

I'm not that great with computers. When there's a problem, I can sometimes resolve it. Other times, I cannot.

I feel like I'm fairly intelligent. I'm no genius, though.

I went to both special schools and "regular" schools. I was pretty much a B, rather than an A, student. I did well at college, though.

I wear chino-type pants, polo or button-down shirts. I seek to keep myself clean with daily showering.

I have some eccentric habits. I don't have much of a filter.

I fit the "weird," rather than the Aspie stereotype.

Intelligence has always seemed like a weird topic to me. Personally I've always felt pretty average in intelligence, sometimes it seems like my family are all talented- and then there's just me, the mediocre one. The annoying thing about being the younger sibling is that you tend to get compared a lot to the older sibling, and she's always been the academically gifted one. *sigh* I always hated school.

Then there's my younger cousin, he gets all the praise because he picked up on things way faster than I ever did.

Well what can I say....

I utterly failed at school and left without any qualifications despite being told how intelligent I was. Mind you its hard to obtain qualifications if you don'y actually turn up for school. Personally I found social peer exclusion and getting the crap beaten out of you several times a week to be something of a barrier to learning, it was much safer to get my mark and jump the fence. I was really good at this and got a way with it for the last two year of school (I left aged 15)


My maths are shocking. although I like dates which mark events or indicate pieces of legislation. My issue with maths is that I just can not remember the sequence in which math problems need to be solved. That said in recent years I have obtained lots of qualifications for work. I am a qualified college teacher (Health and Social Care) and have just completed a masters level post grad is autism and Asperger syndrome, it would be fair to say I am something of a autism geek. Autism is my special interest and has been for many years.

I was thinking about this subject last night, and I had an interesting thought:



Doctors & other experts who study autism & Asperger's syndrome have identified all of these traits of many people on the spectrum, and when "autism awareness" became more common, the trails which the experts have written about have become these media stereotypes that people always hear about, and society only thinks of Aspies as all being this way, and not being unique individuals who are all different. I do not know if it is true because I do not have any proof, but it is just my theory.



Not long ago, I read somewhere that someone said that "when you meet one Aspie, then you have met one Aspie." I truly believe this phrase to be true.

I love parties, at least when there are enough people there I'm friends with. And as long as the music is no annoying mainstream music. Home parties usually don't have music that loud, for everything too loud there are earplugs.
It's always different if I know only one or two people at a party and the rest of the people are like... people that are really NT and different from me and have different interests and behave differently. I start to feel really lost then, because there's usually now way I can bond with these people.
But, usually I got to parties where most of the people work in IT and/or studied CS, and I'm sure some people are a bit on the spectrum.

I don't have any issues with light and also not with smell (except for strong pork smell, but luckily, that's quire rare). I love music anyway (also many genres of music). I have no problems being with many people in one room. I've been to festivals with over 100.000 people.

I DO have sensory issues, though (overreaction to certain noises like sirenes, motorcycles, jackhammers, drills and a really high sensitivity to pain).

I'm really good with metaphors and figurative language. I'm very good with language and words in general.

(You might not believe me, because my English is definitely not perfect, but this message board here is a good place to practice my English skills, at least )

I was a prodigious and precocious kid. I taught myself genealogy, history, law and politics at age 13 years. Despite testing extremely well, I was bored in school, yielding a high-school cumulative grade of C- and a university cumulative grade of D- by the time I removed myself from education altogether. I earned a high-school equivalency diploma in just three hours of testing (when they allowed me five hours), completed my college-entrance test with high scores, and, as a result, was allowed to waive one or two classes.

At the same time, I taught myself enough about law to practice it as an administrative-law attorney for veteran and active-duty service members seeking disability claims. While at college, I challenged the requirement of students to provide their U.S. Social Security Administration account number (SSAN) as a student ID number. After a year of consideration, my university acquiesced, and agreed to change its rules governing ID numbers. When I helped another student register without providing a SSAN shortly thereafter, the clerk (who was oblivious about me) referred to the new rule as the "[my name] rule."

I went on in my 20s, 30s and 40s to write or help write laws, administrative rules, and policies for governments and various corporations in my state. I became a political activist, and a writer, designer, marketing director, lobbyist and public-relations professional. I worked with world leaders and celebrities among others.

But, I became exhausted with my work and the toll it took on my spinal problems. I pursued a diagnosis for autism two years ago next week, after a year of being screened with autism. Having gained the diagnosis (my diagnosticians offered to refund part of my fee because I had "done so much of their work" for them), I found myself not wanting to continue living in my professionally magical world anymore. People would (and often still do) treat me like a human version of Siri or Alexa. They ask questions of me to fill in their conversations when they forget a factoid, word or name. I hate it.

Because of my various workplaces and pursuits, I have been ridiculed and shunned by individuals who resent me. I love my skills, but they haven't served me well. I seek privacy and anonymity every chance I can find.

So, I guess I fit the stereotype, even though I am terrible with maths and pure science beyond their basic usefulness.

LOL...I've never heard a Yank refer to "math" as "maths"

I was in a Daniel Tammet moment. Hehe!

I really hope people don't think we're all like Steve Urkel. I'm not a fan at all of Big Bang, but I used to watch Family Matters a lot when I was younger.

Funny thing is, Urkel could be very kind and caring even though the rest of the time he didn't seem to realize how much he was annoying everyone (Except Carl Winslow's mother, who was always very nice to him), until they were yelling and screaming at him, and while his romantic obsession Laura Winslow had boyfriends who usually turned out to be unpleasant or even abusive, Urkel always had high respect for her, even when she didn't respect him. Although one time, it turned out his locker combination had the same numbers as her measurements. How did he even learn what they were, let alone put it into a school lock??