Finding Our Place in the World

First Lady Michelle Obama released a rap video encouraging young people to go to college, and I have to say it's much better than one would expect from the wife of a President. The message hits a sore spot for me, though, because college was such a difficult time for me that I wasn't able to finish.

It's common for autism spectrum individuals to have difficulty transitioning to independent life, with or without the stresses of school on top of it, and a good portion of us don't have a clear path forward. Then there's the fact that college is designed to best serve the average to above-average neurotypical student, not tailored to the peculiar needs of the exceptional.

Elon Musk deplored the "slow download speed" of standardized schooling, a complaint I shared as a student, and Mark Zuckerberg has recently listed developing personalized education as one of his goals. Every student would benefit from a system that focuses on advancing their talents and interests while slowing the pace for challenges. In a system like that, even Special Education kids can achieve surprising results.

The Internet is the most likely platform to support such a system; online classes have been available for years and are becoming more accessible, and technology is improving at unprecedented rates. Easy access to quality education online is already having a worldwide impact, but we could take it so much further.

I had a college reading level by fourth grade, when the rest of my classmates were just getting into chapter books. This was hardly a secret from my teachers, but I had to sit through the same slow paced literature lessons as the rest and wasn't given any kind of ability-appropriate assignments. The Extended Studies program was better than nothing and got me a head start in math, but still failed to help me reach my full potential.

 I know someone else on the spectrum who had similar experiences. He was a self-taught artist and decided to take a drawing class in his teens. The first day of class, the students were instructed to draw the person sitting across from them so the instructor could gauge their levels of skill. She had barely finished giving instructions when my friend stood up to turn in his drawing. One look at it and the teacher told him, "I have nothing to teach you."

 In addition to trouble finding educational systems that fit our needs, the talents of spectrum individuals are often unusual and our interests obscure. Finding the right career can be daunting or impossible. Vincent Van Gogh is an excellent example- today, people look at his work and think that he obviously found his niche in painting. But even for world class talent that the public remembers for generations, art is not considered a "valid" career, and he was known to forgo food to buy paint.

 Like Van Gogh, spectrum people tend to have obsessions they desperately desire to pursue, but society tells us we must be useful and make money, and that our goals may not be good enough. People frequently suggest that we keep our interests as a hobby, but if Van Gogh had taken a job waiting tables, it would have eaten into the time it took to paint the several thousand canvases he completed in his lifetime, and masterpieces like "Starry Night" would likely never have come to be. To paraphrase the magician Jeff McBride, it takes making a lot of bad art to produce something really good.

Inside that person flipping burgers at McDonald's may be the potential to create world class poetry, but if there's no visible path to recognition and financial gain, their family may see their efforts to be a futile waste of time. I feel Called to be a Wiccan Priestess; I have spent well over 20,000 hours on study and practice, with little to show for it. But it brings me satisfaction I can't express, like nothing else ever has. My mother asks how I expect to make money in this endeavor, and I have no answer for her. Perhaps, as she is a Christian, the answer lies in the question "What would Jesus do?" Today is Christmas, after all...

5 Myths About Brilliant and Talented People

Brilliant people can't possibly be Autistic.

Autism is not an intellectual disability, and contains the whole Bell Curve in its spectrum. In fact, the more we study autism, the more we understand its role in the most brilliant minds in history. Recent studies have shown a genetic link between child prodigies and autism, as well. See Reference here.

 The real kicker is, autism itself may be the very source of a person's unusual talents. According to Temple Grandin's book Different, Not Less, neurotypical people have a type of brain cell called a mirror neuron, which processes information about human behavior by mimicking the same neural  processes as if the observers were engaged in the activity themselves. This lends intuition and social context to neurotypical interactions, and adds the depth of body language, facial expressions, and intonation to communication. People on the Autism Spectrum generally lack these mirror neurons, and therefore cannot process that social information except through logic. If you are neurotypical, you probably spent a lot of energy trying to fit in or find your place in high school society. For a person on the spectrum (often referred to as a geek or nerd in such societies), that energy must be directed elsewhere; the mental energy cannot go to brain cells one lacks, so it is redistributed to memory, creativity, analysis. Autistic individuals tend to like repetition, as well, which may manifest in rehearsing a musical instrument or obsessive pursuit in an area of interest, or simply reading for days on end.

 Brilliant people don't make mistakes.

On the contrary, we seem to make more dramatic ones.

Brilliant people use big words to make average people feel stupid. 

People on the autism spectrum are usually unaware of how other people perceive them, and in my case, I don't recognize  that my vocabulary is unusual until someone points it out. It's the only way I know how to speak. I personally feel that the Asperger's tendency to use formal speech is an unconscious compensation for our lack of nonverbal communication skills; the subtle variations between synonyms fill the void  of nuance otherwise found in inflection or body language.

 Talented people are just naturally good at what they do.

Everyone has a natural affinity for something, be it math or animals or drawing. And most people suffer frustration when they see another person mastering a skill in record time, assuming they themselves don't have "what it takes" to do as well. Extreme talent often shows up in individuals on the Spectrum, but it's not necessarily out of having some special spark that others don't. Even piano prodigies don't play Chopin flawlessly the first time they sit at the keys. It takes time and effort to master a skill- 10,000 hours is the arbitrary rule- but spectrum individuals tend to obsess. If a person spends an hour a day rehearsing an instrument, they can expect mastery in about  28 years. Four hours rehearsal would take 7 years to attain the same proficiency. And a person who is so obsessed they're losing sleep over their music may only take a year or two to wow the world.




Elon Musk is a superhero.

 OK, that one just might be true.

When labels determine how people are treated...

I've been working with mostly the same crew for over two years. As would happen with anyone, there are some people I get along with better than others. One lady who has been there a long time is frequently annoyed by me though she puts on a false face of friendliness, and I try my best to be cordial and not get in her way, but the tension is always hanging in the air. I haven't hidden the fact that I'm on the Spectrum from my coworkers, but I don't bring it up all the time or anything. I assumed it had gotten around. Yesterday I discovered it hadn't.

I was discussing the news with another coworker in the break area where several people were congregated, and Russia's president was mentioned. "They think Putin's on the Autism Spectrum like me!" I blurted out, "He has Asperger's Syndrome too!" The moment the first statement came out of my mouth, the annoyed lady whipped around, and I could see the dawn of understanding on her face, and that old tension I always feel dissipated from the air. Later, I held the door for her when she had a big load, and she called me "Honey" when she thanked me. The way she regards me totally changed.

Why does the label matter? I wasn't diagnosed until I was 27, and the only things I had to go on were the labels "weird" and "too smart." Those don't get you any sympathy, but I still had all the same challenges I had to face. Most Aspies aren't diagnosed at all. Does the world think we're weird on purpose, if we don't have a diagnosis? My fiancée always jokes that when he was young, Asperger's was called "Shut the fuck up, geek." Why is it socially acceptable to gang up on people who are highly intelligent? Every group of Neurotypicals  I encounter tends to ostracize or bully me, and I wonder why, if they can tell I'm different enough to exclude, they don't realize that I'm behaving the only was I know how and just give me the benefit of the doubt and treat me nice. Or is it that the Autism label carries a stigma to be pitied? I don't want pity. I'm the same person I was before I was slapped with the Asperger's diagnosis, and the overcompensation I sometimes encounter can be... demeaning.

 The American culture seems obsessed with labels lately- black or white, gay or straight, etc. But the world contains a million shades of grey and it leaves people trying to hold on to the most socially acceptable label available, even if it's not quite the right one, because there is no doubt that people will treat you differently based on it.

That Awkward Moment People Realize You're Autistic, or "I Like Turtles!"

A couple years ago a video known as "I Like Turtles" went viral, depicting a reporter asking a boy at a fair how he likes his zombie face paint, and his irrelevant reply sends the reporter marching swiftly away. It's an awkward moment, defined by the fact that she expected the boy to be Neurotypical, and was surprised by his classically Autistic behavior. Most people can identify with the reporter's embarrassment; there's no defined social response to discovering an individual is on a very different wavelength than oneself, but typically one doesn't stick around. The reporter from the video changes her entire demeanor when she realizes the boy isn't NT, turning away to quickly ignore the boy, almost with an air of revulsion. Her reaction is not unexpected, especially when considering she had a very brief live report to deliver and no time to take tangents. But life on the receiving end of such treatment isn't pleasant. Autistic spectrum people by definition don't pick up the subtle social cues or subliminal messages that NTs take for granted, but we're not completely oblivious to everything, and some of us are rather brilliant. All of us have our "I like turtles" moments, though, and other behaviors that elicit such reactions, so you'd be hard pressed to find many Spectrum individuals who like who they are. Rates of depression and suicide are many times higher among Autistic people than the general population.

 Our culture is not helping, and I don't just mean that we lack positive pop culture role models. In recent years, the majority of the public conversation around Autism related to vaccine paranoia. Although the studies connecting the two were manipulated and the whole theory since debunked, millions of parents made it very clear that they preferred to risk deathly illness than have a small chance their kid would be like me.

My Asperger's Syndrome is not as pronounced as many on the spectrum, and I'm lucky enough to have received a number of gifts in tandem with my AS: a near genius IQ, ambidexterity, and a 3-day attention span, to name a few. Yet my value to society is hinged on how well I blend in with the Neurotypicals, and I struggle every day to be ordinary because no one cares how many lines of verse you can memorize or instruments you can play if you can't follow the basic unwritten "rules" of society NTs take for granted. (As those unwritten rules vary from culture to culture, perhaps the flaw is in those rules rather than the people who can't follow them...) No matter their IQ, people on the spectrum have difficulty with employment, and while that's changing some, opportunities specifically for Autistic people are currently limited to a few tech companies.

So the subliminal message of American Society is that people on the Spectrum are undesirable as children, of little value as adults, and to be avoided at all times. We are completely marginalized from birth and offered no respite or path to success, all from a culture that claims we are all created equal. About 1% of our population is on the Spectrum, but we seem invisible, shunted to the side, our talents ignored. Forget that Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton and every other genius in history were probably on the Spectrum, and the fact our minds work differently that we are capable of such innovation. Society wants us to fit in or hide away. What else are we supposed to do?

Proof is in the Cheesecake

Today is my 31st birthday, and I amm still a magnet for bullies. For most people, this isn't a problem after the school years are over, but its common for those of us who are on the Autism spectrum. For me, it happens any time I encounter a click of women, and happens in spite of all the progress I've made in my social behavior.

 I've worked on listening to people and not dominating conversations, being more appreciative of others, politeness, and being less of an insufferable know-it-all... Those are personality flaws I know contributed to being disliked by virtually my entire highschool.

But let's face it: half the definition of my diagnosis is "Extreme difficulty with social situations." And here's the proof in the pudding, er, cheesecake:

I suspect they thought it was cornbread, because it had sliced unusually cleanly. I stepped away just long enough to collect plates and trays to serve it. If my boss figures out who did this, I'm sure it will be taken care of properly. He even mentioned "backstabbing" that needed to stop at a recent meeting, so I'm sure he knows more than me. Hopefully this is the last time I deal with this BS, but as anyone on the spectrum knows, it's only a matter of time before a new bully comes along. I shall be better prepared next time.

posts of interest on my other blog

I had written several blog posts related to being on the Autism spectrum before creating a separate blog for the subject. Since Blogger won't let me copy and paste them over, you can see them at http://ravenwildchild.blogspot.com/?m=1

 Thanks for checking them out!