April 13th: Have you ever had to (or wanted to) correct someone's misconception about autism? What happened? Talk about it.
Yes. Well, sort of? This is a bit of a long story, but it's a recent one. This weekend I was serving as a panelist for my university's admitted students preview day, so I had a lot of discussions with parents and families throughout.
But one stood out to me, and that was a conversation that started with a parent who came up to me and the other two panelists (a fellow student of mine, and a professor who is basically my manager but also my manager's manager at work). And she was like, "My son has (her words here) high-functioning autism, how will he be able to integrate within the program that I work for?", and I practically almost interrupted her to say, "me too!"
That conversation ended up being a lengthy discussion, about a half-hour long, about the logistics of being an autistic student at my university. Being able to make friends and have a close social circle (I am more than fortunate to have an incredible friend group that has stayed together since Day 1 of orientation), getting involved in clubs and activities (just show up, and we'll figure out how to share in your enthusiasm), the risk of being overstimulated on campus (low, but not impossible: 'speak softly, and carry a big stick' in terms of your sensory defenses).
I think the misconception that I challenged most prominently was this: The parent talked to me about the possibility of her son starting college by taking 9 credits (3 classes) instead of 12 credits (4 classes, and the "minimum" for full-time load at my university. From what I had learned about her son, he is quite intelligent and already more than competent to more than likely sail through the introductory engineering/computer science curriculum. And I said to her, you know, 15 is the "average" load, and what you 'should' be taking to graduate on time. 12 feels very boring to me right now, and I imagine your son would probably feel the same way as me. (I'm taking 14 units, but two of those units are pass/no pass classes that I don't put much, if any, effort into, so in practice I'm taking 12 units.)
Shelf
Return to Reflections