The Revamped TSR Asperger's Society!

I'm a Wood Elf called Holly Short (with some funny accents over the o's and y). Showing my Artemis Fowl obsession just slightly

You?

I'm a Level 18 Khajiit, cause I like cats I can't remember mine's name, I made it ages ago. Which quest are you on?

Still near the start. Retrieved the dragonstone from the Barrows, now I have to fight a dragon near Whiterun -can't remember the name of it though

I'm also enjoying stealing from people's houses

Oh I remember that bit, I found it pretty fun Ah I haven't done that yet, I mainly rob dead drauger, you get loads of gold that way.

Have you heard the infamous arrow in the knee line yet?

I don't think I have - which part is that at? I take it it's really funny!

No one said CBT was going to fix it. CBT doesn't really "fix" much. CBT is going to give you a way of coping with the problem - a problem that we don't know how to solve yet. Maybe you're right that we're not trying to solve it. But how exactly do you propose solving short-term memory deficiencies? We really, really aren't medically advanced enough to even start that research. If it's not chemical or psychological, we pretty much don't know what to do. Likewise art therapy and likewise psychiatrist sessions; many autistic people are just desperately unhappy, and if these things give them the release and coping mechanisms they need to become approximately functional members of society, then I'm happy. If this doesn't work for you, then that's really sad, but there isn't much more we can do!

(You should also bear in mind that the problems you're complaining about are not the (social) problems that most aspies complain about most of the time. If your psychiatrist can't help you, and you've been referred to the wrong person, they will send you elsewhere.)

Which is also why I started bringing a dictaphone along to my lectures. In the last three semesters I had to learn everything by book because I couldn't retain a single word that was being said in lectures - unless it was something I have already read. If I read something and tell someone about what I have read, then that seems to go into my long-term memory. Maybe I should use this to my advantage.

This is exactly what I'm going through right now. I mean EXACTLY, to the freakin' letter! For the past 4 months, I've been sitting in lectures thinking I might as well pop my eardrums because it's not like that would make it any worse. I don't know what's going to happen this semester (which starts tomorrow), I've been thinking I should just not go to the lectures at all and instead learn from textbooks, or I should try to get into a routine where I learn the information before the lectures so that the lectures become revision sessions of some sort... I've been given a dictaphone and they've set me up with all kinds of disability support you can imagine, but I'm still scared out of my mind because my first semester at university has been a living nightmare. So, since you've got a year on me, any suggestions? Things I should do, should not do?

This! And sometimes you just have a horrid time for weeks on end. But it gets better again

Right now I'm extremely happy....I was supposed to be sitting in a feezing cold church today playing my violin, but because of the snow it's been cancelled! I love lazy Sundays

...seriously? You're already insulting the people most qualified on this planet to help you before you've spoken to them?

Right, and this is what you need to tell your psychiatrist. Then they will tell you how they can help you or pass you on to someone else if they can't. This is what they are qualified to do.

(Please don't forget, though, that their job is not to turn you into what you want to be. Sometimes that's not possible even if we do do 'real science'. Their job is to make you happy and functioning, and if you make requests, and for some reason it turns out they can't meet them, and you respond "well if you can't do this there's no point in living" or "why don't you do real science" or "psychobabble bull****", then they're just going to think you're an arse and treat you for suicidality.)

I'm glad there's someone who understands. We have to go to lectures because the lecturers take attendance. It's also like that in labs: the lecturer explains something and I have to resort to asking my lab partner a gazillion times what he said for this and that and whatnot. It makes me feel really stupid, although I'm quite the beast in labs.

As soon as I have caught up with all the work we have to do, I will read the lecture materials beforehand, so I have a general idea what's going on. And I will listen to the recorded lectures and make notes to at least try and improve verbal instructions. I need to draw diagrams because I'm more of a visual thinker anyways. I am really good with 3D things apparently (rotating stuff in my mind), but I am not sure how that would help me.
As for tips what you could do... read around the lecture. That's what I basically do and that's how I gain all my knowledge for my modules. And then try and combine whatever you learn in one module with whatever you learn in your other module, if that is possible. Colour code things maybe? Draw diagrams if you're a visual thinker. I don't know really, I am still in the processing of figuring out how to help myself.
I look at the handouts and then research stuff in books or on the internet. That has gotten me through the first year so far.

But things NOT to do: leave stuff to the last minute, fall asleep during lectures, not taking notes.
The usual stuff basically. I tend to stare at the lecturer as to concentrate on what she is saying, but it doesn't help. Nor does staring at the overhead projector. It just doesn't stay in my head unless I have read it before. So I may make some amendments starting tomorrow. I'll see.

Luckily lectures aren't compulsory for me, but I'm still not quite okay with the idea of ditching them completely. I'm the same with labs as well and I really hate having to feel like an idiot all the time. I've also found that multitasking with a partner is not easy to do and distracts me from the theory of what's going on.

I will definitely read through the lecture material beforehand, I just find that the easiest way to learn... plus I retain what I see, which is also hugely helpful. I just don't know where actual lecture attendance and note taking and all that are supposed to fit in. I had a huge scare in the first semester so I guess now my only instinct is to go back to what worked for me in high school. I do have a note taker so that's one less of a thing to worry about. And I'm a visual thinker as well although I'm more about 2D. I'm doing biochemistry so rotating 3D enzymes would be hugely helpful, but I guess my imagination is too poor to convert from 2D to 3D. And I too find diagrams useful, plus I find it helps to rewrite numerical data when I do calculations... somehow it's easier to work through a problem when I see the numbers by themselves instead of having to process them as part of a bigger block of text.

Anyhow, your brain seems to work in a way very similar to mine and so it's good to know that people like us can succeed at university. And thanks for the tips, you've given me some good ideas. I guess there's a lot of experimentation to do in order to find the best way of working. Good luck with that to both of us.

EDIT: I have another question if you don't mind. Have you ever approached your tutors/lecturers/demonstrators in labs about your issues and asked for things like specific reading assignments? Basically, have you talked to any of them about your difficulties and learning differences? If so, how have you done it and how have they responded? I've had plenty of setbacks in the first semester and now there'll be quite a few meetings to discuss how the learning process could be made more accessible for me. All the people in my department seem very nice and friendly and genuinely interested in me doing well, but I feel so embarrassed having to talk about these things, I feel like I'm too defective to deserve to be here in the first place.

I studied Biomedical Science, and I'm now a medical writer.

Ideal for me; I love science but I don't have the dexterity for lab work or the creativity for academia.

Digressing for a just a second, that's the thing that frustrates me most about my brain - don't know if it's anything to do with AS, doubt it is, but I have no imagination or creativity. By that I don't mean "I'm no good at making up stories" - although I'm not. I mean I can't think of anything original. I wanted to do a PhD, but had to abandon that idea because I can't even begin to think of a topic to study. If I'd had to pick my own title for my dissertation instead of being told what I had to do it on, I don't think I'd have passed third year because I wouldn't have been able to think of a single project I wanted to work on. When given something - anything - and asked to think of a way it could be improved, I can't. If asked to speculate on why something might have happened, I can't. I can't use anything I know outside of the context I learnt it in.

I know lots, but I'm not even close to intelligent because I can't join it up. I just learn isolated facts, but I can't connect them to make any sense from them.

The result is that I'm great in pub quizzes, but I will never be anything more than average in life. And that's a downer.

Hey just though I'd drop a post, not been having a great time recently stress of university/life has taken its toll. My doctor has booked me in with a psychiatrist starting next week for monthly sessions and am gonna start taking SSRIs, anyone ever been on them / have any experience with what they are like? Did my own Internet research and some of the side effects people seem to have experienced don't sound great.

but yeh pretty fed up, managed to control my condition pretty much on my own since i was 15 so kinda feel like I'm taking a step backwards in that respect and its getting me a bit down.

I'm having a huge meltdown.
Thanks to anyone who reads this and replies. If you quote me, please wipe out the above, I'll probably delete the post when I feel better and be embarrassed that I'm being such a pussy about it.

First of all, you're not stupid. I guess many non-Autistic people (they are NTs, right and not us?) do not understand at all how this stuff affects us.

Thanks I'm feeling a bit better about it now, just frustrated that no-one gets how this makes me feel, I feel like I can't even explain it properly because I don't think in words either, so it's hard translating it first to words, and then in a way others will understand. It gets to me sometimes.