In another thread, you folks have said my creativity is an indication that I have intelligence, despite my claims to the contrary. Tonight I just realized my creativity is probably the result of very slow-processing speed, executive dysfunction, and learning challenges... all of which, combined, results in me taking significantly longer time to "capture" details than the average person.
OK Batman, I don't think so! For one, you write far too articulately for one who is mentally challenged.
What happens is you stay up too late self-analysing, while I just plain have insomnia. As for not having a degree, who gives a diddly damn. Most of the world is not fully degreed. It all just simply takes some time and planning. Often times planning comes with times and successive trials and errors in life. Take it from me, I've had many errors.
You should see my latest dating efforts!
Planning comes with time, and the successive trials and errors in life that lead one to re-evaluate the planning process.
Where I live, in affluent, posh suburbs, to have value you generally need a degree in something. Much of my inferiority comes from living where I do... it's a well-to-do area and a lot of families tend to send their kids to expensive private schools, they flourish, and then they go on to decent colleges, get the degree. Then I'm left in the dust, being compared by my parents to all my childhood friends who went to good schools and now have $50,000+ jobs.
Do you know how many young people must feel like this? For example, even if you were able to find your interest areas, and thus, niche right from the start, the costs of college education, transportation, and just plain socialising in such circles is enormous.
In my own case, I found my niche by working and incidentally finding a job in high demand. I then pursued my education along this line and used government loans for assistance with the finances.
I think that sometimes the problem with so-called PDD is that otherwise intelligent people have a problem finding their natural roles in society because they don't see the obvious stepping stones.
For example, it would have never occurred to me to "schack up" in order to cut my overhead which is so often done by the college age kids. Of course, I'm not advising this course of action.
However, as for your talents, it's impossible to know your own skill areas when your experience is limited by your surrounding and lack of social network. The social network around you seems either a little demanding and critical, financially burdensome, and impossible all the way 'round.
My suggestion, take any old part-time job, specifically on a local college campus and observe the behaviours of others.
You see, us PDD people often end up finding new hobbies, interests, and mimicking the behavior of those around us, if on a somewhat chronologically delayed schedule.
The problem is, I could not possibly be any different/less intelligent than these childhood friends I'm being compared with. It is not a fair comparison.
Also, be aware that others lie. Boy do they ever lie. You know that they lie but perhaps not how much. They drive vehicles that are about to be repossessed. Some fake licensure to the point of getting hired only later to be fired. They lie about their exploits and sexploits. Most of all, they exploit one another to find the shortest tangent to their own success.
Anyhow, back to you. Whether or not you have PDD there appears to be nothing wrong with your intelligence. Rather, it would appear that your experiential learning is limited and that you would greatly benefit from experiences that would involve you with your own age group, and experiences that would allow you to interact at your own social comfort level.
A job on a community college, college, or university campus would allow you to interact as you see fit.
I never supposed schacking up was an intellectual strategy, Batman, folks.
I didn't think they were thinking with their "upstairs" faculties, thinking more mid-level, you know. It makes certain human relations more logistically possible to live together, hmmmm, especially when you only need one bed in the place to save space. She could always make ya sleep on the couch though, maybe at a certain time of the month you wouldn't be doing anything anyway.
I never had to worry much about shacking up. I guess it is one of those NT things.
Uh, now is a good time to point out that colleges are reaching out to help learning disabled students. Marshall University for one has the HELP program.
Wondering1, there does seem to be a credentialism obsession in America, or maybe it also is a handy excuse to get rid of an applicant you don't really want.
I am beginning to wonder if half of hiring is still hiring who you damn well please (NTs, thin people, still a lot of white people) and the other half is justifying it (or making it look fair) with all the available restrictions and cultural values.
Wondering1 et al, I had the Master's, and just like in the movie Independence Day, I felt like the B2 pilot firing the nuclear missile at the UFO over Houston-- it should have been destroyed, nothing can withstand an H bomb right? that's why the Defense Secretary was overconfident they got it.... but they didn't get it..... the shields even withstood an H bomb
I changed careers and got a community college certificate in computer programming. It is kind of like attacking by going around, and it did, after some false starts like in the movie (the morale is keep shooting), I got hired in 6 weeks after graduation in 1999. It has now been 8.5 entire years since going salaried. Happy anniversary.
I never supposed schacking up was an intellectual strategy, Batman, folks.
I didn't think they were thinking with their "upstairs" faculties, thinking more mid-level, you know. It makes certain human relations more logistically possible to live together, hmmmm, especially when you only need one bed in the place to save space. She could always make ya sleep on the couch though, maybe at a certain time of the month you wouldn't be doing anything anyway.
I never had to worry much about shacking up. I guess it is one of those NT things.
It's possible to live with a person of the opposite sex without any hanky panky. Also, even if there is, it's still possible to do it at any time.
"As the red tide kisses the shore?"
Couldn't resist.
OK, I imagine there are ways around that, the sponge. I'm just a virgin, like most of us AS males.
Yeah, semi anniversary, but I guess all of us here would celebrate semis too if we were making fairly close to 50K USD a year with benefits. A **** Aspie fortune when 95% of Aspies are unemployed or underemployed.
Batman, college: do you want college more than anything, even more than a girlfriend while you are in college?
That, and a university with a good LD program like Marshall University, could do it for you-- make some phone calls.
http://www.marshall.edu
The only flaw in the reasoning, Wondering1, is that what doesn't kill you only makes the survivors stronger. The challenges of Asperger have driven many of us to suicide.
A moment of silence for those who aren't here today.
No, no, Wondering1, I simply meant that with bully child NTs and NTs who interview and read resumes, and the NTs who outnumber Aspies considerably on the singles market, there is plenty enough to hurt an Aspies feelings living in an NT world, and I have felt like I am not even the exact human race of most people.
Have you read Emile Durkheim, sociologist, if so, what can you comment on anomic suicide? Feeling like you do not belong, unrooted, to the human race is a cause of suicide. Actually Durkheim identified four types of suicide.... egoistic, fatalistic (such as when the society wants you to commit suicide, or the motive for suicide is having an ego desire that is out of bounds with the constraints of society tries to set on it....)
Mine too. Especially when he was dying, and presumably painfully.
1. Any bad grades
2. Failing to have enough money saved to buy a car
3.
Especially Being unable to leave home and get a job like my younger brother, even with a college degree and later some graduate school
I think the last month of his life he softened... maybe glad I actually came home from Huntington WV (I worked with the University after graduation, but I was going to lose my job anyway, I just came home two weeks early) to escort him out of this existence, or maybe glad Mom wasn't going to be alone without him (a bright side of being unable to leave home, and maybe why I failed or Jesus made fail persistently at trying to leave home).
I still had bad dreams about him after he died. "Damn it, you're still alive? This is a horror movie!"
Batman - re: the hard childhood thing. I had a not so normal childhood witnessing domestic abuse and being scared of my father. I was also considered a failure in Maths by him. He mentions it still. He was wonderful at maths, a natural and tried teaching me and my brother... it wasn't the nice patient kind of teaching. I have problems still with pressure situations and I think it might be to do with that. Even in a friendly scrabble game, if people are watching me and I'm expected to add up something I really struggle and sometimes my mind even goes blank.
I also grew up in a home where there were often turtles in our bath, puppies in the laundry and chickens and other animals in our backyard. We lived in suburbia and I was teased in school because of how I smelt... I had no friends until Grade 4 when I met a nice nerdy girl.
So no, I don't think a bad childhood would make things better. In fact I think some of my self confidence problems come from back then. I still have problems with authority figures and my initial reaction when someone is putting me down is just to be submissive until I can get away, sometimes my mind just goes blank and doesn't think of the standing up for myself option until after the situation.
I mostly had an easy childhood except for my father's yelling. My father verbally abused my mother--and all of us--and it very easily sent me into meltdowns. I am also very afraid of authority figures. I still cannot have a normal conversation with my father.
His yelling did not help me--however ruthless it was... it hurt more than it helped. With an AS person, sometimes the things that hurt, actually hurt.... rather than "make you stronger" as it would be with NT children. (I'm guessing that's the idea, anyway)
I wonder if "Wondering1" is surprised to hear that "ruthless upbringing" does not work for everyone.
Those who see your desperate need for validation and who get rebuffed when the validation that's offered isn't acceptable to you?
Because the validation is oftentimes little more than a symbol that says "you should have more confidence in whatever abilities you have" rather than being accurate. The real world does not see someone who graduates high school at age 19, and cannot handle community college classes, and who has almost no talents--as intelligent. To believe otherwise is to delude oneself.
It is amazing that still, no one on this site will acknowledge what these simple facts of mine might mean. Lack of intelligence, dare I say it?
I guess everyone is afraid of bursting that artificial bubble of positivity.
Why can't people just see the facts and give me what I want. I need to know I am defective... and I will need outside parties to confirm it.
Is it too much to ask for such confirmation?
Yup, it's pretty much too much to ask for..sorry I can't give you what you want..
Batman, you get (rightfully) cross if someone else mouthed off stereotypes, so why are you doing exactly the same?
Stereotype 1: People with learning disabilities can never learn anything useful at all in any way. Surely there's enough people around here for you to see that's bullshit? Yet, you say over and over again in perfectly spelled, grammatically correct, beautifully constructed writing, that you can't learn. You've convinced yourself of that sometime SINCE you learned to write, obviously.
Someone with learning disabilities who's doing very well/working very hard would be mad at me for saying such things. But I feel I must have some right to say the things I say because I'm *in* this group. And I'm not happy to have a membership in the "Learning Disabled" club, at all. I am not proud of my learning disabilities.
But RE: your main point: this all depends on WHICH learning disabilities you have, and to the extent you have them. There are degrees here. So, while it is not on paper, I'm quite certain I have significant learning problems. Therefore, I feel like I'm useless in society.. especially when people start comparing me to others. That's what kills me. That's the source of most of my anger, I think.
Stereotype 2: People with learning disabilities are only fit for certain jobs. This also buys into the twisted greed-is-good thinking that some jobs are somehow less worthy than others, as if a cleaner on 30 grand a year is somehow less important than an office worker on 50. Bullshit. If the cleaner's happy and paying her rent, who are we to pass judgement on her job?
Generally speaking, a significantly learning disabled person is not going to be able to do the science/math oriented jobs that quite a few people on AFF have. And generally their colleagues are not people who took an extra year in high school and felt overwhelmed by a few unweighted classes in local community college. That was my point.
I have strong anecdotal evidence to support the above ideas. My father was well-known for his ability in analytical chemistry. He talked a lot about the workplace and the facts were that his colleagues had credentials, unlike me.
This is a conversation you've really got to have with a counsellor, doctor, or trusted family member if you have one. Not a bunch of randoms on the 'net.
I've done that a lot and it seems the barometer such people use is other people in my age group, what schools they've gone to, how quickly they succeeded etc. How is it that going to help me?
Batman, I've tried to help you and I can't. You've got an answer, nonsensical as it may be, for everything anyone tries to tell you, so what do you actually want this thread to achieve?
I don't know what you want and am not going to try any more. If you're looking for someone to give you permission to do something rash, it's not going to be me.
Shouldn't the fact that my answers lack coherence be an indicator of learning problems...?
I don't have a typical day, unfortunately. I would be criticized heavily if I explained what I did with my time.