Aspies For Freedom

"School community" is my schools favourite buzz-word/buzz-phrase, and they incessantly pester me to take part in their crackpot schemes.
I'm in 6th form (optional last two years of school) now, so I get free periods when I'm not in classes. Now, I would like to use this time for studying in, but nope, that's apparently not the idea. Instead of doing A-level work and learning, I should apparently be going into lessons of 11-16 year olds and helping them out. I would have to go around checking they were doing their work right, help them if they were stuck etc. Basically, it's being a teaching assistant and not getting paid. I can't do that because I would have to socialise with kids I don't even know, and I have a very quiet voice so I'm not going to be very authoritative anyway. I know this for a fact because I have tried it once (standing in for someone) and it was my idea of a living hell. I've managed to avoid it for the first half of the year with vague answers like "yeah, I'll get round to arranging it", "yeah, soon" and so on. They're not taking to kindly to that anymore though, I can't avoid it much longer. (I'm not officially diagnosed either, so they don't understand I can't do it.)

I wish they'd just let me be, but the trouble is, they can't.
To get into universities in the UK now, having great grades and showing you're a hard worker apparently isn't good enough. You have to have done a variety of things. Why? The whole point of going to a university is to study in a specific feild, so how is variety supposed to help anyway? Why do you have to be sociable to get in, when that doesn't affect the grade you get?
The system is set up to screw over aspies completely.

Many distinctions that could set you apart from other applicants do not require social interaction.  Prestigious schools do, however, tend to look for people who achieve both inside and outside of the classroom.  I'm currently at a top 10 university in the US and everyone here definitely have achieved excellence both academically and in social settings.  It's significant that you have that duality because schools want their student body (and eventual alumni base) to have a high level of leadership.
I would suggest being receiving a formal diagnosis so that the schools you apply to can understand that a lack of or limited amount of extracurricular activities does not mean that you are lazy or delinquent.  It will also give you the chance to explain to the schools that you will contribute to their student body by being capable of a higher-than-typical level of devotion to your studies (and therefore you will be adding so much to their campus academically that it compensates for what you feel you cannot do outside of it).  When the admissions officers are looking at your application, they'll be asking "What will Steve add to our campus if I admit him?"  The diagnosis will help tell them that they'll be adding a level of diversity.

"The whole point of going to a university is to study in a specific feild"

Is that why they're called UNIVERSE(ities)?

No.  You were right about university obviously having the same stem as "universe."  "Universe" (universus in latin) means "all together," but "university" (universitatem/universitas in latin) refers to a community or society.  University, as it has come to mean today, comes from it being referred to as a community of teachers/scholars in the past, not as a community of different fields.

At my high school at the start of every year they had this huge fundraiser & they expected every1 to help. U didnt have to but they didnt think very highly of u if u didnt. The school was split into 4 "houses" & competed against each other to see who could raise the most.. Well I didnt see the point of baking horrible home-made lamingtens or selling raffle tickets let alone actually going to the social at night time & helping with a stall. Most people got really into it & there were awards for various things. Also during the "house" meetings about 75 students were crammed into a classroom designed to hold no more then 30 so I was quite irratible & 1 time a teacher asked me in front of every1 if I would help & I barly managed to say "uh, no I dont think so" & they kept at it & I repeated myself & they said how dissapointed they were & I'm just thinking 'just cos Im a good student who doesnt make alot of noise & gets the work done doesnt mean I am automatically going to want to help u'. Then the same thing happened the next year I wasnt overly impressed it was the same teacher to... sry it was so long

I found school fetes fun but not everybody at my school helped or were expected to do anything. It was left up to the individual to decide and we certainly didn't break up into "houses". There was a bit of competition between the various classes but it was light hearted.

School spirit can be taken too far sometimes and if someone doesn't feel they would like to help, it should be their choice and no further pressure applied. I also think it's unhealthy to cram so many people into one classroom. Some of us are sensitive to heat and liable to faint or feel under such conditions.

Ya it got really hot in there, & since Im in Australia the start of the school year is the end of summer so its always hot as hell to begin with & they dont see any prob putting 75 students into a room that small.... there was like no space AT ALL u could barely even move without bumping into some1. It was bad for everybody but I think I had it the worst out of any of them plus that damn teacher, u think she would have learned after the 1st year but nooo she had to ask me again.. Alot of people took the whole school spirit thing way to far. My school always competed in a regional sports day with other nearby schools.... we never won. we hadnt won it in about 20 years but the principle cant seem to let it go. We must do our best to win blah blah blah.. It was quite stressful during term 1 every year at that place cos the schedual for classes changed every couple of weeks :S 1st 3 weeks were 1 way for the fund raiser, the next 3 weeks were different again so the athletes could tain longer then the next 3 weeks were different again... thank god they got everything out of the way in term 1 I couldnt do that all year long.. the more popular students always seemed so offended when I didnt want to help. Its like they thought I was doing it to avoid them or something they were so stuck up & the fact I was the least popular guy in the school didnt make anybody want to stick up for me......... Plus all my friends were in a different house then me so I couldnt turn to them for support..... wow that was long sry..

MercuryA, what part of Australia do you live in? I live in the tropics and can vaguely remember being crammed into a room with lots of people in 8th grade so we could decide on a new house war cry. We simply bailed up at singing the one they had because it was so silly. I think all the house cries were lame-o but ours was about the worst.

I liked our team colour though, it was a pretty shade of green. There was a fair amount of pressure to participate in the swimming and other sports carnivals, but as I wasn't good at any of those things, they didn't expect me to do anything but cheer our people on.

It's ridiculous cramming heaps of people into small rooms because our summers are so hot. There was no airconditioning and even if there was, having so many people in the room would have nullified its usefulness.

Im in South Australia & not all the houses went into a classroom. 2 of them went outside at diff areas of the schools but the 1 I was in of course had to be a classroom 1. When I was in year 10 2 of my NT friends talked me into going to their house meetings lol the teachers didnt bother with roster checks so nobody even noticed. That was a godsend cos it was outside & u could actually move. One of my teachers in year 10 asked me if Id like to participate in the atheletics & I was like no why would I & he jokingly said so I can win some ladies it was 1 of those LMAO moments u never forget I hadnt figured out I was gay at that point (did later in the year) but I was like I dont want any ladies from this place & he jokingly said r u sure & I was just like yeah im sure & he walked off & my 2 NT friends cracked up laughing cos it was so funny & I wasnt even in that house lol. When i was in the room for the house meetings I always waited for every1 else to leave before I even got up, if I had got up I probably would have bumped into about 5 people or stumbled & fallen ontop of some1 so I just sat there waiting for every1 to leave & they thought I was odd cos I always sat near the front of the room so like every1 walked past before I even considered getting up.

Ah yes, I was a bit like that with moving out of classrooms. I had this lemon coloured cardigan which was my favourite since I was about 9 years old. It stretched and so I was still wearing it in 9th grade. It was so soft and fuzzy.

Anyway, one day I was miserable with a cold and allowed myself to be hurried out of the room. Earlier in the lesson, I'd taken the cardigan off and put it under the desk. In the rush, I forgot to put it back on.

By the time I realised it was gone, I went back to the classroom and found it no longer there. I was too timid to ask at the office if anybody had handed it in. I mentioned it to the teacher next time I had a lesson with her and she said the cleaners probably would have thrown it in the bin.

Anyway, proper communities recognise that everybody has different things to offer.We can't all be good at sports or cheering. I wanted to help make banners for sports days as art was my strong point. But it doesn't matter what group you are in, there is always this pressure to do particular things.

Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing.
And besides, we can't all be the leaders. I don't want to be a leader, I just want to learn.
I'm kind of scared that I'll put in loads of work and get good grades, but then not get into the university I want because of not doing a silly little exercise in futility like this. I'm doing other random things though, which don't involve talking to people, like helping out one of my teachers cataloging History magazines, and I quite like that. So hopefully, I'll be able to get out of the teaching assistant thing.
I think it'll probably turn out okay, I was a bit stressed when I wrote the first post so the situation's not quite as bad as I might have made it seem.
Still annoying though.

I've never been to the UK, but I've noticed a very disturbing downward cultural spiral for them. This is just the latest in a line of problems. First, there was the increase in teen & pre-teen violence. Then there was the extreme separation of social classes (Actually, hasn't that been a problem in England since forever? No offense intended.). Now there's this BS! And you're saying this is how England's schools are run? GOOD GOD! This world getting more Aspie-intolerant by the second!

It's a bit like that here in Australia as well. I havnt ever thought about going to collage but when I was in High School when they wanted people to help out with sports events/fund raisers & general stuff they were always like "It will look good on ur university/collage application" & they wonder why not as many people r going to university anymore..... Think it may be cos they want u to do other things besides studying & getting good grades..... Im not sure why participating in the schools sports day when ur going there to study IT is important (<example) it doesnt make alot of sense in my head.. Since I never considered furthering my education after High School I always blew the teachers off & was like "Im not going to Uni I have no use for these extra things" & walked off if I could... They never seem to get it though cos every year they always ask do u wanna help

Well, I don't know if anything has changed since I went to uni in the late 70's - early 80's, but back then, academic results were basically all that counted. Perhaps in a very marginal case (if the mark was on or just under the cutoff for a particular degree), some weight would be placed upon extra curricular activities.

As far as I know in Australia, there is still a great reliance on academic results and OP scores to determine entry to university. Perhaps it is different in other countries, I don't know.

The academic results yes, they don't really learn how much you really know and can. Here in Norway you get extra points for requesting civil-engineer studies if you are female, which I honestly think is unfair.