Hello, this is an unnecessarily long introduction.

Post Reply New Topic

I have a mini-autobiography for you!

Academics:

The earliest significant events that I remember is being admitted into the Gifted And Talented Education program in my local school district starting in the second grade. The next is being kicked out halfway through the fourth grade. The teacher did not like me, and I did not do much to discourage this dislike. Just before the seventh grade, my parents decided to buy a house, and we ended up moving outside of that school district, into one that didn't exactly fit my dad's idea of a good school. I started being homeschooled halfway through the seventh grade. When my parents moved us up to Reno, I started the ninth grade in public schools again. I was bored most of the time and I avoided doing my homework. I should've gotten an 'F' in English, but my teacher knew that I knew more than an 'F' student. Still, when my father saw my 'D', he asked me how long I had been speaking this language. When they built North Valley High School, I was transferred there, where I was even more bored and upset by the fact that I seemed to know more about basic geometry than at least one of my math teachers. I spent a couple of years there before transferring to a charter high school. I never got my diploma, but I was able to find a math teacher there that I could talk to about my mathematical ideas. After two years of trying to find work and being fired not long after being hired, I started at Sierra Nevada Job Corps, where I did not get along well with my instructor. Luckily, I was able to finish my vocation in record time and I was accepted into the college program. I currently stay on Job Corps campus and attend Truckee Meadows Community College. I have recently finished my first semester and am halfway through the first of two summer sessions.

Family:

I have three sisters, two older and one younger. We are all two years apart, born in the last third of the year. My father was seven and a half years younger than my mother. Looking back, I can say with certainty that he was an excellent parent, if a little prone to reading dirty jokes to his wife near his kids. ...Yeah. He never trusted public schools that much, I don't think. One of my fondest memories is him reading Animal Farm to my sisters and me. He also attempted to teach me some rocket science. It didn't work out so well. My mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic after she attempted suicide. She spent some time in a mental institution, but I was too young to remember much of this. My sisters and I would fight quite often. Arms nearly broken, eyes nearly gouged out, chairs and windows broken, that sort of thing. Eight years ago, my father died in a car accident while on a trip out-of-state. Not long after that, my sisters moved out, and my mother stopped taking her medication. She spent some more time in a mental hospital and now has guardians managing just about every aspect of her life. Luckily, she managed to convince them that she is capable of living alone, so she was able to move out of the horrible assisted living center she was in. I now visit her on the weekends.

On my self-diagnosis:

Something I discovered very recently was that my parents were told that I might be autistic. They soon found out that their insurance wouldn't cover a diagnosis, so they apparently just shrugged and moved on. I won't be able to tell my father how grateful I am to him for that. He recognized that I loved math, and so he would play a game with me whenever we went to the grocery store. I would see how much the total was, and then he would tell me how much he was handing the cashier. I would try to figure out how much the change would be before the cashier could enter in the amount he was handing them. I got to the point where I was beating the cashier nearly every time. This seems a trifle thing, but everyone who ever suggested that I might be autistic has used this in their argument. Oi. I kept to myself growing up, and I had an ever-growing dislike of physical contact, especially with people I didn't know. I blamed this on my ever-growing germophobia, which began about ten years ago. I heard about obsessive-compulsive disorder a few years ago and assumed that that was what I had. I went to the Northern Nevada Adult Mental Health, at the behest of one of my aunts, and they said that I did indeed have OCD. I took medication for it for a short while, but it just made me really sleepy. Not long after that, that same aunt e-mailed me suggesting that it might be autism, not OCD. I dismissed it, but for some reason, a little over a half a year ago, I came back to that possibility. I am quite sure that I meet the diagnostic criteria for autism. I know I meet the diagnostic criteria for AS if I don't meet it for autism. I have also taken a couple of tests that show that I am on the spectrum. I really don't care enough to get officially diagnosed right now. Whether I am who I am because of some sort of left brain deficiency or because I am this way because of my choices, it doesn't matter to me. I am who I am. I did manage to find out why I have some trouble with my senses.

I think that's all that's relevent and a heck of a lot that isn't. Except I did want to say this: I think that my brain works in such a way that it processes data for, say, writing an essay, through the same portion that processes math. This would explain why, as my math skills improved, so did my ability in most everything else intellectual.

My user name is the way it is because I enjoy being loony. I entertain myself in that fashion, since other people and things do a very poor job of it.

I am 22 and live in Reno, Nevada. I spend my time doing any math that comes my way, drawing, and forcing myself to do my homework. I probably won't be able to post very much, but I will try to read what is posted here, if nothing else.

Greetings, and welcome to the Wrong Planet, MrLoony.

Very interesting bio, I wish everyone would do that. I too don't post often, but I read posts all day long.

To WrongPlanet!! !