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Hi. I would like to introduce myself. I was diagnosed with AS a few months ago. I'm 32 (female), a PhD student (political philosophy) and living in the UK. My main obsession is with words (grammar, spelling, syntax, categorization and so on). I am slightly hesitant about joining a forum, but am feeling so lonely and isolated that I thought I'd give it a go. I don't really have any contact with people who understand this kind of thing, so was thinking that maybe here would be a good place to start. Thank you for your time.

Welcome. The subject of words is interesting.

Welcome

"My main obsession is with words (grammar, spelling, syntax, categorization and so on)"

I better be more careful so mine is dredful

"I am slightly hesitant about joining a forum, but am feeling so lonely and isolated that I thought I'd give it a go."

Joining a forum isnt that big a step think of it as a large room with people who share similar experences.

*waves hullo*

Thanks, everyone.

Alex: I think it's interesting. (Well, to me it's kind of crucial . . . )

Derek: I am an expert in self-restraint when it comes to correcting others. (I can't tell if you're joking or not.) Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it.

Zastoi: hullo and smiley face to you too!

well being not being able to tell when someone is joking is aspie trait and im not joking im truly terrible.

your appreciation is appreciated

Hello Leila. Welcome to WrongPlanet. Hope you like it here.

Whereabouts are you in the UK?

Hi Leila, welcome to WP.

"I am slightly hesitant about joining a forum, but am feeling so lonely and isolated that I thought I'd give it a go."

I felt like that when I first joined but now I'm really glad I did. It was so good to find people who shared similar experiences. So don't worry, I think you'll like it here.

I'm from the UK too, I live in Wales.

hello leila!

i'm also 32 and from the UK. i'm a recovering mathematician, now doing social sciences (an oxymoron if ever there was one )

i also find 'correct' spelling/grammar/style interesting, though i don't write proper gammar here (quite deliberately too - if i did i would be checking each post and obsessing over it and double checking and triple checking and checking and checkingandcheckingandchecking and getting more and more obsessive about it and i'd end up not posting anything!) weirdly enough i also find incorrect spelling and grammar very interesting! two of my friends are dyslexic and i love chatting to them online, as (i'm almost embarrassed to admit) i find their spelling just as entertaining as what they are saying dyslexic english has an odd sort of logic and structure behind it, it's perhaps even nicer than proper english

another friend is german, and writes in 'englisch' i love it when continental europeans write in 'european english', i even find it attractive in the same way people find spoken accents attractive maybe it is the way they mix the logic/structure (and sometimes spelling rules) of their first languages into their english. and it seems most other languages are a lot less irregular than english!

anyway, hope you enjoy it here. i also feel lonely and isolated a lot. it's nice to come here and talk about AS issues from our own perspective.

Hi everyone. I posted earlier but it didn't seem to take. Apologies if I'm repeating myself.

I live in London.

DivaD: I, too, am interested in "incorrect" English; what we now consider to be incorrect/slang would have been considered as correct, years ago. What is interesting about (written (and spoken)) language is that it is ever-evolving. Are you studying as a career? How do you find it? I am in two minds about it: in some ways, it makes me feel real, in that I do well, academically, and can live off awards and scholarships and things. However, there is a whole social aspect to the lifestyle that flummoxes me. I feel that I am living on borrowed time, and that at some point I shall be "found out".

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Enjoy WP!

sorry for the delay in replying, i'm not well

i'm not studying as a career but it could be what i will end up doing, so i'm interested in your experiences of it. my AS seems to be worse than average so i live on disability, but i hate it and would rather have something purposeful to do. what i'm interested in would be social research with people with AS in the areas of rights, empowerment, social policy, advocacy, getting-what-we-want, that sort of thing.

what sort of thing do you do in your political philosophy studies, and what about it do you find interesting? (your answer can be as short or long as you like )

when i did my first degree i found the social side of it completely impossible. i just ended up locking myself away in my room. interestingly i also felt like i was living on borrowed time! i felt under pressure from two sides - i knew i couldn't keep up the social act much longer, it was stressing me out (to the point of not being able to eat). on the other hand, if i left, what else could i do? i knew i couldn't cope with a job. and time was always ticking away... i ended up in the mental health system i always used to get good academic results (at least i did whenever i managed to get work completed!), i'd win prizes and scholarships too, which at least gave me some sense of worth. but it was never enough to make up for all the social stress.

Hi, DivaD.

I'm interested in rights, and the way they function in philosophical and political argument. What I'm mainly interested in is the structure of certain forms of argument, and what it is that is pushing the argument through. Rights are interesting in that respect, because nowadays so many arguments and debates quickly become "reduced" to a series of claims and counter-claims, and it sometimes seems that the arguments ignore the very thing that rights are there to protect, and focus more on the rights themselves. This often means that debates become polarised, and turn into some kind of battle of who can shout the loudest. It's as though rights now have their own ontological force, independently of anything else.

No, academic success doesn't make up for social difficulties. And the more time I spend in academia the more obvious it becomes that social interaction is an important part of academic progress. So I'm not sure what I'm going to about that. Like you said, though, I can't think of anything else I could (or would want to) do with my life.

I also live on benefits, which I think is allowed if you are registered as a part-time student, as I am. In terms of a PhD, it makes no difference if you are part-time or full-time. I have tried to work, many times, but find it difficult to 1) hold down a job and 2) think about work and study at the same time. When I am busy studying I can't even think about basic things, like food and sleep. Plus, it takes me absolutely ages to actually get my work done. I'm not sure what to do about that, either. It makes me feel slow and stupid.

that's very interesting, i often find myself getting frustrated with political arguments for similar reasons. debating has become more about verbal skill than anything else, which biases everything in favour of those with the greatest social skills. and that's not us

it's one reason why i'm interested in advocacy and empowerment as much as rights - a right is only useful if one has the ability to exercise it, and that's a big issue with AS. for one thing it's not even clear what rights we have (one employer sacked someone for having AS, then claimed the disability discrimination act didn't count because AS wasn't a disability). but more important it's near impossible for us to exercise our rights, because it's a social process with many unwritten rules and lots of uncertainty. yet the organisations we may be up against can afford legal teams and people with high levels of social skill, we would never stand a chance against them.

i do wish there was a way of getting organisations to respect the values behind rights



i know the feeling, it takes me ages to get work done too in fact doing any sort of writing takes ages (even this!). the reason i did maths originally was because it was the only subject where i did get work done, because in maths there isn't much writing to do! even then i only got about half as many problem sheets finished as i should have. writing essays is much, much worse, sometimes taking hours for each paragraph and leaving me with terrible headaches.

i've just been through the disabled students allowance assessment procedure, and i am hoping to get out of it some more support hours so i could have a support worker as an amanuensis. i've tried this a bit already, and when i've had support my marks are over 90%, without support it's under 50% so having an amanuensis seemed to help. it got work done quicker too. having someone else there kept me focussed on the topic.

Welcome to WrongPlanet.