An Introduction

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Hi all,
My name is Cal, I'm 19 and I've never posted to a traditional forum before but I've always been interested in them. I think I may be a good bit younger than most of the people that reside here. For my entire life I've been obsessed with computers and more recently, Linux and online privacy and online security. I'm in my first year of college, entirely overwhelmed and stressed out. I'm posting this introduction totally not as a form of procrastination. I haven't done too much lurking on this forum before making my account so I'll be waiting not so patiently for replies lol. I learned about this forum ironically enough, from /r/aspergers on reddit and have been curious about this place ever sense. I'm glad to be here and I'm excited to meet you all

Interesting. Strange introduction. It seems like you read a little bit about Asperger's Syndrome and arrived at the conclusion that you may be one of us. One thing about Aspies, we tend to become subject matter experts. We latch onto something and dive very deep into the subject then the normal NT. Many of us develop very high IQs as a result. Many of us develop a strong ability in using computers, we can become computer experts.

There are on line tests available that can provide you a fairly accurate assessment. Have you taken any of these and how did you score?

You wrote, "I'm in my first year of college, entirely overwhelmed and stressed out."
That sounds normal. Many times exercise can help minimize the effects of stress overload. But many times it needs to be an extreme form of exercise in order to vent stress.

In many colleges, they use the first year courses to weed out students. Some of the classes in your major field will be very interesting. But you will be required to take other course outside your major. Most people take first year courses in these areas. But I found out that spearheading into more advanced courses, gave me better grades and were more fun. For example, I was able to substitute a 4th year course to replace one of my mandatory courses. It was a course called Field Archeology. I went out on weekends with a group of classmates and participated in a dig site. It was a little like being Indiana Jones before there was a movie series called Indiana Jones.

Welcome to WP! I hope you like it here.

....but don't let it interfere with your studies. We'll likely still be here after you graduate.

I realize it was pretty dumb of me to not even mention I am officially diagnosed with aspergers and I have been for most of my life. Quite an assumption to think I am self diagnosed but with how I worded my post I can see how you came to that conclusion.
Anyways, I'm not sure if you're asking if I have taken an online test to test my IQ or to test my computer skills. I believe I have taken an IQ test once a long ago but have since avoided them as I felt they were sort of harmful on how they rank your IQ. IQ isn't all that important anyways in the board range of intelligence it doesn't make sense to just have a single number to represent someones intelligence.
It wouldn't surprise me if your comment on first year courses weeding out students we're true for my college. All was going well until my English Communications class which is absolute hell, at least for me. I have to do multiple long essays and do "group projects" despite the class being fully online with no scheduled meet time so theres a lack of organization in the class I feel. Sadly these online classes are nearly unavoidable since Covid. My college is well loved and highly respected but I have a feeling that these feelings were post-covid when the professors migrated to what are (in my opinion) incredibly lazy courses. Im glad things worked out well for you though. It sounds like this thing you did was a long time ago, quite interesting.

I'm trying my best with my work lol it seems like my best isn't enough though its a struggle as procrastination and distractions are my worst enemy.

Yes, I am 75 years old, so a long time ago. This conversation calls to mind one of my first year English classes. During my first year I attended a university in Texas that was an all male college that had just changed to both male/female. I had an English class where our teacher had just graduated and this was her first teaching job. She was very attractive. But her entire class consisted of male students. Our first assignment was to write a two page essay. It could be on any subject. One of the boys in the back of the room said, "any subject, even Playboy"? She repeated, "Any subject." Everyone giggled. So we all turned in our essays. The next day we all received them back. Every student in the class received an F. There was utter horror. She said let me describe my grading policy. For every spelling mistake, I deducted two grade points. For every punctuation mistake, you lost one. But she then went onto say, "But you can redo them and turn them in again". It took 3 tries before someone in the class received something higher then an F. I broke that level on my 5 try. The only way I was able to succeed was to check and evaluate every single word, one by one. It was crazy.

So as the year came to a close, I decided that it was unlikely that she would fail her entire class. Something would happen. I was right. She said that the final would account for around 75% of the grade. And she was fairly liberal on the grades she gave in the final.

It was a very interesting class. Our family moved the next year to Los Angles and I transferred to UCLA.

Welcome!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Hi Cal and welcome!

Welcome to the forums!