What did you have the most trouble with in school?

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The most difficult thing for me was giving speeches and formal presentations. I cannot count the number of times I was marked down for not making eye contact. Absolutely worst for me was French class, because it included, horror of horrors, improv and conversions. Maintaining normal small talk is hard enough, without having to do it in a foreign language and with the added stress of knowing you're being graded. I could handle presentations when I got a lot of time to prepare beforehand and memorize what I was going to say, but discussions were nearly impossible for me.

Math and sciences that used math (there was so much of that pointless stuff in HS). Strangely though, I received an A in the only math class I had to take for university.

I have to say that my all time worst subject was physical education...not that it was really a subject anyway, but was still terrible at it. I was clumsy and always falling over when I was running. I could not (and still can't) throw or catch a ball properly which was irritating. And then there are team sports which were the worst for me, most of the time I would fall over and have to sit on the side, or stand on the "side-lines" watching, and confused of wear to stand and what to do.

There are subjects I did not like and those I really hated. Homework I usually did in school or forgot, sometimes I did them the night at 2 a.m. before the day they would have to be finished. One third of homework I never did.

I hated physical education. I have had the usual ball games/team sports issues and trouble doing things by watching other people. Being forced to do things you simply cannot do as well as others over and over again and being watched by "peers" all the time ... I do not need to explain that here. PE teachers usually treated me as if would be extremely stupid or ret*d but never did anything to improve my abilities. If NTs are supposed to use empathy and see people suffer then PE teachers must be an exception.

I had a maths teacher doing PE and as soon as he became my maths teachers my math marks magically reduced from stellar to below average. Very nice. School is the place where self-esteem of young people is systematically removed.

I think I have been lucky in my schools, all the time I never had more to do than copying something from the blackboard and I could do things for myself. Reading something aloud or participating in discussions was a bit harder. I remember I had to do an oral presentation at the age of 16 and almost had kind of a meltdown in front of the class. I remember two projects where students had to do teamwork to achieve something and actually talk to each other. I did badly at those but they did not matter much for my marks or graduating. If I would have had to defend my ideas, negotiate with and convince others I could as well have stayed at home.

I always did very well in natural sciences, especially in maths or physics but not when doing teamwork (very rarely). I had problems with languages, especially in English (foreign language) and German (literature etc.). Finiding story content between the lines was a real challenge. Fortunately there are books about books where other people did that job well and you only need to memorize them, easy like nothing else. I realized there are simple patterns in most stories and today I see them all the time in fictious stories or movies and I dislike those because they are boring.

Things got much worse when I started university. Taking notes during a lecture is almost impossible, I can either focus on the lecturers words and presentation or take notes. Following a lecturer and trying to remember everything got difficult after 30 minutes. The university had small student groups at the size of 5-6 people expected to learn together, exactly the weakest spot of all. I took counselling. No go.

Fortunately I had enough support from my parents and enough time to find strategies around the issues. But I had to leave the big university for a small one with small classes and without real team work projects but I still cannot learn in a group with other people. I can pretent doing so but it would not work for me and I have to learn things for myself.

I did one software project (I graduated MS in computer sciences) in a small team but my team members sucked up totally compared to me, they were neither motivated nor creative. Not their fault, they are just NTs The professor leading the project got me job at an research centre (engineering, telecommuting) I could do while still attending lectures two years before I had my degree. Self-esteem got better again.

My hardest subjects have always been any type of math, any type of science, and history/geography. I've always been very, very good at language arts and writing.

In high school -
Writing personal or opinion essays. Research reports were easy, but I would stay up all night crying in frustration over personal essays, and usually turned them in late. I still got great grades on them, but that was only because my grasp of advanced grammar and vocabulary masked their mediocre content. I even managed to get an A+ in a college-equivalent composition course because I submitted an essay about the movie The Royal Tenenbaums, which was my obsession at the time.

In college -
Chem lab reports. I was required to take four semesters of lab courses. I even had to repeat one of the courses. To this day I still have no idea what the hell the graders wanted from me. I also just couldn't handle the large-lecture format. I had no friends in my major, so I would get really stressed out sitting in a room full of strangers with no one to reassure me. This led to a lot of skipping class. In retrospect, it's a wonder I got my degree at all, especially since I attended a university ranked in the top 25 nationally.

Getting homework done. I'm awful with procrastinating and motivation. Unfortunately, homework includes a lot of essays, which are a huge portion of the grade; I have to get those done, regardless.

Gym was a nightmare. I'm a clumsy person and would always get picked last for teams.

And any kind of essay-writing is my idea of hell... especially if you have to develop your own thesis.

I have problems with executive functioning in school but this is something that most aspies have trouble with. However, I have plans in progress so that over time this will not be as much of a problem for me.