Medical School/University Life and HFA/Asperger's

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First, I'd just like to say this is my first post so be nice Okay, this may sound a bit mad but whatever I'm gonna go with it. I basically came to the conclusion the other day that I have clearly some kind of high functioning autism, apologies but I don't know enough about the classificational guidelines of autistic spectrum disorders to accurately be able to shoe horn myself into a category.

Let me start from the beginning. I'm a second year medical student in the UK. I've just failed the entire year and I'm not really sure what to do with my life. I moved into a house with two girls (I'm female FYI) who were previously best friends at high school. Long story short, it's been hell. But pieces have been clicking into place for me all year. I take everything they say too literally and it causes arguments. I tried explaining this to them, saying if you want me to do something you have to be a 100% clear in what you mean after I realised that this was the basis for many arguments. One of the girls is very forward and aggressive, she is a lovely person as well, but she becomes extremely irrational quickly. An example would be one time I found the heating on at 3am, after I woke up from being too hot. I sent both my roommates a text saying politely that we need to remember to put the heater on timer. I was met with a response informing me the the f***ing heating is broken and I shouldntve touched it, etc instantly. Yet I had not been told at any point of this. Basically, long story short I became really passive and terrified of doing or saying anything for fear of upsetting my roommates. I used to have panic attacks in my room if I dropped something, thinking they could hear me and would go mental about the noise. I did anything to avoid going back to my house.

I started spending time sitting in the toliets at med school or my boyfriend's house. Unfortunately his house was located too far from the Uni for me to ever make it to lectures. I started missing everything, and got really behind. Then in January he broke up with me and everything just went to hell. I started sitting in my room at uni crying all the time. I have no friends at University or in my year at medical school. I joined the Uni after being diagnosed with an extremely rare illness which meant I was so damn ill all the time I didn't have the energy to go out and "put my mask on" as it were and get to know people during Fresher's. I have only one friend in this city and he's moving back home this Summer, so I'll have no one.

I started staying awake for 3-4 days at a time. Just lying in bed crying, wondering why I couldn't sleep. Thinking I was actually going mad. I went to my end of year exams, but I knew I didn't know anything, the pain in my chest was excruciating. I'd been in and out of hospital with my health problems, so my fail didn't count in the end. But now I have to think about what to do next.

I know this year has gone bad because I'm so isolated and alone. I went to a Grammar school before moving here, and although I never had a lot of friends, people eventually got used to me. I've arranged to start a fresh next year and retake the year. But I'm moving in with 3 medics in my current year (I don't know them, but they had a room free when I was looking for somewhere to live). I'm just terrified this will happen again. I keep convincing myself I'm thick and I'll never be able to do it. But I know that's not true. This isn't beyond me academically at all, but I've always been worried about clinical years and patients and how I'd cope because I'm SO BAD with small talk, and meeting new people. But I always kept such a positive outlook, I'll deal with it when it happens. I think this has just taken all the confidence right out of me and now all I see is failure no matter what.

I guess I was just wondering if:
a) There is anyone here who has experience with medical school and having a diagnosis of autism, and how they coped.
b)Any Aspie's that have gone to university, and how you integrated with other people on your course/uni.
c)Any Aspie's with experience of living with other people and how to cope.

I know I've just had a bad year and I just need to come back and start a fresh. But I'm terrified it will all happen again, this is a huge financial investment for me. I just written this in one huge chunk and haven't read it through so apologies for the inevitable terribly constructed English this produces, haha.

Wow. My heart went out to you in this post. I'm not sure where to start though; you've got a hell of a lot of stressors going on at the same time.

With regards to your housemate; this sounds like her problem more than yours. When a bunch of people move in together, it's always going to be difficult, especially so if they're friends. But just because she doesn't have the emotional maturity to control her outbursts over small things, that doesn't mean that other people will be as bad.

One thing I would say is that whilst she sounds like an obnoxious housemate (if not friend), I don't think you can go through life asking other people to explain things in your particular way; sometimes you need to adapt to other styles of communication and if you are uncertain of a request, it can help to ask for clarification at the time not later on.

Moving in with the medics sounds a good idea; it may make it easier to get to know the rest of the class and if they're nice people, they may invite you along to nights out etc. (one thing I regret living alone was that I didn't mingle much with my year). From a studying-perspective; you'll find you end up talking about medicine constantly so something will sink in.

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Went through that too once- it ends eventually. Fair play to you for attempting the exams at least. They'll be easier next time round (does your college have repeats in the summer?)


You're not thick. I know it's easy to feel that way though when surrounded by people who seem to breeze through med school, but at the end of the day being a good doctor does not require getting honours. Many of the consultants whom I admire most are quite open about the fact that they scraped a passing grade.

With regards to the clinical years; that was always the bit that scared me too, and I still get anxious each time I take a history. It's true what they say however; the more you do, the easier it becomes.

One thing I found enormously helpful for the finals was my webcam; recording myself talking to and examining the 'patient' (a teddybear propped up in a nightdress) allowed me to go back and see how I appeared to others and to compare myself to other professionals (you'll get a lot of videos on youtube). It's heresy to say this, but I found a week's worth of this acting far more worthwhile than a month on the wards! (obviously, you'll need to talk to real patients afterwards!)



Yup. I won't lie, I found it very difficult. I spent my first couple of years wanting to quit but by the time I was half way through, I felt it would be a waste to quit now. What got me through? Stubborness. Pride. Wanting a guaranteed job at the end of it. No small part of it was not wanting to come across doctors in future and thinking 'I could have been one of you....'- I'm not saying any of those are good reasons, just that they were mine. Funnily enough, many people in my year dropped out or went into the year below and I don't think any the less of them; two of my friends took years out before they came back into our year and their experience with life will probably make better doctors than the rest of us.

Good luck whatever your decision.

I don't have experience with medical school, but I am planning to apply to med school at the end of the 2012 school year. The aspie diagnosis was a huge positive experience because I was able to befriend other aspies in a support group when previously I had no friends. I'd say my post-diagnosis life is much better.

As far as coping mechanisms for school, I am severely lacking in the executive functioning category. My working memory was tested in high school, and I scored in the 2 percentile, really bad. I'm terrible at taking verbal directions, just as terrible at organizing tasks, and anything else that pertains to executive functioning. The only reason I can still get good grades despite all of this is because I learned to recognize my own impulsive behaviors (playing a CD ad nauseum or spending too much time on my special interests). I used those special interests as rewards for finishing a certain obligatory task. I don't know if you have a problem controlling impulse, but I do know it's a problem for many aspies and it can severely affect your grades if you don't know how to cope.

As far as dealing with your peers, I usually just try to stay as complaisant as possible. I find it's the best way to avoid conflict. If you have to live with roommates, make sure you have your own room. I hate small talk, but it's the best way to convey your intentions and attitude to everyone else. If you don't do the small talk, people will assume you're unfriendly or rude. It's just something you need to do if you want to avoid contentious encounters. Small talk has an important purpose in that it introduces you to the other person. With time, you can skip the small talk and go right to the interesting material. First impressions count whether it's logical or not, so it's best to do the small talk.

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That is something I definately have to start doing. I have a tendancy to not understand something, try and figure it out and then eventually days later or whatever asking for clarification and making a fool of myself. Because obviously anyone else wouldve just asked for clarification there and then! Haha.


I think the problem for me is, I have an almost photographic memory, I can hold huge volumes of information in my head for a short time. I know I could do the resits, and no doubt pass, but in the long term I won't have any real understanding of this years work (musculoskeletal and neuro, oh the horror! ). Realistically, it makes more sense to come back and actually go to the lectures and learn it properly. I've started on antidepressants, which is probably the right decision and I want to just want to use the next 3 months I'd have off to try and sort my life out really.



I like this idea! I've previously had to do an 15minute oral presentation on a drug advertisement and I found it really helpful to record my voice and listen to it back (I have a tendancy to talk extremely quickly!). I just worry because I know when I live with other people they can hear me through the wall. First year I was in typical student flat with seperate bedrooms that were very well sound proofed so I had my "space" as it were. Living in a student house is much different! The walls are like paper. I've had problems with people asking me "who I'm talking to" because I like to vocalise my train of thought when I'm working to help me focus but obviously people don't like the noise. My "stimming"(? I think I've seen people use that word, hopefully I'm using it right hehe) is body rocking. I like to listen to music while rocking. I had an incident where one of the girls I live with came back during the holidays and heard me doing it and then made loads of jokes about who was I f***ing in my room! It was all friendly but it made me so aware that they could hear me and I stopped doing it, I think that's been a mjor part of my "meltdown" this year - important coping mechanisms I developed I had to abandon because even my bedroom isn't really my "space" - I can't escape anyone. So it's undoubtedly the basis for my fear of next year, as I will still worry bout upsetting other people. And you can't exactly say to someone, oh sorry, I like to rhythmically move backwards and forwards because I'm slightly mental...



That's how I feel. I think I'd crack up if I had to walk away and be a failure, because in my eyes I would be. And when I say that I don't mean it in a normal medical student OH MY GOD MY LIFE WOULD BE OVER kinda way, But school has been my happy place as it were for a long time. I love school, I love learning. I love being challenged. So to walk away and just go back home with nothing to look forward to, nothing to learn would be horrible for me. I just get this feeling that if I walk away, I'll just give up and spend the rest of my life sitting around being sad about it, I don't think I'd just pick myself up and do something else. Everything I want to do with my life requires me to get a degree in something! I'll have to go to University eventually. And yes maybe I should've chosen something easier like a Biology degree (I don't mean easier academically, I mean in terms of less social interaction). But I can't help but be realistic and think, there's a chance I won't be able to handle the clinical years. And I've already paid for two years of university, if I retake this year, I'll have already paid for a normal three year degree! So to go forward and then potentially have to admit that this is too hard for me 3 or 4 years in, the financial burden will be massive. I won't be able to afford another degree.

Obviously you can't tell me which to do! But I don't know, I just don't want to stubbornly go back to my degree to fail later and have to face my parents and admit I was wrong, they were right and I shouldn't've chosen soemthing so hard. But equally I really don't think I can walk away at all. I think it would kill me. And on my good days, my brain tells me hell yeah I can do this, and yeah everyone thinks you're mental and patients can be a social minefield but I can do it, because I can do anything. I can look people in the eye and pretend to be normal much better than I ever could even two years ago! I can learn this! But on my bad days, I just feel like I'll never fit in, I'll upset all my patients by saying something stupid, look like a fool in front of the consultants. Everyones so cut throat, and I know any of my peers would stab me in the back even half the chance to make themselves look better because I watch them do it to each other all the time. Maybe someone like me, someone so emotionally sensitive shouldn't be putting myself in a career where it can be so cut throat. How do you cope with it?

THIS. This is one of my worst problems. And now I'm stuck in a rut where I'm used to sitting around doing nothing and being miserable, and the mountain of what I have to learn seems so high that everytime I do sit down to do it and then get distracted, I think what the heck, I'll never finish it anyway and then wonder off lost in my own train of thought. I'm hoping moving in with medical students (who seem VERY hard working) will hopefully rub off on me, I tend to become like the people around me. I think a major problem for me is I am extremely clever, and my special interest IS medicine. I spend hours a day just reading medical journals for fun, so I know all this random crap but I still can't name like any muscle in the body, because I found dissection completely blew my mind when we started anatomy, so many new words and I never really learnt them. But I can just "wing it" and still pass things by just working it out using what I already know, so I can hide how little I've learnt. And it's definately made me lazy and in the long term is not a good idea.

I find if I write a timetable I never stick to it, and then that upsets and demotivates me further. Just sitting down to write a plan is so horrible I proscrastinate on the actually planning! But I know that if I get into a new routine, and get used to being up early and doing work, I can stick to it. How do you organise to do work? Can you give me more details about how you motivate yourself on a day to day basis?


This is easier said than done, and in the long term I think in regards to living with people it doesn't work. This works for everyone so long as you don't have to live with them. I tried to do everything that was asked of me and not say if they were doing something I didn't like, because tbh I hate so many things that I know wouldn't be fair. But I don't think they realise that they do all the things they complain at me for, simply because I never said anything. And so they became used to me being really passive and just doing whatever. Til I finally snapped, and did say something (always politely, I don't mean like I got in a argument or anything like I would at home ), I was met with adversary because I think they'd just assumed they hadn't done anything and now I was pointing it out to be annoying or something. When in reality it had been pissing me off for weeks and months. It's so much harder when you're living with people, because to just be complaisant all the time, requires me to let things happen that I actually cannot stand. For example, my flatmates started putting the heating on full 24hours a day (normally i'd let it go even though it's a huge waste of money and who the hell needs heating on at 4am while asleep, when they admitted to having electric blankets on as well) but it actually reached the point where even with the radiator in my room off, I still had to walk around in shorts and a vest in December! I had to start opening window, so my room was just permenantly too hot or too cold. And then they had the cheek to go mental when the bill came through, even though I was the one who kept trying to turn it down... I mean for me to sit in my room whilst boiling, so I'm uncomfortable as well as worrying about the cost (I get very strange around anything that seems like a waste of money), I literally would lie in bed and become so angry, but I had no way to let it out. I couldn't even control the temperature of my room, let alone the rest of my life.


I definately agree with everything you've said here. But I find the more I know I need to make a good first impression, the more stressful it is! And when I get stressed the last thing I want to be doing is talking to someone, and ended up making an even worse impression of myself. I have it compounded with the fact I can get really ill, and I just don't have time for anyone when I'm ill.

I really want the people I move in with next to like me. I was thinking of just straight off the bat mentioning my health and sort of using it as an excuse, saying sometimes I just get very ill and so I might retreat away a bit more sometimes. Because I can try all I want when I'm healthy, but when I'm ill I just have to be alone, I can't "put on the mask" as it were. So if I am a bit antisocial, they think she must be feeling ill today rather than she's avoiding us and hates us. But obviously I'll have though it through a lot more and will communicate it more eloquently than that I think in the long run it might help.




I would love a diagnosis, but if you know anything about medical school, you'll know how strict they are about health/mental issues. I'm already going back and forth to Occupational Health about the fact I'm immunosupressed (obviously a massive problem in medicine!) and I think if I had one more problem, they'd just kick me out. Who the hell wants a socially awkward and immunosupressed doctor on antidepressants?! I just feel like I'd be stabbing myself in the foot if I got an actual diagnosis. I already see the Disability Service at the Uni, and I saw them advertising an all female Aspie support group! I would love to go to something like that but obviously I'm not an Aspie officially so I can't.

I'm so glad for you everything is better with friends! I think coming to uni and losing all my friends that took me years to somehow magically gain has made everything a lot harder. Since your diagnosis what help have you been offered? Have you received any treatment, be it CBT or medication, that you felt has improved your quality of life?

As far as executive functioning. I know how easy it is to become stuck, and how hard it is to become unstuck. It's much the same as waking up too early from a really good sleep, where you can't find the will power to be productive. When you get stuck on something, you need to have the internal conversation to "logic" yourself out of the mental rut. It works with me because I'm good at convincing myself of a reward in the future, even though it's not immediate. You have to make a list of obligatory items that is prioritized. Then make a separate list of things you really enjoy doing. This is your "reward" list. For every obligatory task you accomplish, you can allow yourself to choose something from the reward list. This makes the reward that much more pleasurable, and you'll also be in a good mood for accomplishing an obligatory task. You'll be less stressed because it will help with time management.

Being polite works, but you can also communicate things that bother you while still sounding polite. Your roommates were not accustomed to your expression of frustration, so they reacted negatively. If you communicate the second you have a problem, they will learn to respect you.

Don't mention your health problems right away. Wait until after the initial introductions, and look for a graceful opportunity to bring up a personal issue. It's the reciprocation rule. If they bring up something about their parents being divorced or their own health problem or something else personal, you know it's okay to bring up your personal issues. If you broach the subject too soon, you'll make them feel awkward.

I go to the psychology department at my school (UIC), and the support groups around here don't require an official diagnosis. Maybe you can find a group in your area that is less exclusive? I also get CBT through my school. It's sort of a "guinea pig program" for PhDs, but I find it very beneficial. Hopefully your school has something similar.

Is there a way you can soft-pedal it? Such as, 'beginning to consider that I might be on the Asperger's / Autism Spectrum. Just like a lot of famous people, and a lot of nonfamous people. A lot of high-functioning people, a lot of medium-functioning people.'

'You know, I really don't feel the need for a diagnosis at this time.'

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And honest to gosh, I really got the idea that the main threshold was getting into medical school. That once you're in, they really want to keep you.

A) No experience with med school yet. I had very high hopes for it about a year ago but those hopes have pretty much faded away.

B) I'm a sophomore in college now. First year at a university though (my first semester was done at the same time I was in high school). I've not managed to make any long term friends yet. I've tried to get along with people in some of my classes and some students who in the same major as I am, but it's not really working.

C) Nope. Never lived with anyone but my parents or grandmother so far. I'm not even living on campus while I'm in college, I commute. It's a 30 minute drive to and from my university.

I hope you get everything worked out so you can get into med school. Good luck. And I'm sorry I have no advice to offer you.

Why can't you go!! ! That sounds great! And like a great place to start! So long as they know that you're not "an Aspie officially" yet, then it might be okay. You should totally talk to whoever is in charge or whoever leads it and see if it's okay for you to attend a meeting!! ! You never know!! !! !

I have finished medical school and I have HFA. I had problems with the fake patient encounters where someone either is in the room grading you or watching you over a camera. I always score low on "communication skills" and "interpersonal skills", but I make up for it in knowledge. I have found thru my interactions that some people are instantly drawn to me with very little effort on my behalf, yet the complete opposite is also true. Some people will dislike you no matter what you do, and sometimes this includes professors/attendings. To get thru this I just put my head down and took the punishment.

I live with my wife, so I am not able to comment on how to live with other roommates.

I'm undiagnosed as of yet, but I'm fairly sure that I'm Aspie. While I'm not in medical school, I am in my second year of university. I met some people on my course when we were queueing up for registration on the first day: when I saw them in lectures I sat by them, and met the people sitting next to them as a result. The people I interact with most are people I've met through societies: we tend to have similar interests and most people in one society in particular (an open-to-all-faiths-and-none Christian discussion group) are fairly open-minded and accepting of me and my quirks.

In first year I lived in halls: I barely saw my hallmates, which suited me fine. This year I've been living in a house with three others: it helps that we all have completely different timetables, so sometimes I'm the only one in the house. I need my space every now and then. It also helps to not always have all of us in the house at once, since we don't get in each other's way too much. When we do need to talk, we often do so through email, or leave messages by the kettle. Next year I'll be living with three different people, but we'll all have different timetables too. That's been really helpful this year, much as I like my housemates.

I really hope things get better for you: it sounds like your housemate is being unreasonable and unfair. She shouldn't make things your problem.