College and University

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It seems that, from chatting to a few people from here, a lot of people with AS are disillusioned from school and end up not progressing as far as they probably could. I know I've been in a similar position, albeit, to a lesser extent, where not being able to interact with people very well has lead to me not performing very well when working with others, and losing out overall.

I'm looking at this as an outsider, and would like to know about whether this changes at College and University?
I'd be really interested to know what can be done to make it easier, who is able to actually do anything?
Is there anything helpful that should be available that normally isn't?

Looking back on my time in Uni, I think that the set of challenges is different compared to grade school. And the environment of the university (big city vs. somewhere more provinicial e.g. United States Bible Belt) probably has a lot more bearing on how people who don't fit in as well as others manage to fit in.

With regard to the disillusionment... I'd say there's extra space to actually learn, to make your own time to review materials for which you are responsible. Many people, not just Aspies, find they don't particularly learn well in classrooms, and it's better to use the parts of the lecture as references to studying you've done outside the classroom. I would imagine college learning environments expect this to be the rule.

I'm in grad school now and I think the situation is complicated.

Yes, you can probably perform better academically in college given the flexibility and tailoring of interests, AND explicit "bullying" or negative behavior will all but disappear.

However, and a big however, so many program majors tacitly demand sociability and "networking". I did very well on my second bachelors, and I'm doing well in grad school with my grades, but I am still falling behind because I fail at making connections and building peer networks.

So really for success after college you need confident recommendations, which usually require your professors to "know you well", and you will often need peer connections for job leads or grad school info. Without those you might as well average that 4.0 you earn with the 1.0 from too few connections into an overall 2.5.

It gets easier on the immediate emotions; but other challenges of the real world matrix replace them.

Pick your major with an eye towards the least amount of networking needed for success. I chose anthropology and it demands networking to find opportunities or to be included, and it requires one to build a lot of peer social capital.

I probably (guessing) would have been better off with something in a lone lab hard science, computer programming, or librarian media sciences. Being a long artist is possible too IF you are extremely talented and versatile with skill sets (line drawing, painting, digital, etc).