How to let your college know that you have autism

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I'm studying chemistry in college and a problem I'm having right now is the lab technician is giving me a hard time about leaving the lab when all the practical work is done. He wants us to stay until hes sure that we understand the calculations after the demonstrator explains it to us. The main problem here is that I can't understand a word the demonstrators say to me, I have serious trouble processing spoken English, I have to translate everything I hear into pictures but the main problem is I can't form my mental images linearly like that. I don't wanna just walk up to him and tell him I'm mildly autistic or something. This guy seems to have the idea that I'm a slacker which is ironic because my obsession is chemistry and I spend all my spare time learning it. My friend tells me hes pissed that I left early today after I'd done the practical work and that he covered for me so I need an excuse. I'm sick of making up excuses though I'd prefer if the technician knew the truth so he'd get the hell off my back and stop wasting my time. How should I deal with this should I just go up to him and straight up tell him? I don't wanna do that in front of everyone cuz nobody knows I have it but if I have to do it I will. Would I be better off setting up an appointment with the academic advisor about this?

I'm so determined to become a research scientist nothing short of a bullet in the head will stop me but its not right that this lab tech is getting in the way of my learning because doesn't fully acknowledge the fact that everyone has a different style of learning and thinking. Autism isn't the only thing that makes me different from the rest of my class, I left school when I was 14 and just decided to go to college when I discovered chemistry so I learned all the maths and basic science from scratch by myself without the help of any teachers or lecturers and I'm fairly confident I can keep on doing this but when they try and make me conform to their method of learning then I struggle to keep up and this sucks the fun out of the subject. I found the original copy of the document my psychiatrist gave me when he made the official diagnosis so I'm going to bring it in and show it to him so he doesn't have to take my word for it that I am diagnosed with it. I'm wondering whether I'd be better off talking to the academic advisor about this first though.

BTW you mentioned "visualising math". I have to visualise all mathematical concepts I learn otherwise they are meaningless to me. This is often insanely challenging because they don't provide the kinda of proportional, meaningful images that I can use to represent the concepts in my head so I have to do some extreme thinking to formulate them myself. Its not a problem though cuz when I do manage to formulate the images I have them for good and they give me a pretty deep understanding of the mathematical concept.

My university has a wonderful disability services dept. that can provide letters that you can give to your professors in order to request accommodations. I don't know what is available at your school but I would possibly email your professor ahead of time about wanting to meet with him/her during their office hours. During that time you can discuss your concerns about how your autism/asperger's is affecting your class(es) that you have with them.

If it's a larger college, they'll have a disability person/support service. Contact them, explain the situation, and have them arrange a meeting with the professor or to talk to him for you. Often they can arrange for materials to make it easier for you in the future, or recordings of the sessions so you can re-play them in your own time.
If it's a smaller college, find some staff member you think will understand, and ask them to advocate for you.
Or, you could walk up to the professor and ask him directly to arrange a meeting.

Hope you get this sorted (:

Ask your tutor or the counselor about disability services, any college should have (or be willing to provide) accommodations for (among others) neurodiversity. This is guaranteed under the ADA (or equivalent)

The OP last visited in 2011, so offering advice to him/her is long past the use-by date.