emotional attachments to grades

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Actually I believe aspies are more likely than neurotypicals to develop emotional attachments to school/university grades.

Aspies are likely to be disadvantaged socially, so academics may often times be the place where aspies can find success. Therefore it is natural to develop emotional attachments to grades - if they are no good in school, they fail at the one place where they personally think they "should" be great.

If neurotypicals fail in school they can usually disregard it (to a much higher degree) because of their solid social abilities. In the end social skills are way more important than good grades, because you are going to need social skills in almost any aspect of life. You only need grades to enter some educations and (sometimes) to get the job you want.

In life grades are not nearly as critical as social skills are.

I did develop emotional attachments to grades, especially in primary school. I had NT classmates who also did, and also NT classmates who did not. I think it depends on conscientiousness. When I was in college I did not care about grades that much but tried to focus on courses that I was interested in. In case of the rest of them, I just wanted to pass the exams.

I would also speculate that this become more of a problem for Aspies over NTs.
I am diagnosed with ASD, and an emotional attachment to the grades I achieve in school seems to the bane of my life!
I am absolutely obsessed with studying, and excel in all subjects at school. Fortunately for me, I do not have the problem that many Aspies have, in that I don't tend to lack concentration in subjects that aren't a 'special interest' (maybe that is because study itself is my interest...)
Anyway, what grades I get is hugely important to me; I like to be the best, and I hate being criticised, as I often feel that I should always be right. I would certainly regard the extent of my attachment to being successful and my intense fear of failure as being linked to ASD, as 'delayed Theory Of Mind' means that I find accepting change/criticism/views other than my own very difficult. ASD has also led to further problems resulting to this attachment, such as the difficulty of describing/understanding the emotions that I feel over such situations, and the tendency for 'black and white thinking' to be overwhelming - it's either perfect, or it's a failure.
Saying all this, I love school, can't wait to go to University (at least for the studying side), and generally I try not to let these anxieties get to me. But admittedly, it will almost always be an blip in my studying/grades that triggers a meltdown.

How much generalization here.
I am not accademically successful, most of my grades are Ds, and I don't feel bad about it because I think that a D is a sufficient grade, therefore it's ok to me.
I don't think I should be accademically successful because I lack social skills, even if I'm not a straight-A student I've always been considered "talented" since my childhood, and I don't need to show my talent through my school grades. I get better grades only if I like the subject, and there are very few subjects I'm good at. I know there are other ways to show my talent, I don't think that "if I don't take all As and Bs, I'll be useless".
And however, I couldn't study more, because even if I try I can't.
Blame my ADHD on it or not, I am not the type you described.

Hi chlov,

You are right. Not all aspies fall into that category. It was mainly to get my point through.

It's just my experience that many aspies play the "high IQ" card to compensate for the social skills. I've done that myself. It is very natural I would say.

The main thing is that one should not base one's confidence on skills, but on actual self-love.