Page 1 of 1 [ 4 posts ] 

kiwiya
Butterfly
Butterfly

User avatar

Joined: 21 Oct 2014
Gender: Female
Posts: 11

19 Dec 2014, 5:09 am

Hi,guys.
I am starting to work on my dissertation on college students with autism. To get more ideas, I tried to picture myself as a student with autism and imagine how I would experience the campus life. But at some points, I can't figure out how should this be going.

To start, I suppose that I were a newly enrolled college student and received an email informing me about the orientation. I would go to the event because of my adherence to rules and because I did not know it might include social activities. So I went there with notebook and pen.
But as soon as I entered the campus, I found that there were a lot of people. Some were greeting me with smiles and leaflets. And it seemed that the hall where the orientation would occur was crowded and noisy.

So my question is, what would I do as a person with autism?
Would I go inside, hiding my fears, or would I just leave and go home?


Please give me some ideas. A lot of thx!



Who_Am_I
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Age: 40
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,632
Location: Australia

19 Dec 2014, 5:17 am

This is just my perspective, but I hope it helps.

I would take the leaflets, and peruse them to see if the information is useful or essential. Then I would enter the room and stand on the perimeter observing until I figured out what to do next, and while I assessed if staying would actually be worth the effort.


_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I


kiwiya
Butterfly
Butterfly

User avatar

Joined: 21 Oct 2014
Gender: Female
Posts: 11

19 Dec 2014, 7:40 am

oic, thank u!



olympiadis
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jun 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,849
Location: Fairview Heights Illinois

19 Dec 2014, 4:41 pm

kiwiya wrote:
Hi,guys.
I am starting to work on my dissertation on college students with autism. To get more ideas, I tried to picture myself as a student with autism and imagine how I would experience the campus life. But at some points, I can't figure out how should this be going.

To start, I suppose that I were a newly enrolled college student and received an email informing me about the orientation. I would go to the event because of my adherence to rules and because I did not know it might include social activities. So I went there with notebook and pen.
But as soon as I entered the campus, I found that there were a lot of people. Some were greeting me with smiles and leaflets. And it seemed that the hall where the orientation would occur was crowded and noisy.
So my question is, what would I do as a person with autism?
Would I go inside, hiding my fears, or would I just leave and go home?
Please give me some ideas. A lot of thx!



You might get a good idea of perspective if you go visit a zoo and observe some of the animals, in particular animals that are in social groups like monkeys. Then imagine you go inside the monkey enclosure where they are free to become aggressive and harm you.
But first, back up a few steps to include the anxiety about knowing that you will be going into the monkey enclosure. You may have several hours of worry and fear, make yourself lists, do research, make contingency plans, or figure out ways you may be able to protect yourself if they become aggressive towards you.

You will be very anxious when you go in with the monkeys, but you will try to hide it so they can't sense the fear. They will sense your fear anyway, and will almost without fail treat you differently ( the uncanny valley effect).
An aggressive monkey may approach you and seem to want something from you, but you can't figure out what it is.
The monkey takes your non-compliance as aggression and becomes upset at you, perhaps screaming in your direction in order to pressure you into compliance. The monkey may call in other monkeys for support. Your increasing panic makes it harder for you to reasonably deduce what the monkey might want, and so you try to plan a quick escape.
You feel that your life was in direct danger by the situation, and all of this started with an email invitation from the monkeys. You then realize that you will have to enter the monkey cage for several hours each day.
The only solution is to work extra hard to make yourself look at act more like the other monkeys so maybe they will leave you alone.
In a very real way this means abandoning your identity for at least a large portion of the time, and also acting in deceptive ways. Both of these things give you a powerful emotion of disgust along with nausea on top of the anxiety and fear.
It doesn't make sense.
Why can't the monkeys just understand and accept your differences?
Why can't you simply communicate with them and work out these issues?
You simply cannot understand all of their language, and if you could it wouldn't matter because they still wouldn't understand you. They exist in another reality that is all they have ever known. They operate under the assumption that you are also in their reality. They don't really understand that they are within an enclosure and that your reality exists outside of the enclosure.


_________________
Anachronism: an object misplaced in time.
"It's true we are immune, when fact is fiction and TV reality"
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards"