OK, first question: are you registered with your university's disability services office? (It may not be called exactly that, but will probably have either 'disability' or 'accessibility' in its name.) Some of the issues you describe may be helped by accomodations they provide. For example if (like me) you have trouble taking notes, you can get a notetaker, which basically means one of your classmates volunteers to anonymously give you copies of their notes.
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1. This is my second week in the uni and i have issues remembering faces, but even more difficulties remembering their names. If my class mixes up with another group of students i get totally irritated. Most of them are like clones to me. It takes me a very long time to actually recognize them as different individuals.
I have the same problem. I learnt from a young age to just act like I know anyone who talks to me. I won't use their name or refer to any context I knew them from because I don't remember that, but instead just say the kinds of generic things people say to people they know, such as 'how are you?', or else talk about myself. I also figured out to try my best to befriend highly recognizable people, such as physically disabled people.
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2. The uni consists of 1000 rooms and 3 buildings. Sometimes i miss classes or even come to late because my orientation is really bad. The extent of my lack of orientation even goes as far as entering the wrong classroom twice or not noticing a certain door.
I seem to have this lack of quick perception.
Is it possible for you to leave early, so that you have time to spare wandering around lost? Bring something to study (eg your textbook) in case you find your class earlier than you expected you would, you can sit in the hallway and study (I often see university students doing this, autistic or no).
Also, since it's only the first two weeks of class, you may find this gets better with time. Also, when I'm learning to navigate a new place I tend to pick a 'starting point' and learn how to get anywhere from that starting point. (In my new university it's the library.) That way I get the same route every time I go to or from a class, because I'm always going between that class and the starting point.
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3. When reading a text book i somehow forget 1 sentence after another, even though i understood it. Exceptionally long sentences are very difficult for me to understand since i tend to forget the first half while reading them.
How fast do you read? I've heard that can be a common problem for people who read very slowly, because the longer it takes to read a sentence, the more time you have to hold the first half in short term memory.
Are you better with understanding spoken sentences than written ones? If so, ask the disability student office to allow you to record your lectures, and check if your class has online resources that may be audio or movie materials.
You could also look into getting yourself a neuropsychological assessment. This is the 'gold standard' for diagnosing learning disabilities, a psychologist will test you on a variety of cognitive tests and give you a detailed description of your strengths and weaknesses. (Did you already have one of these when assessed for HFA? If so, you should get the report for it and see what it says.) It may help you figure out what specifically you find difficult about reading comprehension - whether it's a reading problem, memory problem, or language problem, or some mix of two or more of those.
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4. I somehow have extreme difficulties remembering my phone number, numbers in general.
Do you use a cellphone? If so, try entering every number you need to remember into your address book. That's what my Mom does.
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5. I have issues performing multiply tasks, a sequence of tasks, usually remembering just the last or first one of a sequence.
Ask people to either write it down or give you one step at a time.
Does this problem contribute to you getting lost, due to an inability to follow directions? If so, then follow the first direction and then immediately find another person to ask directions from. That's what I do.
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6. It irritates me and annoys me being together in a group. I try to prevent that. However when im forced working in a group or if a try to be sociable i either get treated as evil, as a social outcast, as completely weird, or people pretend i dont exist.
Firstly, how comfortable are you with telling others that you have a disability? You could say 'I have a disability that affects my social skills. I tend to be very blunt in how I say things. This is not because I'm trying to be offensive, it's because I don't know how people will react to what I say and I don't know any other way to say the same thing.' (Or whatever your specific difficulties are.) Most people will be a lot more understanding of someone with a disability than of someone who's just plain weird.
Secondly, if you find group work very distressing, talk to the disability student office and your professor about whether you could be excused from group work or allowed to work alone on group projects. That's not an unreasonable accomodation for a student on the autism spectrum.
Lastly, see if your disability student office or your local autism society knows of any social skills groups for high functioning autistic/Asperger Syndrome adults. You can get training in how to socialize with other people effectively. Or you can study on your own by some combination of: taking drama classes, sitting and watching random people interact, getting some social skills book such as
What Does Everybody Else Know That I Don't? (though that book is written for ADHD adults, most of the issues it describes are present in autistics as well).
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7. I feel no empathy towards others, and i do not understand when people laugh or sometimes even cry unless it is depicted in a extreme manner. Death and pain does not affect me emotionally.
Do you feel no empathy because you don't understand? In other words, if someone tells you very clearly what they are feeling and why, can you empathize with them?
If not, that may indicate an additional problem other than autism. Particularly if they describe a situation where you would feel the same way if it happened to you, but you still aren't affected by what they're feeling.
If you do feel empathy when someone clearly explains what they're feeling and it's the same thing you'd feel in their situation, but that's the only time you feel empathy, then there are two things you can try.
Firstly, you should work on learning how to recognize subtle cues regarding how someone is feeling. There are online self-training resources for autistics to work on this, such as
this one. You could also try watching the show
Lie To Me, it's a detective show involving a team of experts in nonverbal communication, and often they'll freeze and highlight certain expressions and the main characters will explicitly point out facial expressions/body language and explain what they mean.
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8. Math weakness due to my extreme short term memory.
When working through a math problem, write down the result of each and every step so you don't have to remember them.
You could also try seeing if you could get the math requirement at your university waived, or else get tutoring for any math classes you are taking.
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9. In speech i have difficulties expressing myself but, in a high valency when required in written forms.
You express yourself better in writing than in speech? That's common for autistic people. You can use this to plan conversations in advance. Write down what you want to say in an upcoming conversation, then practice saying it until you can do so fluently. For example if you're planning to ask for something from your professor, write down what you're planning to ask for. You can also carry the page you wrote this stuff on and glance at it occasionally if you're lost for words.
Lastly, remember that you've been high functioning autistic all your life - the only thing that's changed is that now you know what you're dealing with. This diagnosis is not something to despair over, it's an opportunity. You can rfind solutions for things you've been struggling with all your life.
25 Sep 2011, 4:20 pm
