Questions from 20 year old self-diagnosed aspie

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Well, the disadvantage might be that's it's a bigger secret you're keeping, and people might feel you're fooling them, etc., even though you do have a right to keep private stuff private.

I heard on National Public Radio that this young doctor was turned down for a pediatrics residency because he shared with his mentor that he was gay,  and this was in the 1980s for crying out loud.  And this older doctor may have even thought, well, I'm not against someone being gay but 'it's the parents.'   That is, he may have acted as a gatekeeper.  A similar thing might possibly happen with someone being Spectrum.    

An alternative might be to visit a professional with the goal of adding some skills and talking over some issues, with possibly a diagnosis down the road.  That is, more of a 'soft' diagnosis.

I mean, the DSM doesn't talk about PET scans or neurotransmitter breakdown products in the blood.  It's all, do you gave these traits, how big a deal are they?  And I think DSM way under emphasizes sensory issues.

If and when you choose to tell people, you're likely respond to things such as, no, it's not all social, it's also sensory issues.  And no, I don't necessarily have bad social skills, it's more like patchy social skills, and the very fact of the patchiness, some people then think things are deliberate.

And documenting a diagnosis and formally requesting assistance such as notetaking, likely to get for assistance someone who tries but is mediocre.  What if you ask one of the top students if you can borrow his or her notes?  Might take it as a compliment, and perhaps all you have to do is be polite and make a point to promptly return them after photocopying.

I read a book about law school and it seemed like when you kind of understood something, you could write a three page summary, and then as you better understood it, a one page summary, then a paragraph summary, then maybe just words connected with arrows.  (By the way, I'm a story/narrative aspie and reason a lot by analogy.)  Not that you automatically need to offer something like this tit-for-tat in exchange for notetaking.  Again, people are often happy just to help.  But maybe you could pass out a limited number of photocopies of this without making too big a deal of it and see what people think.  As an experiment, if it feels right.  And if not, the heck with it.

I'm just wondering how big a thing it would be for the OP to approach the parents.

The mother is already known to have suspected an ASD, simply thinking "coping skills" have grown enough to muffle obvious symptoms.

Since getting diagnosed as an adult can involve the family being interviewed, this shouldn't be a real problem. The mother might even be able to provide useful info for the diagnosis, including how coping skils have developed and made things "less obvious".

I'll ALWAYS be in favor of an adult going ahead with getting diagnosed.

no one that I know of assumed I'd be less competent, based on my lack of social skills.