Considering my starting point as top of the class in my infants' school, I fell a long way academically by the time I was 16. I put it down to a shift in the teaching methods away from clarity, an increase in the expectation that we'd all somehow be able to pick out meaning from the background noise and blurred woffle, that we'd all manage to drink in their one-way monologues for hours on end. I was so "behind the door" by the time I was in technical college that I failed to register for the exams, simply because nobody had made a point of telling me I had to do that. The information was probably buried in the plethora of stuff they'd thrown at us, but I never noticed it. Standard education just doesn't fit out thinking style. I somehow managed to keep my head above water, to hang onto a reasonably sustainable income and to avoid falling into a poverty trap.
Of course that assumes doing well academically is the main first purpose in life. Some truth in it, because the better your qualifications, the further you'll be from economic hardship and a squalid, short life. And I've never known receiving money to do me any harm. On the other hand, there seems to be an idea in a lot of people's heads that it's vital to pursue the "highest" possible position, get the biggest house, the flashiest car etc. I've always taken the view that as long as I'm financially secure enough to be able to pay the bills for the foreseeable future and have a bit left over to have some fun with, that's good enough. I probably wouldn't say no to being rich beyond my wildest dreams, but I'm not going to make my life a misery chasing after it.
And I know a lot of people who more or less agree with me. Aspies might be less motivated to strive for the standard hallmarks of "success," and their bad experiences of trying for that probably curbs their enthusiasm eventually, but there are plenty of people around who have values and aspirations very different to the standard ones, and I think there's a strong case for the idea that they've often "got it sussed" better than the ones who chase massive prestige and obscene wealth. So all in all I don't feel like I've fallen behind my peers. In a way they've fallen behind me.
17 Jan 2022, 5:15 pm
