Did you get lower grades than your NT peers?

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Not in general, but my notably weak scores were maths and P.E. My low maths grades are curious because it's a science, and I had something of an inclination toward the exact sciences, and after finishing secondary school, maths has always been my achilles heel at every entry exam I attempted to make afterwards.

I would skip school starting in middle school due to stress. I would spend my days reading and gardening and hiking. 8th grade was good (almost all A's) because I had a homeroom teacher who would protect me pretty well from other students and because he was a good teacher in subject that interested me (technology classes - woodshop and aerospace). High School was social torture. I would skip school for even a week strait and just feel depressed like crazy from social stuff. That's when panic attacks started in school. I would put up with it all day staying in classes wanting to run away and then skip all the next day just to recover. I did this for years, not finishing grades, but allowed to go on since the teachers knew I tried by reading the material, but not showing up for tests or not turning in homework. When I did the tests the grades were usually very high though. Got GED at 17 after just feeling demoralized by any more high school.... College was different, but still didn't finish. Started well with A's, but grades got worst and worst due to a lot of factors, including not being able to take care of myself away from home. I will probably not try anymore college since I feel very demoralized from the situation now.

Even though the grades I've gotten don't necessarily reflect on this, I've always felt that I've struggled with math and especially abstract mathematical concepts. Throughout much of elementary and middle school, they denied us access to calculators, and tried to make us do math mentally. For the majority of assignments, where I could take time to write things out and use various tricks I learned to do certain types of equations, I did alright, but I remember when I did these "mad minutes" in third grade, I severely struggled since they involved completing these rather difficult (for a 9-year-old, at least) questions in under a minute's time. It was especially humiliating since there was a series of "mad minutes" to do, and if you failed to complete one of the mad minutes, you had to write it again the next day, and it was made fairly obvious how far ahead or behind you were in the series, compared to the other students. Later on, I remember in 4th and 5th grade, I had to be given extra time to work on a lot of my assignments.

When I was FINALLY allowed to start using a calculator on a regular basis in middle school, it was like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the math had progressed beyond simple equations into more abstract concepts, so that somewhat nullified the appeal of being able to use a calculator. To this day, I still can never remember the correct method of rearranging algebraic equations. It's something I've set out to learn, and forgotten, many times. On the plus side, I've noticed that my mental math skills have become somewhat better in the past couple years, though I wish I had those skills back when I really needed them.

On a related note, long division SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Division is the type of thing calculators were invented for, and as such that is what they should be used for. Feeble human minds on the other hand haven't evolved to properly comprehend division, or at least mine hasn't.

In my experience, for most teachers, their primary goal as educators seems to be to crush enthusiasm and initiative for a subject. I have seen very little to contradict what Noam Chomsky said about the primary goal of educators, outside of the sciences, being to inculcate obedience and submission to authority.

I'm generally against the concept of tutorials in education especially for aspies. They're usually just an exercise in socialisation, and submission to those dominant personalities which hold uncontroversial views.There's also a very real expedient of the teacher needing to control the narrative, so a lot of independent minds are going to be reined in because they're a nuisance. Unfortunately, students are exposed to this before they get the confidence to take their own idiosyncratic thought processes as far as they can take them, and this is bad.

Actually, a lot of things about the way we approach education these days is bad. We've been told that education has to be purely work skills. Not only is this bad for your individual development, but as John Ralston Saul pointed out, In a workplace that's increasingly flexible, we are denied the broad education that would allow us to think flexibly, and pursue opportunities outside of a narrow career path that could collapse at any time.

I had mostly failing grades through out school, then again my whole school experience was a disaster of teachers who were paid to babysit instead of teach (I went to a terrible public elementary school because my father felt like kids should be sent to their local schools.) Then I was thrown in special ed for many years because of my poor communication/social/behavior skills and on top of that I had to deal with one abusive parent. I would like to think that if I had another chance at it I would have done very well in school but I will never have that opportunity so I usually don't like to think about it.

Last edited by WhatHazard on 21 Jan 2014, 2:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Elementary school: Bad grades, exept when something interested me. Generally I turned my back on it.
HS: High grades when I wasn´t nervous or when the subject was important to me. Bad grades when nervous, which I was most of the time. I had to redo a number of exams because of that.
University: Same.

Elementary school: Bad grades, exept when something interested me. Generally I turned my back on it.
HS: High grades when I wasn´t nervous or when the subject was important to me. Bad grades when nervous, which I was most of the time. I had to redo a number of exams because of that.
University: Same.

Elementary school: Bad grades, exept when something interested me. Generally I turned my back on it.
HS: High grades when I wasn´t nervous or when the subject was important to me. Bad grades when nervous, which I was most of the time. I had to redo a number of exams because of that.
University: Same.

Depend at what grade you're talking about. From first to sixth grade me grades varied on my interest to the subject. (I got good results in science and religious studie, having interest in religion as a child while not coming from a particulary religious familly is pretty weird. ) In general it most not had been very good, as I had to remade the grade six. After the sixth grade though, I had pretty good results, (Having the right to use a calculator has been of great help in math, to the point sometime of perfect results.) until 11th grade in which I had a depression and my grades plummeted, I has still be able to pass at least. I has never be able to get very far in CEGEP.

Just curious, how were you able to know the answers without having studied or having paid attention?

I was a bit generic in my other post. I might specify more since I found all my old report cards.
1st-8th grade: average
4th-5th grade: a little below average (I started to develop some ODD due to my teachers' s***ty metods therefore I didn't do homework at all, and on purpose this time)
6th grade: somewhat average
7th grade: below average (it was a s***ty year that one, I got terrible grades except for English and art and I skipped school so much that I almost got into troubles because of it and almost had to repear 7th grade)
8th grade: average (that year I was the best student in my class in English, art, Spanish and natural sciences, I was average in all the other subjects)
9th-10th grade: average
11th grade: average up to now, I get some bad grades in some subjects but I have got sufficient grades

Mine tended to vary widely. There were times when I did well, and others, not so well. There were often times I just didn't care because I didn't like school and when things changed at home, I didn't like homelife much either. There were times when I was on the honor roll every report card and other times, when I got C's and D's. I went through periods where I just couldn't cope with the stuff I had to deal with from the other students, and parents would blamed me for everything and had all sorts of outrageous ways of dealing with my problems, like one summer when they thought taking everything I enjoyed away and having me go swimming 7 days a week on my sister's command would do what they called "build you up until you're a human being again."

I managed a 3.0 GPA in college, which wasn't easy because they would ride my case about not wanting to everywhere with my sister because she needed my support to get into medical school, something else that I had to deal with that made no sense, but it hasn't done me much good. When I graduated, nobody cared.

I don't know...I guess because I read a lot as a kid, and I learned things on my own that were more advanced than what I was being taught in school. I used to read the encyclopedia when I was little. By the time I was in high school, I had read a lot of college textbooks. I just knew a lot of stuff, and I could work things out on my own. I don't remember much of it now though.

My grades across the board at school were pretty good, except for PE which I didn't care about and practical subjects like woodwork and metalwork which I would have liked to have been good at. I wasn't in the absolute top rank of the year, destined for Oxford or Cambridge, but I was just below that.

I got a place at Imperial College, London to study Geology. I experienced a lot more difficulty here and limped out with an uninspiring 2:2. I was pretty disappointed.

I think the thing was at school I could rely on being (quite) smart and being able to store a large amount of stuff in my memory. University tested my stamina, which I lack. It also made me ensure numerous field trips where I had try and sleep in the same room as boozy and over-confident other students and to deal with sensory issues (such as having to be outside all day being rained on). I just wanted out of there.

Geology was my special interest from childhood. University killed it for me. I would have been better suited to a subject that was less outward bound and with a less "macho" culture. It does gall me that I now have a lower rated degree than people who I know that I'm smarter/harder working than (if that doesn't sound too arrogant) because I was defeated by the social aspects of my course.