Did you graduate from college?

Post Reply New Topic

I have a bachelor's degree in secondary education in English.
I have a master's degree in secondary education.
I have a master's plus 15 hours in secondary education.
I have a gifted education endorsement on my master's degree.

I earned all of these without accommodations.

Accommodations? HFA/Aspergers??????? Did not exist form 1975-1979. B.A in Political Science (wanted to be a survey poll analyst). First college was a bullying noisy nightmare. For a few nights people gunned their cars at me before pulling away the last minute. When I complained I was given this incredulous look that said say anything more and you will be thrown out of school. Second college was great and began a 12 year good run. I had friends even going out to crowded bars. As far as I was concerned in the 1980’s by sucking it up and trying hard I had put my nightmare teen years behind me. Then the gradual decline began.

While I look back at the last 2 years of college and immediate post college years there are mostly good feelings. They were good years. And I am kind of proud I accomplished what I did now knowing that I had “moderately severe aspergers”. But here is a key and what I am most proud of. I learned to accept myself and “personality” differences and made good choices based on them. Without that all the hard work would have been useless. Not going to a psych was a good choice in retrospect. With no knowledge of HFA/Aspergers I would have gone backwards. But I can not give myself kudos for that decision it was the stigma and being a "real man" that kept me away.

But looking back all was not well. Political Science major was a coping mechanism. If I did not understand people major in something that relates to masses of people and those who led them. I always started very slow grade wise to the point where it was always touch and go if I would stay in school or job, then I would bust my bust off and the last semester had a bunch of B’s. Work followed the same pattern. But in that era of lifelong jobs employers put up with slow starts. But when something was over it was over and I did not bother keeping in touch with friends when I graduated or left a job. So I have no network when I need it. And despite friends there was no relations/sex.

There was no choice then but to do what I did, but it set up bad patterns of never asking for help, internalizing everything, staying in bad employment situations because never giving up and trying harder was the only option I understood and any change seemed so scary as to be worse then in whatever situation I was in.