Should I tell the school about my Asperger's?

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I am a self-diagnosed Aspie, and I am heading to university next year. I only recently discovered Asperger's and realized how perfectly it fit me, and since then I have been coming to terms with it. It hasn't been too hard, because I feel free in knowing, and I feel as if somehow now I make sense. Some questions have come up though that I don't know the answers to, and I was hoping you could help.

If you have Asperger's, is it considered the right thing to do to tell your teachers or the school district about it? I go to a public high school. I'm unsure of the protocol for this, but it might not be critical since I am graduating in a few months anyway. I have always had trouble concentrating and focusing on my work, but I have managed to get good grades, so is it important for them to know?

Also, I will be going to University in the fall, which will create a whole new set of challenges for me. Should I inform the university of my Asperger's?

If you don't want any special services or treatment it seems kind of unnecessary. Also keep in mind that if you do decide you would like some kind of special considerations in the future a self-diagnosis will probably not be good enough.

A self diagnosis will definately not be enough to get any kind of accommodations. You would need a professional diagnosis, at least in the US.

I agree with the previous poster that if you don't need accommodations, there is not necissarily a point to disclosing. If you do need them, it would be benificial to talk to the disability coordinator at your university. He or she would be the person to ask.

I agree with the posters above. If you do not wish to have any special accommodations, then there is no need to tell any of your professors. I also agree that if do wish to have those accommodations, you should get a professional diagnosis. I think having a diagnosis would be useful even if you do not use it at school. I plan on getting one when I go away to college as I feel it would be good to have should a situation come up where I would need it.

1. Like what has already been said you would need a professional diagnoses for them to make accommodations.
2. I think it could be really helpful. I stopped going to class fairly quickly (mid october) for a couple of reasons. A teacher, homework, a girl, stress, and probably some others. From my personal experience with college I needed help if I wanted to succeed, which I didn't. No one would know (teacher or students) unless you told them. Lets say you wanted to take a test in a different area, the teacher would be informed, but they wouldn't know what disability you have. And yes, if you are getting accommodations for it then it is a disability, at my school you went to disability services office. But if you are diagnosed with add then you could get most of the same things out of it.

Some schools can refer you to a doc for evaluation. Some schools have resident psychologists/neurologists/psychiatrists who can do the evaluation. Check into that, if you need accommodations.

Do you have a diagnosis other than AS? For example, ADHD, a learning disability, a physical disability, a mental illness? If so, you may be able to use that to get the accommodations you need. The specific diagnosis isn't as important as the fact that it gets you into the system, where you can explain your needs more precisely.

If you don't need any accommodations, then you don't need to tell them--there'd be no reason to. But be aware that college does place some demands on you that high school doesn't; you're expected to be a lot more independent with your study habits, and there's some emphasis on group work, writing, research, and higher-level reasoning. If you run into those things and find you have problems with them, don't delay thinking that you can "just work harder". If you're telling yourself you're not working hard enough, chances are you have a problem beyond just the amount of effort you're putting in, because people who truly don't work hard enough often don't care about it. If you care, and you still can't seem to put in enough effort, there could be ways to work smarter that you haven't learned about.

The only official diagnosis I have is dyslexia, but I have never been offered any kind of accommodation for that, nor have I ever felt I needed it. Would that get me into the system?

All of the answers have said that I would need a professional diagnosis to get accommodation. Does a university health center usually have a psychiatrist, and if so would they be able to diagnose me? The reason I have not gotten an official diagnosis so far is because money has been an issue in seeing a professional.

Yes, dyslexia will help you get accommodations. It's enough to get in, and enough to talk to them about what would help you learn. You should be aware that even for those with relatively mild dyslexia, college does present a challenge in terms of the amount of reading matter necessary; so don't be ashamed to do things like arrange to copy others' notes, or get audiobooks where they are available.

You can ask limited personnal accomodations on a one-to-one basis to teachers without a diagnosis. Though it wasn't for Asperger's, and despite my not showing any medical proof of anything, I have made special demands to teachers twice, and they accepted. Once, I asked for clemency in a class starting at 8:00 because of my sleeping problems at the beginning of the semester. This allowed me not to fail the midterm exam, for which I was an hour late. Another time, I asked if I could do all the groupwork alone, which wasn't a problem.

However, this depends on your teacher's openness and on your demand's ease of application. I think it all depends on what you want out of it. You should work that out first, I think.

I am in the process for a diagnosis myself, and am going through it with my university, so it is plausible yours will have the staff for it too. Actually, I don't even have need for accomodation (I had only A's), and I can still do it there.

if you are self diagnosed no you need documented proof to get accomodations

This, i'm afraid. I got ask for documents when I went to uni.

I think telling others people gets you nowhere. Having a problem, being a problem, needing, wanting, or requiring special attention, can just lead you into the weeds. It's not just that other people don't understand us, we don't understand other people either.

In High School I was apart of a special education thingy and that still didn't get me any help from some classes. For example, I HATE being the center of something. So reading something aloud or doing anything alone in front of or to a group of people stresses me out badly, so much that it makes me stutter or pause, or lose my ability to get the next word out. Some classes had me do those things anyway. I am guessing that they did not know why I was in the SE thing.

It might have its drawbacks, but if you need accommodations and it's massively harder for you to learn without them, then you are better off informing the disability office and getting those adjustments. They will not give you anything that gives you an unfair advantage; they know you probably already have to work harder than most other students, but what you get will be designed to make your school accessible to you--so you can learn, and prove on the tests and projects what you have learned. Disability accommodations adjust the college environment to be something an autistic person can interface with. They will make it easier for you, but they will not make it easier than it is for people with no disability. You have to earn the grades like any other student does.