Autism and College?

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So let me tell my story, friends.

I started at a top 30 private university this past fall. It was my dream school. I loved everything about it. The teachers seemed to really care about the students and the school really seemed to take care of everyone. To this day, there is nothing I can complain about with the school itself. The real problem is the student body combined with my personal problems. It was not until several months into college that I was diagnosed with ADHD. It had been managed before then pretty well, but it had gotten to the point of becoming too much for me to handle on my own and then I began spiraling downward into a deep pit of apathy and depression. This escalated to the point where I seemed so distressed and my mom called me early one morning last September and I didn't pick up (because I was asleep and had told her I wasn't getting up until 10), so she called someone to come check on me and they sent the campus police and needless to say, they were friendly, but that was not good for my psyche at all. I spent the next several hours in student health waiting for my parents to get there. Once they did, they tried to pull me out of school and bring me home for the rest of the semester and my doctor and counselors all said that would be the best option. Once I realized I wouldn't be able to do marching band (one of my greatest loves) at home, I was exceedingly opposed to it and only let them take me home for a week. I've been told I'm very brave for fighting through and staying. Honestly, I probably should have gone home. However, I was foolish enough to stay and push through. I continued going to counseling, but am still very poorly adjusted and want to come home all the time and my mom is very worried. I've seen a psychiatrist multiple times and am on several medications. Once they figured out I had ADHD and put me on Adderall, school became much better because I could remember to do tasks and not get distracted and all of that wonderful stuff since my parents were no longer there to help me. I have a very difficult time relating to my peers and have four friends, only one of which I see on a regular basis. I just don't feel the need to make more friends and I'm not really sure how, anyways. I know my story is probably rather unique, but has anyone else had a somewhat similar experience in college, as far as poor adjustment and social issues?

I was also diagnosed with ADHD a few months after I started college.

In my case the school itself wasn't all that great. I felt like I got suckered in to believing they had a great music program, when it turned out they had misrepresented things a bit. Also it turned out a good portion of the student body were people who probably didn't belong at college at all, but were there only because their parents could afford the tuition. And people like me had been lured in with scholarship money. It was NOT a good environment for me.

The summer before, I went up for a piano lesson and realized it wasn't going to be the right school for me. But my mother insisted that I go since it was all planned and I had the scholarship money and everything. The first week of classes, I decided to drop out. I actually packed up and went home and everything. The day I got home, my dad started in on me about getting a job at a factory. So I called the college and said I wanted to come back. I felt like either way I was going to be in a bad situation, so I figured I might as well be away from home.

I didn't adjust well to living in a dorm. I was not used to anything like that and felt like I never got any privacy. People were coming in my room all the time wanting to borrow things, scratch that, wanting me to just give them things. I was staying up really late at night because that was the only time I could be alone. Then I'd sleep in and miss a lot of classes. This was a school where they expected everyone to actually go to class, not just show up for tests, and it counted against you if you missed class. Then I started drinking alcohol pretty heavily. Things just spiraled down. I didn't care anymore.

I barely made it through the first year, on the grace of make-up exams. I thought seriously about not going back, but I didn't want to stay home either. So I went back for a third semester. I thought it would be better since I would be living in a smaller duplex instead of a dorm. Instead there was just more drama about sharing rooms and sharing a kitchen. I still felt like I had no real space to myself. I really wanted to just withdraw from everything around me. I would leave campus a lot and just go driving around in the mountains. I was still sleeping late and missing classes. Then I started dropping classes. It got to the point where if I dropped one more class, it was going to be below the minimum requirement. So I decided to finally drop out of college for good. I'd had enough.

After I came back home, I was just flattened out on the sofa in a daze for weeks. I felt like a total failure. My parents were somehow understanding about it. I wish I had never gone to college.

Yeah, my story is rather similar.

Throughout high school and earlier, I struggled with severe procrastination. I simply didn't seem to have the attention span others had to just get stuff done. In sophomore year I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI, and have been taking some medication ever since then. It did help, but in some ways I do not think it could compensate for being so lately diagnosed, and not having developed the basic habits others probably do develop in absence of ADHD.

Of course, I didn't know what AS(D) was back then. I already knew something skewed and seemed posed against me, but I didn't have any good explanation as to why. I was diagnosed with AS late 2013. But it certainly makes sense, and they occur together at relatively high co-morbidity rates. That hints at a possible underlying neural commonalities.

I've seen so many autobiographies of individuals who had initially attended a prestigious university, dropped out some way through, worked outside of academia for some years, and came back not only to graduate with a 4-year but even with PhDs/MDs. It happens.

One of my favorite self-produced analogies, though it may be stretching it, is that "I've always struggled socially, but significantly less so in college. In college, it's everyone has some degree of autism - their majors being their 'special interests' in which they engage in with deep passion, and with narrowing focus on a very specific topic if continuing to the PhD levels."

I had serious problems in college. Not ADHD, but keeping a schedule was hard, knowing where I stood with other students, TAs and professors was hard. I didn't know when to ask for help and I had no idea how to study.
I like to focus on one thing for many hours or days, and that doesn't work if you have a full schedule.

I was living on my own in a big city and didn't understand the nature of my sensory problems, so I was messed up every morning just by taking the subway to campus. Then I really didn't know how to relate to other students, though I tried.

I had some medical problems with lots of chronic pain that required surgery during my freshman year and that threw my completely off kilter. I dropped out and then applied to a different school after a couple of years of recovery and had the same difficulties as before, then my dad and that was very traumatic.

I never graduated.

I was planning to go back, but then started to get work and have been working too intensely to go back to school ever since.

I wish I had been able to finish.

The things I could have used the most help with where EF issues: note taking strategies, time management strategies and knowing when and how to ask for help.

Also, I should have made more allowances for the big disruptive events. Instead I tried to keep going as if nothing had happened and then everything fell apart.

Anyway, good luck to you--do get the degree if you can.
I have been able to get by without but only by huge effort and with a lot of anxiety--there were a lot of closed options because of not having that degree.