Aspies and autists, what was high school like for you?

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Did you have any friends? Did you sit alone at lunch? If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people? If not, then why? Were you ever invited to places? Did you like your teachers? Did you get good grades? What was your graduation ceremony night like?

I did not have any real friends to speak of, although I do have a few acquaintainces with disabilities that I keep in touch with regularly. I almost always sat alone at lunch and I NEVER got invited to places. I liked most of my teachers and my grades were fairly high for the most part with an 81 average. My graduation ceremony night was fun mostly because I won 2 scholarships. Do you think my experience is typical for an aspie or autist? What was different about yours compared to mine?

Although this is terribly depressing, yes I can relate to your experience.

I had a couple friends before HS. I had no friends my whole time in HS, just a few acquaintances. Worse than sitting alone everyday, I had nowhere to sit. I had to walk around. I couldn't bear the fact that people would see me sitting by myself everyday.

looking back, it was so painfully hell and sad. I thought that I could escape it when I finished HS, and all of those pressures would go away, but it doesn't really work like that.

HS from what I understand from not experiencing it, is stage of life experiences growing up. That shapes who you turn into, and sets the stage for the next years.

I thought my home town was just cursed and I grew up in the wrong place and this and that, and once I left for college things would turn out okay. While college was different, it still wasn't any better of an experience, just as hell, but in completely different ways.

I am just realizing now how badly I wish I could go back and be in HS again. I would do anything. I don't care if I got beat up everyday. I just don't care, I would do anything for the chance to go back to when everyone was younger and growing themselves.

Theres nothing to compare to the hell of being 24 and being stuck i the past light years behind everyone else

I had an aide in some of my classes in high school until I was a senior, I think. For someone with an aide (and as I later found out, with Asperger's), I was pretty popular. I made some friends in each class but did sit alone at lunch at times. I had an IEP. My major problems had to do with not doing homework because either I forgot about it, it was boring, or else it was overwhelming (as was the case with English and sometimes history.) As a result, my grades were lower than what I was capable of. I finished with a 3.2 or so GPA where I was capable of about 3.75. There was one D in there, in English in my sophomore year. I was almost the only senior to ride the school bus to school. I did not get my driver's license until I was 18.

Did you have any friends? Did you sit alone at lunch? If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people? If not, then why? Were you ever invited to places? Did you like your teachers? Did you get good grades? What was your graduation ceremony night like?

I did not have any real friends to speak of, although I do have a few acquaintainces with disabilities that I keep in touch with regularly. I almost always sat alone at lunch and I NEVER got invited to places. I liked most of my teachers and my grades were fairly high for the most part with an 81 average. My graduation ceremony night was fun mostly because I won 2 scholarships. Do you think my experience is typical for an aspie or autist? What was different about yours compared to mine?


I had plenty of friends. Mostly, I think was because I was quiet but also could be funny and endearing to people. I am still friends with many of them though we don't hang out very much because I'm currently away in college. They still invite me to birthday celebrations and other events via social networking sites or texts.

During lunch, I almost always walked alone. I sat with friends but didn't want to talk for too long and instead, moved from group to group. I enjoyed walking and seeing different people more so than sticking in one place with one group of friends.

As for teachers, I liked them for the most part. I was a polite kid, so I think the teachers respected that. I got mostly good grades in class. Though, after my childhood friend died during my senior year of high school, my grades went from a 3.7 to a 3.4 in one year. I just stopped caring about grades and school. This has largely followed me through college to where I don't care very much for class. I'm currently at 2.5, which should be higher if I cared more. I think it may be depression or some post-traumatic stress state which was further fueled when my parents got a very nasty divorce my Freshman year of college. I don't know. For me, college has allowed me to experience some of the best times and worst times of my life.

As for graduation, I didn't enjoy the ceremony so much but I did enjoy seeing and hanging out with friends afterward.

It was dreadful for the first three years. I was depressed, lonely and isolated. My grades were poor, and I would spend hours and hours on the internet to fill the void where my life should have been. By my final year, I decided that enough was enough. I decided to take control of my life. So, on the first day, at lunch-time, I plonked myself down at a table where I knew a few people, and within a month I was being invited to parties and hanging out after school. I maintained one of the highest averages in my year, won numerous awards at graduation, and ended up in a solid university. One of the friends that I made in that final year is now my room-mate!

So, for anyone in a similar position, it all depends how much you want it, and how much you're willing to put on the line to get it. Friends are rarely made, and never maintained, without effort. And that's the best advice I can offer! Good luck!

It was a pretty significant improvement over middle school, where my problems were most obvious and I was taunted the worst. I would say that my life generally improved over time, although it did sort of hit a high point in the first semester of my junior year and then start leveling off. My last semester was pretty bad, but that was for a complicated reason involving a friend becoming more withdrawn from me that I still don't fully understand. Other than that, my high school years were decent at worst, with some times when I was more stressed because of things that I don't really think were related to autism all that much.

Elementary and Middle school was pure, unadulterated, hell. The other kids must have seen me coming from a mile away and started planning right away how to torturer me. In High school I figured out that if I made my mind completely blank and copied somebody who was doing well, I could fake it enough to at least not stand out like a sore thumb, even if I did not fit in quite right. I still ended up dropping out even though I was capable of a 4.0 and eventually took the GED and scored in the top 96th% of the nation compared to high school graduates, and it only took me 4 hours to complete the entire set of tests. It took me ten years to try to go back for a higher education and now I am doing well in college, no real friends yet but I am not completely ostracized either. I was never invited to anything and never kept in touch with anybody but I would like to do those kinds of things, who knows maybe college will turn out better. One thing that is different is that now I know why I do the things I do, the way that I do them, and I can explain it to people. Most are very understanding and can be friendly when they know you are not trying to be a jerk and that you can't really help some of the things you say or do.

Overall I hated it. It wasn't as much of a torment as elementary school, with all the bad stuff that comes with those early school years, but it was still pretty wretched. I did have friends, but as the years went on it became a smaller and smaller circle of close friends. Didn't sit alone at lunch because I was lucky enough to have at least a few kids I knew at the same lunch period each year.

I was friends with that close circle for about a year or so out of high school because we all lived close by and even agreed to try not to drift. I haven't talked to or seen them for a few years though, I totally would but I'm trying to be more normal now and back then I was straight clown shoes, so I just don't know how it would go over, you know? I've changed a lot.

I got invited to the typical things they would do. I was a definite albatross, they even told me I was creepy and I know I did things that would piss them off, but at the same time I made them laugh because I wasn't afraid to be nutty (looking back I wish I didn't act that way). I did get good grades and should have been a straight A student but eventually my condition and everything that came from it made me just "give up" and become suicidal, so I just didn't give a crap about grades and they slipped. Again I wish I could take this back.

Graduation night I didn't go. I think I was too ashamed to show myself at this point having hit rock bottom, and I think I resented mad people anyway. I had a friend in a similar "situation" that didn't go either. We just drank in these river bottoms area and made fun of people instead. Pretty lame, I know.

Overall it was tough and I can definitely see it being hard for a lot of people on here. But everyone is different. I know normal people whose experience was similarly terrible for their own reasons.

I had people I hung around with at school... but the relationships never really existed out of school or extended past school when I graduated

I was at high school 1984-1989, then two years of sixth form before going to Uni. (Yes, I'm old)

Back then, the only form of 'special needs' was the Remedial table where the kids who were a bit 'slow' sat. I was clever and worked hard so I was considered 'normal'.

Did you have any friends?
At primary school I had one good friend who I played with all the time. If she wasn't there I didn't play with anyone else. When we went to secondary school, she made other friends and I didn't see her so much. That was hard. I made another friend who was also a bit of an odd-ball, like me. Her brother was too. Looking back, they are probably both on the spectrum somewhere, as is her mother.

I was envious of the popular girls. I wanted to fit in, but I didn't know how. Sometimes they would make friendly overtures to me but I didn't trust them - I thought they would be nice to me, get me to believe that they wanted to be friends, and then drop me horribly "As if WE would be friends with YOU" sort of thing. So I kept myself to myself.

Did you sit alone at lunch?
Always. Usually I would go to the music room with my sandwiches as there would usually be choir or orchestra at lunch-times and I would just go there early.

If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people?
No

If not, then why?
My early friend, I was friends with for a long time - many years, then for some reason, I never knew why, she stopped returning my calls. I went round to her house last year to invite her to my wedding and to try to make up, but she shut the door in my face. I still don't know why.

My second friend started to take me for granted when we had kids. I would go round to see her, and she would just go out, leaving me to look after my kids and hers. We finally fell out when we had gone out for my birthday and I said something about flirting technique with men. She laughed at me and said nastily, "And that is why I'm married and you're not." I cried in the toilets and then walked out and left her. I have never spoken to her since, although I did send a card when her dad died.

Were you ever invited to places?
Only by my two friends, who didn't like each other.

Did you like your teachers?
I had a mad obsessive crush on one of them, who was a saint to put up with me. The rest: some were OK, some I hated. I did my work so, as long as they left me alone mostly I got on OK with the teachers.

Did you get good grades?
Yes. Except in German.

What was your graduation ceremony night like?
Didn't have one.

Other info
I hated school. I was bullied by pretty much everyone, even younger kids jumped onto the bandwagon. I was beaten up on the way home by gangs of bigger girls, 'asked out' for a bet by boys who would not turn up and then laugh at me the day after. I was 'wound up' and set on other girls so they could watch me fight.

Sixth form was slightly easier because mostly the nasty girls had left and Uni was much better as I could concentrate on my specialism and be with other people who shared it. I also hooked up with a really nice bunch of friends who looked after me. I felt almost normal at Uni.

I'm still in high school, so I'll say how it is right now:
Did you have any friends? I have people who consider me a friend, but I don't feel terribly close to most of them. I have one girl who I do get along with well, and kind of depend on her, but most of them are kind of distant to me.
Did you sit alone at lunch? Usually. I stay in the library most of the time.
If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people? People come and go.
Were you ever invited to places? I get invited to a lot of things that I'm not interested in. There's the odd occasion where it's something I'm interested in, and if it's not a huge thing, I'll probably go.
Did you like your teachers? It's a case by case thing. I like two of them, have no opinion on three of them, and dislike the other two.
Did you get good grades? All A's and B's. Could be all A's, but I tend to slack in boring classes.

I was bullied a lot in middle school but I was largely ignored in high school so it was a definite improvement. I had one close bestfriend throughout middle and high school (who I have good reason to believe is also an aspie) so I was never completely alone even in the worst of times. I think our experience of being bullied together has given us a long-lasting bond (we've been friends for over a decade now) that will probably always remain in some form regardless of the direction that our lives go.

I'm still good friends with my first boyfriend though other than those two individuals I'm not in contact with anyone from that part of my life.

I wasn't invited to anything in high school but I didn't really want to be invited so it was all good. I was pretty obsessive with my school work (kept beating myself up over that one B I got as a freshman) and did my best to ignore the social scene and other similar sources of distraction from my school work. My teachers generally liked me. I think I was still lonely and depressed a lot of the time but obsessing over my schoolwork seemed to function as a kind of anesthesia. I enjoyed making lists of all the homework I had to do and then checking off items as they were completed.

At my graduation ceremony I gave a speech on squirrels (with a plush squirrel wearing a graduation cap and gown). I enjoyed having a captive audience who had to listen to me go on about squirrels. I didn't have any sort of celebration afterward though. I probably just read or played a computer game.

Did you have any friends? no.
Did you sit alone at lunch? yes, i usually hid out away from the lunch room, in the library with the friendly librarian named mrs. michaelis, who was just about the only friendly face i saw in school. there was one other teacher who was also a county sheriff's deputy in his spare time, who treated me like a human being.
If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people? didn't have any.
If not, then why? they didn't want to know me, and vice-versa.
Were you ever invited to places? no.
Did you like your teachers? there were a few who were decent.
Did you get good grades? B's mostly.
What was your graduation ceremony night like? lonely. i went through the motions because my parents insisted on me attending, i was more than willing to skip the damned ceremony and just stay home that night. i flipped my tassel the wrong way, just like how i screwed up everything else up to that point. i walked up and picked up my diploma from the principal, and if it weren't for the concert band perfunctorily applauding for me [as a band member] it would've been deafening silence for me to have endured. after the ceremony, i didn't stick around because everybody in the band had already left, and they were about the only kids i even knew, so i just went home. i haven't been back to any reunions since graduating in '79.

Did you have any friends? Yes, and no. I knew plenty of people from grades prior, but did not really find any actual friends until much later on. My group of friends were older, and left school before I did. They did, however, teach me enough about socializing to find friends in my own grade up until graduation.
Did you sit alone at lunch? I preferred sitting alone, as other folks tended to bother me with noise and such. On and off I'd revolve about different tables of acquaintances.
If you did have friends, are you still friends with those people? Most definitely.
Were you ever invited to places? On and off.
Did you like your teachers? I often enjoyed the instructors far more than my peers.
Did you get good grades? Not particularly. However intelligent or mature for my age as I may have been (not my opinion, but more the impression that I've received thus far), I was never a fan of traditional academics. Time constraints and problems at home lead to a virtual inability to keep up with homework, which to general apathy towards school as a whole. I was much more prone to self-learning, and this I greatly enjoyed, but there was just something so unappealing about being forced into a small room with people that I didn't know; making noises and moving and the like. Also, there was the drug and alcohol abuse that I needed to attend to.
What was your graduation ceremony night like? The night? I just went home to sleep.

I am currently a senior in high school.

Do you have any friends? Yes, actually, lots of them. They all share my same interests. (either programming, strategy club, or marching band) But it seems like I quickly lose all of the friends I don't share interests with, so most of my friends are computer nerds :P.

Do you sit alone at lunch? I eat lunch in the strategy club room and watch people play trading card games (and sometimes play some myself). If the room is closed, then yes, I usually do sit alone, then go to the library after I finish eating.

Are you ever invited to places? Yes, but not nearly as often as others, I think. Most of the time it's to play video games on the weekend.

Do you like your teachers? This year and last year, yes. But during my freshman and sophomore years, it seemed like some teachers hated me from the start.

Did you get good grades? Kind of. I'm in a lot of honors/AP classes, but my weighted GPA is only slightly higher than a 3.5.