MY AUTISM STORY!

I have Autism. I think of my Autism As a gift and super power! Because I have Autism I know what it feels like to be rewarded for hard work much more than average and normal people! My Autism has helped me understand others feelings. For example since I have a disability I know what the pain of being bullied is, for the most part people who have disabilities are treated by others like they are freaks, and for immature, belligerent, and oppressive reasons such as feeling superior, and entertainment. What kind of disability you have will likely determine what people say to you, and what actions people take towards you, for example people who where glasses are sometimes called 4 eyes. When you actually experience something first hand in your life you have a better chance of relating to other people who have also experienced the same thing if you are willing to. Unfortunately today’s society makes it very hard for people to share their experiences, and give advice to others, the two main causes for this that I have came up with after doing a lot of research are,

1. For the most part people instinctively do not want to listen to other people because they think that they have all the answers, the reason for this is because of pride.

2. The second reason is most jobs that allow you to convey ideas to others require a whole lot of training and a whole lot of education.

Since we are on the subject of education, the college and higher education system in the U.S.A is a spiders web. Often people with disabilities are the ones who need extra help and often that extra help comes in the form of specialty teachers and therapists. The sad part of it all is that even though there is some help for individuals with disabilities at younger ages, when they reach the age for higher education they fall through the holes and cracks of the spiders web. Let me go into more detail? Based on my experiences with grade school and higher learning they’er differences and expectations are worlds a part, which is a very bad thing for anyone with any kind of cognitive, learning, and or developmental disability what that means is let’s start by explaining the differences that I believe they have. The first difference they have are, grade school is free, the books are free, and so is transportation, which is especially helpful for when I was in grade school because as of right now I have always received the bare minimum which is housing and all other bills payed for by the government, college is certainly not free in any sense of the word, and though community college has minimal to zero tuition, registration, and entrance fees, they do charge a lot for books, and they do not have free transportation. The campus size of grade schools no matter what grade is much smaller than even the smallest community college, for people for me when I was younger trying college out  was very daunting not to mention overwhelming, navigating schools when I was younger was much easier than navigating community colleges. When I say they each have different expectations which is a bad thing what I mean is, on one hand you have K through 12 which has grade point average requirements at all, however both community and 4 year colleges require a super high g.p.a. which makes it even harder for someone like me. My hope is by writing and submitting this to many people and organizations that it will help others see the world in the perspective of people with disabilities!

Thank you