So, I founded a club at my school earlier this semester for students with disabilities. It is really important to me to empower disabled students and to make them feel at home here, and at this school they REALLY need that. It's hard for such gifted students to understand how someone could have a learning or developmental disability and still be just as smart as they are. They need a group on campus to go to that gets it.

I am getting really frustrated with it. We had 15 members at our first meeting in January and now have anywhere from 6-10 at our meetings. That isn't a big deal to me, I expected as much. But those 6-10 keep showing up every week but will not get involved, or they'll only do the bare minimum. I feel like I'd be getting a hell of a lot more done if I just did everything by myself.

Twice now they have committed to something and almost nobody followed through. One thing was my idea, one was theirs. We agreed, at my suggestion, to make a list of Do and Dont type things for professors to help them understand how an LD student should be treated, because they are regularly breaking university policy and embarrassing students in front of the whole class and discouraging other LD students from disclosing. We worked on it during the meeting and then, at the suggestion of the VP, agreed we'd brainstorm about it during the week and post more ideas to the facebook. Not one person did it.

So I made a survey for them to fill out about what expectations they had for the club that had been met, and what expectations they had that haven't been met, wondering if I'd just gone off on my own tangent and wasn't doing what they wanted to be doing.. The bottom line is that everyone wants more "fun" activities and for things to be more laid back, but they want to get more work done, too.

Okay. Contradiction number 1.

Now we have broken into committees that meet separately during the week to get shit done, at their suggestion, so we have more time for fun at the meetings. We've only done it once but that appears to be working pretty well. The committee I sit on met on Monday and the four of them decided they wanted to go to the basketball game today instead of meeting. I asked them if they really wanted to go and thought it would be fun. They said yes. I posed it to the rest of the group, they agreed.

NOBODY WENT.

I don't know what these people want from me. I feel taken advantage of. We had business to take care of this week that didn't get done because they insisted they wanted to go to the basketball game and then everyone found something better to do. Even all three of the other officers. I was too sick to go and my second, third, and fourth in command were all absent.

This is so frustrating, honestly. This summer I think I am just going to work on everything by myself. The club is never going to get off the ground if people don't get shit done, but they are not happy enough to work together no matter what I do. I literally asked them, "what do you want?" but they don't actually want what they say they want. I don't know what I am supposed to be doing to please them. It seems like nobody cares as much as I do, and that's totally fine with me, but we have to at least commit to the bare minimum here and I don't even have that anymore. I don't know why they're bothering.

Just kidding. Things are not better. I am tired of not having any friends and wish I never had to socialize with anyone ever so I wouldn't notice. This sucks. Terrible hard to deal with things are supposed to pass. It has been 20 years and it's probably not going anywhere. I am tired of this. I don't know how I am supposed to make it an entire lifetime being treated like I am an alien unworthy of friendship or even kindness. I don't want to be around people anymore if that is how they are going to make me feel. But I don't have a choice. It's hard to look at an aspect of your life, probably any aspect really, at 20 years old and think, "this is as good as it's going to get."

If this is as good as it gets I don't want "it."

Waiting...

Things are going a little bit better. I am just waiting to get all the documentation I need for my academic standards board petition. I'd like to start working on the part of the appeal that I have to write, but it'll be hard to do that before seeing my documentation from the autism center. Even though I know what difficulties I have, I don't know what I have a medical professional backing me up on yet, and they'll want undeniable proof about everything I say. Hopefully the documentation paperwork is something I can work with. Last time I was able to talk to the psychologist who wrote my report, for my LD screening, and get it customized to suit my needs for the petition but there isn't time to do that now. So I just have to hope they hit on the right things.

I spoke with my professor to explain what has been going on with class and everything and all she said was, "thank you for this detailed explanation. I will start working on your letter." So I have no idea what she'll write. Hopefully it is something helpful. Her and her class may be the biggest barriers to convincing the board that I genuinely have a disability. *sigh* Whatever happened to the days when medical professionals actually made decisions? If it's not insurance companies, it's schools.

I've told the Washington program that I will for sure be attending in the Winter. Sooner or later I need to bring up the issue of accommodations, in terms of housing and academics, and I know I should do it sooner rather than later, but ten months in advance seems a little bit excessive. I don't know. I am just afraid they'll be like "ohhhh maybe you shouldn't come after all." I don't know how to explain it in a way that won't make them think they can't work with me.

So I have yet again not slept (surprise!), so this will not be particularly lengthy or coherent, but I find it very annoying when people with asperger's act as if they are all superior to people with HFA. Some will go so far to justify it that they will make up completely bullshit "symptoms" of HFA which do not even exist just to separate them from me.

It really kind of makes me want to be like YEAH TREATING PEOPLE THAT WAY IS WHY YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS, but that would be insensitive and probably at least mostly inaccurate. So I don't. But I would probably be trying to befriend them if they weren't such assholes about this, and now I am not. So it's at least partly true.

But it is incredibly annoying. If we want to play the divisive game, if anything I am more high functioning than they are, but they act as if I am incapable of being a successful person and that I must have a lower IQ because good god, I have AUTISM!!!! Nevermind that they are BOTH AUTISM, and nevermind that I am actually going to school and in a relationship and not emotionally manipulating my friends by spending hours on end online insisting I am going to kill myself to fish for compliments. The few that are at least remotely rational insist that I must have had that speech delay and that is just a huge freaking deal, but I actually didn't even have a speech delay and it isn't even a big deal anyway. So whatever. (Then there are those that say they "can just tell" when someone has HFA and when they have Asperger's. Okay!)

Dear Aspies,

Stop being mean. Having autism does not give you an excuse to be indiscriminately douchey. Sometimes we are all just douchey and we can't help it, because sometimes we don't know or understand when we are being douchey, but some of you are behaving EXCEPTIONALLY douchey and it is really just not okay. Try a little harder. Some of you really do know better. Some of you don't, and you're forgiven. But some of you do.

Kthxbai




I suppose as someone who IS functional enough to know better I am probably obligated to let it go when I run into people who aren't. But I have a hard time believing that every one of them is really that irrational. I can't be the only one like me. It's hard to tell what standard to hold these people to. I'm hesitant to let go of any and all standards like it seems I need to do to not get annoyed, because that doesn't seem fair to either of us, but then I don't know where to draw the line either. It isn't as though people with autism aren't capable of being assholes just for the sake of being assholes if they feel like it like everyone else. I dunno.

I am just very, very annoyed.

I just got this in my email....

""Live up to your message in the Bachelor of General Studies thread. Your mental health is at stake.

Please do as you said and just live life in there here in now and not online anymore.

You have spent an eternity claiming to have different LD's and whatnot just to get out of your Spanish classes. You bowed out of this silly web site like a Queen when more than one person called you out on a fair amount of what most anyone would refer to as fibbing.

I am sorry for having a good memory, btw. My memory is a blessing and a curse sometimes. For you, it is obviously a curse, but if you were not so keen on lying it wouldn't be.

Please just man up and do whatever you have to do to earn your University degree.

There is no way in God's green Earth that the majority of the claims you have made against the university are true at all and I also doubt that you are truly LD or have Asberger's at all.

It is obvious that you have spent an eternity on this web site racking your brain trying to figure out how you can get out of your Spanish requirements because you personaly do not think you should have to fufill them at all.

The persona you have created for yourself on this web site is fine and well. But the persona you have created on this web site is truly based upon your incessant lying because you personally do not wish to work with what your University has offered you period so you create more and more scenarios and various LD's and all of that online. This is not the real world, dear. This is online. No one in the real world would take your claims seriously and that is more than likely why your University did not at all.

The second someone calls ou out on your fibbing you freak out. But, shucks! All you have done is fib and fib and fib, so what do you expect.

Your University obviously made the right call. You will not accept it come heck or high water and are making excuses online to get out of what you should be doing in reality. Do you understand what I mean? You cannot circumvent the reality of your situation by fibbing online.

Move on.

And yes, drama queen, your future is very much at stake.

Personally I am tired to death of logging onto this web site and just having it be inevitable that you are fibbing and high jacking more and more threads about your shape shifting sotry of doom at the UofM.

So, I am done with this web site because of you and what little you are."


Awesome. Just awesome.



On a brighter note, I found out today that I will be interning from January to April in Washington DC. I am completely terrified to be alone for that long, and with no friends or relatives anywhere nearby, but I am excited anyway. I am obviously pretty kickass. Hopefully my grades don't drop, or I won't be allowed to go. And hopefully this opportunity will make law schools focus less on my grades. And hopefully my lack of independent life skills won't be the death of me. And hopefully I can acquire enough suits and pieces of luggage and gift cards to dry cleaning places before then. I will miss my boyfriend terribly.

"I think we all can observe that you try to use your disability to gain sympathy from others, but as soon as people point out what you are able to do you strike back hard at them."

I am so incredibly sick of this. I work so hard. So much harder than other people. With little to no complaint. Sure my family, probably my roommate, and my blog get an earful, nobody else knows what I do to myself to just barely cling to keeping up with others my age. And people think I am just trying to get sympathy? UGGGH.

My mom brought up an interesting point today. She suggested that perhaps because I speak and write so eloquently (her words, not mine), it makes it hard for people to believe I am disabled. Boyfriend agrees and said it probably makes it seem like I am lazy when I struggle with my things. It almost makes me wonder if life would be easier if I were mentally handicapped. Because apparently you can't be smart and disabled, and I am going to be fighting to prove what I can't do just to be allowed to do what I can do for the rest of my life. I DON'T want sympathy, I just want the world to let me do what I am good at.

On that note, the disabilities office said that I should re-petition, but they weren't optimistic about how it would go. He suggested I give up my major and become a bachelor of general studies instead so I wouldn't need a language. I will be really hurt if it comes to that. I've worked hard to earn my political science degree, and I have all but finished it already. It's just this stupid Spanish class.

I love it when people who have no clue what they are talking about try to tell people who do know what they are talking about what they should be doing.

"Asperberger's"

Seriously.