What was high school like for you?

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Really? This site makes me feel like even less of an outsider; it's pretty much the only place I'm accepted.

Hell. That sums up my years of high school.

Highschool was significantly easier then middle school. I had some issues with students in my regular classes my freshman and sophomore years but nothing from random people around campus. Teases included things along the lines of my clothes not matching, not fitting, obviously being from discount and thrift stores etc. The thing is, in highschool they are more sarcastic about their teases and actually direct them as compliments. The insult would either go over my head or I would even say thank you. The bullies got bored and it never became a reoccurring incident. I was also by far not the oddest dressed person on campus, there were crust punks, metal heads, flower children, emos, goths and even a few gender benders.

I am still haunted by my middle school experience. It was the worst three years of my life. I got teased on a daily basis by my peers, I felt like some of my teachers made it their mission to humiliate me, was stolen from, taken advantage of, and some of my friends were ignoring me and hanging out with people who had nothing good to say about me. Highschool and later college were the greatest relief. Now in the rare occurring that I get teased it is in the form of a sarcastic compliment, I just say thank you and the bully looks like an idiot.

It is easy to believe in hell when you have been there. Secondary school was a total nightmare, I was very glad to escape to university when I was 18.

I have no wish to see any of the children from my secondary school on this earth ever again. My way to strike back at them is to live a good, happy and productive life in which they have no part.

I went to High School back in the days before AS was diagnosed, so I went to a mainstream High School. For what it´s worth, I still don´t have an official diagnosis, but according to all the screening tests, I have an ASD.

Okay, aside from social stuff, here were some of the other problems I had:

1) I had a very hard time changing my focus from one thing to the other. In my day, High School meant going to, say, a math class, then having 5 minutes to change "periods", as they called them, and then suddenly being in an English class. I always felt rushed in my 5 minutes of "free" time, and it was incredibly hard for me to go from focusing on one subject, to suddenly focusing on another. As a result, I felt constantly stressed and overwhelmed. In addition, I would tend to zone out because I hadn´t had a proper break, so I missed a lot of information. Now that I´m an adult and am aware that I need breaks (as well as time going from one thing to another), I can plan my own life better, so that I can do things more constructively. I feel less overwhelmed, less stressed, and also have better self esteem because I function better when I have proper breaks.

2) In High School, I had constant uncomfortable stomach aches, which were very distracting. This was likely due to anxiety, though it may also have been due to undiagnosed celiac disease. I didn´t have this problem on my days off- (less anxiety, of course, but I also ate less gluten, as on a Sunday, I would have eggs and bacon rather than a quick cereal....hard to say, but my guess was it was a mix of both). Anxiety can create uncomfortable physical effects.

3) I found it highly difficult to study things that I was not interested in, which, unfortunately, was most of the curriculum of school! I knew what my special interests were, and didn´t want to waste my precious time. It felt like a huge chore to study subjects I didn´t like. (I even wonder if I had other cognitive difficulties that often go along with AS, particularly, dyscalculia). I seemed to be far more annoyed by illogical things that didn´t make sense and that made my life difficult than the other students- (like homework that was just "busywork", or being required to do subjects that I knew already- like sex ed, where I got a 104 on PRE-test, and knew some statistics that the teacher didn´t know. so why was I required to waste my time and take that class???)

4) This ties in with bullying, but I was afraid to go to the bathroom because that´s where the type of kids who beat people like me up- hang out. So I would hold it in. That can´t be healthy.....

5) Though, in retrospect, I realize that I was in the top courses in school, at the time I was convinced that I was stupid. (I also thought I was ugly). This may have been due to bullying and name calling, taking things too literally (thereby understanding things incorrectly and not preforming as well), comparing myself to other students (realizing that I had to work harder at things that they found easy- this includes the social, of course), trouble with multi-tasking (like note taking during lectures- I had to memorize ALL of it), prioritizing (studying the unimportant details of a particular subject, but not being able to answer some of the most important questions on a test about that subject), or trouble with interpretation (having trouble with multiple choice tests, for instance, because I didn´t "think like" the creators of the test). I was in a total state of anxiety about my perceived stupidity.

6) In High School, we were constantly reminded that we were about to embark in the "big world" as adults, and that we had to be successful. This thought alone caused extreme anxiety.

You might also want to check and make sure that your son is not experiencing any social situations that are confusing for him. Sometimes, bullying may not be perceived as such; it may just feel uncomfortable, but one may not be able to pinpoint why. As people age, bullying becomes more subtle....an AS person may not quite recognize adult bullying as bullying.

I was homeschooled for middle and high school so it was easy.

I had a lot of the other experiences you describe, but this one almost makes me cry thinking about it, because I am fairly sure that I had been finding this aspect of school so difficult/beyond me, so exhausting, so frustrating, so stressful, so disappointing, so utterly and totally demoralising and soul-destroying since my first/earliest years at primary school that by the time I arrived at grammar school I had not only virtually given up on actually caring about the content of ( most ) lessons, concentrating instead on "achieving" the performance of dutiful listening, note-taking, etc which seemed to be all that mattered, but had become, ( like a pavlov-dog, conditioned by a bell ), practically incapable of deep sustained engagement with any project/activity, ( as opposed to performance ), sustained beyond a few hours or a day anyway, ( very occasionally a few weeks ).

I have cried about this, raged against this, felt despair about this, over and over again; how I don't seem to be able to persist with any project which requires cumulative steps, ( as opposed for instance to infinite one-dimensional activities like research into a special interest or other similarly "one-stage"/"first step" "work" ), for longer than a very short time.

I didn't get the chance to develop the skill involved in proceeding "organically"/effectively from the first stages of a "project" to the second, and so on, to completion. And thus my adult life has been marked by one "started project" after another.

As a child I learned, only tooooo well, to adapt to the timetable of school, by just going through the motions in each class, with no sense at all of any progress, of building on anything, of getting somewhere. Stringing beads together, collecting a "row" of "lessons", ... . I still don't know how to do anything else. How do you go from a first chapter, an idea, a paragraph or two, a plan, to a finished book, from lots of drawings, or a sketch, to pictures I can sell?

I was a "good student" right from the start at school. I did what I was told most of the time. To fit in, to cope, I gave up on really thinking about, being interested in, wanting to know more about, anything that we were taught at school, ( the rare exceptions, "precis" in english classes aged 14/15, speed of eyeblink as measurement of internal/external locus of control, at uni, etc proving the rule ).

School was like being turned into a zombie.

Edit. PS. ... 30/45/50 minutes to do something? ! !! !! ! That might suit people who are only able to go through the motions, who learn in soundbites, for whom the lesson is really about practising their handwriting, etc, ... but to do anything requiring thought, ... I need hours. I need a whole day to really get into something, to move beyond first reactions, etc.

It's a totally insane system, but then as Gatto points out school wasn't invented by philanthropists wanting to educate people, but industrial magnates/capitalist quite open/honest about wanting to produce obedient workers/citizens and compulsive consumers for their shiny new "stuff".
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I was bullied and my teachers were my best friends. I never had a girlfriend.

High school was horrible but I got through the last half of it on antidepressants.

Most of the girls were not a problem. Only a few, strangely.

Most of the boys were an upfront problem, like aggressive-aggressive; the rest were not the solution so they were part of the problem. In any event I never got along with any of the guys. So the entire concept of boyfriend-girlfriend eluded me and made no sense. It still makes no sense. Even though I am straight lol.

I chalk it up to, there are a lot of terrible people in my town. With alcoholic fathers and then themselves become raging alcoholics.

I was homeschooled. I remember doing my school work outside on my first day of high school. I wouldn't have been able to go to a public high school with out trying to kill someone or having a meltdown, getting made fun of for it, then trying to kill the people who made fun of me and the stupid teachers who told me to "snap out of it". If my parents hadn't taken me out of public school in the fith grade or sent me back like they had originally planned too, I would have pulled a colombine if I didn't kill myself first. Whenever people claim that homeschooling is bad because kids, epicaly AS kids don't the the chance to learn social skills, I have to argue that the only social skills aren't any better. I was becoming insanley violent from public school trying to defend myself and eventualy would go off on anyone that so much as looked at me. Homeschooling was in my best intrest.

My experience sounds a lot like your son (OP). I can remember having at least two bouts of major depression that went completely untreated. To me, it was an inability to fit in coupled with constantly being stressed while I was there. I wasn't bullied, but was picked on without real taunting. Being fairly big, I actually started a couple of fights myself because of it. I also ended up cutting classes and telling off a couple of teachers. More out of misery than being a bad kid I believe. I still maintained high grades in most of my college prep classes despite missing large chunks of classtime which I think didn't sit too well with the teachers, and was part of some of the athletic teams at my high school.

Looking back if someone was there to help me decipher the social interactions, I think things would have gone much more smoothly. I saw my peers changing and I was perplexed how to go about doing them for myself. Also, I found some of the teachers to be intentionally hurtful in making fun of my difficulties and differences. Of course, this was before AS was widely known and I was just part of the general population.

I have this problem too! In my case, though, I have many ideas, which I don´t act upon at all- (i.e., I don´t even start them)- because I know already that I don´t know how to get from "point A" to "point B". I did learn how to manage a few specific things involving my work; however, I can only do those things in that context. Take me out of that context, and in a different situation (change my occupation, for instance)- and I´m lost. Most people don´t seem to understand my fears about change when I try to explain it to them; they say "but you can learn it". I don´t know how to explain it properly, but I know it´s much more than just a simple question of new learning, or acquiring new skills. I can´t seem to be able to explain to people why I feel "blocked", and why I don´t know how to even begin to start something that´s outside of my narrow little zone.



That´s true! That reminds me, that was another reason why I hated school. That was actually one of my biggest grievances, starting in grade school. I could feel that they were trying to brainwash us, but it didn´t work on me. I resented the fact that people were trying to squelch the individuality out of me.



Oh yeah, I also spent quite a lot of time in High School reading books like "Education and the Corporate State".

For the most part, high school was pretty good. I had quite a few friends, including most of the cheerleaders. I got along well with most of my peers and they accepted me for who I was. Quite a few liked my sense of humor.

Quite a few girls thought I was "cute" and had a crush on me. It was not uncommon for girls to flirt with me. I only dated one girl, and that was the during the last three months of my senior year.

My grades were usually A's, B's and the occasional C. Most of my classes were easy; some were a little more difficult.

I wasn't too bad in PE. I struggled with volleyball and football. I was able to play ping-pong, badminton, and basketball with little to no problem. I was really good at running short distances.

Of course there were those who tried to bully me both guys and girls, but I was able to ignore them which got them off my back. The girl bullies were slightly more difficult to deal with than the guys.

Overall for me, high school was a very enjoyable experience despite the ups and downs.

I suffer from slight PTSD from my adventure into high school. I basically dropped out by the middle of 10th grade. The school called my parents and told them that I could start attending again in the fall if I so wished. Thankfully my Mom got me into a home school program (Clonlara if you were thinking of going that route) and I graduated. She also worked with me to get me back into a classroom environment so I could go to college. I graduated with an AS, BA, and BS.

Exactly! I felt like I was frozen and I only counted down the minutes to the end. I find school a big waste of time. And waste of me, because I was bullied (only primary and secondary school, not high).

My first thought reading this was very simple. Hell.

I should probably say first that my AS was not diagnosed until after I left school. Had it been, I probably would have had a far different experience.

It was mainly the social side of things that was my problem, if you would call it that. At many times during my years in high school I was almost in tears walking down the corridor to class because I was so afraid that someone, one of the many faceless multitudes of people who I'm fairly sure I had never done anything to offend, would make one of those horrible little slights at me. Many of you know the kind of things I mean, from reading through others' posts. Taunts, jokes that I wouldn't understand yet came to realise were making fun of me, people literally looking or pointing at you or laughing... It goes on. I couldn't shrug it off or make some sarcastic reply back, I just felt horrible. Alone and ridiculed and wrong. I wondered what it was I could have done that would make people be so horrible.

I tried to make myself as normal as possible. My school didn't have much of a uniform at the time, so I tried to mimic the fashions of others. I wanted to stand out as little as possible, hoping that if I was unremarkable enough, they would find someone else to bother. I made an effort to participate in things like sitting with a group at a table talking during lunch, when I would much rather have been in a quiet corner of the library. It didn't work, of course. All it did was make me look bland. I hid so much of myself that there wasn't anything really left to show anyone who might have been interested in getting to know the real me. I got enough acceptance to hang around on the fringes of one of the big friendship groups, but I never really belonged with anyone.

I did well in class, though. It was a refuge; I understood things there. They were logical and reasonable and I have a good memory and ability to mimic the academic language (aka wafflese), so I got good grades. I did struggle in my last two years when I started getting stress-triggered migraines (the cause of this wasn't diagnosed until much later; at the time I didn't quite realise that I was stressed, because I was never not stressed) and it caused me to miss a lot of school. While I felt bad that my schoolwork was suffering, I was also relieved that some days I just didn't have to go through being there. My parents and guidance teacher (a sort of in-school counselor, everyone was assigned one) knew that I was unhappy in school, but there wasn't much anyone could do. None of the kids ever pushed anything far enough that I would have proof to report them or have them removed. All they could do was tell me to wait it out, eventually they would either grow up or leave.

And some of them did. It got a little easier as I went on, but I can definitely say I felt absolutely no nostalgia on that last day of school. I was just relieved. Then came university, which was just wonderful in comparison. Difficult still in many ways, especially when classes had quite a large social aspect, but the kind of hostility I had had problems with in high school was just gone. It just shows what the different learning environment can do. I know this has wandered a little off-topic, but I hope something in there might be of use.