How did you act in lessons you didn't like at school?

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I always hated it when teachers want your "whole" attention. It doesn't help me with anything. It's better if my hands are busy. I'm not good at taking notes though. I want to hear what the have to say while keeping my hands busy in a non-essential way. Look, I'll go back over and read the TEXTBOOK. That's why we HAVE them.

When I'm not motivated in a class, I just pull out a book and while the class away happily reading.

At my school, we don't have honors level sciences (well, in my sophomore year they added Honors Biology, but that was after I'd already taken regular biology). The school loaned me the textbook the school uses for AP Chemistry, which helped with me not being bored, but I ended up spending more time learning than doing the work for the actual class. Also my teacher gave me a series of research questions to investigate. Very interesting stuff.

In fact, I would've wanted to go straight into AP Chemistry for sophomore year, but AP Chemistry and AP Biology are offered in alternating years, and that year was AP Biology. So then I would've wanted to go into physics, but I didn't have the math prerequisite (even though I'd studied about half the textbook for the course and understood it the summer before school), and the counselors underestimate everyone, so they would never have put me in AP Physics instead, so I got regular chemistry. It helped that the teacher was good, though. Her notes are very visual. I think she's going to be my teacher for AP Physics in junior year.

Boredom averted!

If I could get away with it I'd do homework for other classes in the boring class.

I also drew pictures of the fittings, usually close to where the teacher was standing.

Sometimes I'd draw the teacher. I'm not very good at drawing faces, but every now and again I'd get one just right...

One time in choir practice (and this was an adult choir) we had to wait because one section couldn't get it right and they didn't have the resources to separate us so we could practice at the same time, different parts...

I drew a picture of an airline crash. Quite a few United Airlines planes had been falling out the sky at the time, so I drew a broken plane on the ground, and filled in some details, and the other section still hadn't got their bit right, so I filled in some flames and smoke, and then some fire engines, and finally little people running away screaming (0ooh survivors!), and by that time, I found several people around me were giggling and I had quite an audience. I didn't expect that, but they were as bored as I was.

School has long been a challenge for me, and not academically. I have always known there was something unusual about me judging by the way people reacted toward me, and couldn't quite put my finger on it. However, I very much on the inside wanted to learn how to be a social creature so I could make it in this world. I tried to pass myself off as normal and slip through the cracks, but it's catching up to me now.

After high school it was music education that I studied in college, since I am a proficient musician. I did exceptionally well in all but one course through the first semester at USD.

Then, I got into a power struggle with my advisor over not taking any core classes such as math, arts, humanities, what have you, and so the next semester I signed up for College Algebra. That was a traumatic experience and I only made it two weeks (couldn't tell you what they were even lecturing about because I was way out in space checking out supernovas and black holes), and dropped out of the university.

My Brown Institute Radio School excursion proved to be more fruitful. I was on the Dean's List through out that phase and graduated as valedictorian, even having several profs directly assert how impressed they were with my performance. I took a job in Pierre on a small radio station and worked there for eight months. Because I had unresolved, undiagnosed "problems" going on with me socially and emotionally, I suffered a nervous breakdown, lost my job, and got institutionalized. That was a trap that is still hard to free myself from, and no amount of intellectualizing gets you out of it. They got you right where they want you.

Today, I am in another university going for psychology, and have more insight into my situation. Thus, I feel confident that this might take me farther than I've gone in this world to date. It is my third year of study, I again have an advisor riding my ass about difficulties relating to interpersonal interactions and making a game out of my shortcomings in classes.

The core classes are a pain in the ass, and frankly a waste of my time, and I've already dropped a few because I got apathetic fast.

Other classmates still retain that same non-existent, cartoon-character-like presence. Although I will say I keep meeting more than my share of very rude ones who attempt to tamper with my peaceful fantasy world and end up making me angry and want to storm out of the classroom. This happens even when I have my headphones in and it should be obvious I don't want to be bothered.


Teachers think I'm high falutin, egotistical, narcissistic, self-absorbed, and a bunch of other condescending descriptions apart from the "Erin" that I am. There's no use explaining yourself over and over either, because that gets to be more work than succeeding in college. That, and I really don't think we should have to answer to people no more than neurotypicals.

Then again, selecting psychology as a major was like putting myself in the line of fire for character attacks. Hopefully I'll come out stronger on the other end for having done such a stupid thing to myself.

Nonetheless, as much as I resent teachers/profs for their narrow-mindedness toward AS, ADHD, or whatever else, I do at times in a very pathetic manner try to