Autism Goes To College
Autism Goes To College
EPISODE 43: She graduated with a BA + an autism diagnosis - what changed after getting support and naming what she needed
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L chose a college experience that started out at the liberal arts-focused, smaller Oxford College campus of Emory University. Coming from a small school in Savannah, it was a choice that felt like a great fit for a lot of reasons. Smaller class sizes, a smaller student body, and less chaotic than the giant campus and Atlanta scene that are part of a typical Emory experience. Academically, L found it ideal. But still, some aspects of college life were hard to navigate. And she continued to struggle with a familiar difficulty: initiating relationships. Listening to a friend talk about similar challenges during her freshman and sophomore years, L started to learn something about herself: maybe... I'm autistic? At first, she says, that seemed unlikely. But the more L listened and learned, the more she felt like, actually, this might explain a lot. So, she decided to get evaluated. L tells her story about getting into college, not even considering looking for a school with accommodations and leaving college better prepared for the road ahead with both her degree and a much greater understanding of who she is.
Now that I'm genuinely enjoying my social life at Hamilton, I'm more incentivized to actually be social.
SPEAKER_01Having autism isn't something that should prevent people from having a successful college experience. It takes work.
SPEAKER_02Join clubs, find groups, find your people, find ways to fit in, see a peer mentor, see somebody who can help you get involved on campus.
SPEAKER_03There are a lot of black children on the spectrum who are also deaf. She's not the first one.
SPEAKER_06I researched all of the majors and then I eliminated the ones that sounded not interesting to me. So then I changed it to chemical engineering, to work for chemistry, then I took an environmental science class, and I'm like, I think environmental issues are really important, and I'm really passionate about state sustainability and stuff. So then I changed it to finally environmental engineering.
SPEAKER_00Especially in a college town like Outdoor Dash. Like, just go out and get the food. It's good exercise.
SPEAKER_04Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us on this episode of Autism Goes to College. The podcast for students on the spectrum and for everyone who supports us. Navigating college is always a challenge. So here are the hacks, insights, and great ideas you've been looking for to make college work for you. We're a small group of self-advocates. We're all in college or recently graduated. And you can do this too.
SPEAKER_07Autism Goes to College began as a documentary film following five college students on the spectrum as they navigated college life. At the end of this episode, I'll give you some details about where you can see the film today. And it's all at our website, autismgoes to college.org. Every month we drop a new episode. Here's what's also new: there's a resource center on our website with dozens of outtakes of important stuff that didn't quite make it into the film, all the podcast episodes, and blogs from experts and from student advisors from the film. Thanks for listening. We do hope to hear from you.
SPEAKER_08Hello, thanks for listening to our podcast, Autism Goes to College. My name is Elle Nash, and I graduated from Emory University in December of 2024. I have a bachelor's degree in classics and English with a minor in linguistics, as well as an associate's degree in liberal arts. When I started the process of planning for college, I knew I might face some obstacles with such a big transition, but I'd been lucky to have spent many summers at Sleepaway Camp, which helped me feel prepared for the day-to-day of share living space with other people. Once I arrived, however, I encountered unexpected challenges at college and in life, and after discussions with friends and family and a lot of self-reflection, I came to understand myself as autistic. In other words, I went through all of high school, the application process, and nearly half of my undergrad experience unaware of this fundamental part of myself. By the time I graduated, I had an autism diagnosis, I had found a community, and I truly felt like I belonged. On this episode, I'll share how all of that unfolded for me, how it changed my college experience, and how it continues to impact my life as I start to become an independent adult. I'm here with Catherine O'Brien, host of the Autism Goes to College podcast, and I'm going to hand it over to her.
SPEAKER_07Hey everyone. Welcome, Elle, and congratulations on receiving your degree. Thank you. So you you went to Emery, which is in Atlanta. I think of it as a happening urban culture center, but you started at the satellite campus called Oxford College, which I understand to be a smaller liberal arts program. Can you talk about how you ended up at Oxford and then chose to transition to the big city, big university?
SPEAKER_08So part of it has to do with how the program itself works. Um, the Oxford College program is a two-year program by design. There are only freshmen and sophomores on campus. It's very small. There's a graduating class of roughly 500. And then all of these students receive an associate's degree in liberal arts and then they transition onto the main campus. And depending on what you are looking for in the college, it can be useful for a variety of reasons. A lot of people who enjoy leadership positions or want to take that on for themselves find a lot of difficulty starting at a place like Emery, where maybe all of those positions are filled by juniors and seniors and they don't want to wait. And with that sort of space, they are able to immediately take those first steps. For me, the draw was a little different. I'm a humanities major at heart. And I also come from a very small high school. And our graduating class was 60. So even though the uh graduating class of my Oxford class was 500, that was still almost a 10 times increase. So for me, it made the transition a lot more gradual and gave me time to adjust. So it was really helpful for me trying to navigate this space in a way that was both functional for my development and also didn't break me down inside.
SPEAKER_07So you mentioned in the show open that you weren't cognizant in the college application process of looking at schools from a neurodiversity and accommodations lens because you weren't identifying as autistic yet. So, what was that like in high school and transitioning to college without that level of insight?
SPEAKER_08Well, and this will probably be a running theme. I'm very fortunate to have the world's best parents. And so my parents have always been very supportive of me and understanding of my brain, even if we didn't necessarily have the language to say, oh, that's why this works this way. So when it came to the college process, uh, the way that my brain works, I'm generally a high achiever in a structured academic setting, and I like to plan ahead. And so the idea of applying for colleges was the issues that were more daunting for me were A, writing about myself, having to sort of sell myself or present myself, and B, when it came down to the colleges I was accepted to, knowing ahead of time what I would want to commit to because it's such a big decision. It's amazing to me that we ask really anyone at that threshold of adulthood, really on the edge of childhood, to make such a big decision with their lives.
SPEAKER_07Um Yeah, I I personally really struggle with the UC system asking high school seniors to apply to a specific major. Um, speaking of the college application process, you selected Emory, but where else did you apply?
SPEAKER_08So I applied to many different places, but I ended up accepted into four uh on the surface very different schools. So I was accepted to Emery, accepted to the University of Miami, which is where my parents both went and it's where they met. And I was accepted to UCLA. So, you know, alternate universe where I was in a different time zone. Uh, and I was finally accepted to Brimmar. And as you can imagine, very different in terms of size, in terms of environment. Was it hard to choose? And and how did you decide? It was very hard because one of the things that is supposed to feel reassuring and really ultimately is reassuring, but can give you that sort of choice paralysis in the moment is the idea that, oh, well, you you would find your way in any of these schools. You would, you would fit in any of these places. I see, I see potential in each of these sort of spots. And so it was it was a rough couple of days of just back and forthing with my very understanding parents of, but how am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to know if it'll be the right fit for me if I if I'm not there already? Uh and ultimately we decided on Oxford and Emery because it provided that sort of transition for me. So even though I didn't have the language of, oh, I'm autistic, I like XYZ things, I'm my brain is structured in XYZ ways, I did already know about myself that the transition was going to be hard and this was going to make it more gradual. And it gave me the most versatility. It gave me the options to explore what a small setting looks like, what a more rural setting looks like, uh, what a more liberal arts focused setting looks like. And then it gave me the opportunity to expand and push myself. Because if I don't know what it's going to be like, then giving myself that room to kind of wiggle around was useful.
SPEAKER_07Seems like you had a lot of wisdom in your approach. So when you got to campus and at the Oxford College uh location, did was that an on-campus living dorms, uh traditional first-year college experience for you?
SPEAKER_08Absolutely. Did you have a roommate? I did. Uh, and I had a roommate that was randomly matched. One of the things that I was a little worried about, but ended up pleasantly surprised by was the roommate matching, because I had heard that other people did all of this research and matched ahead of time and found each other on social media before and they were all compatible. But as I was there for those two years, it turns out that the people with the highest success rate, at least at Oxford, were the people that matched randomly. Because if you try too hard ahead of time to figure out who's most compatible with you, eventually you're going to run into difficulties no matter what, and you haven't anticipated them. So I matched randomly with my roommate, and we are, we were and are not similar at all, really. But we were able to respect each other's space and we actually ended up becoming friends because we were able to kind of start with that distance and respect and then work our way in instead of coming in with preconceived notions. I think part of it too is that while I definitely advocate for being able to control as much as you can in terms of your own life, your own structure at college, because there's so much freedom and that can be paralyzing, um it is very true that you cannot control other people. And so your efforts need to be focused in the right spaces, or you're going to just drain your energy. If you spend all that time trying to select for the right person and then they are or do or say things you can't control, and you are or do or say things they can't control, you're setting yourself up for failure.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, there's almost no way to meet the expectation of like I have matchmakered my perfect friends and everything is going to be perfect now. Um yeah. Speaking of finding friends and making friends and the pressure, did you have any friends from your hometown or your prior school? I know it was a small school, so maybe not uh at college. And did you make new friends pretty easily?
SPEAKER_08Well, I did end up actually having one of my friends who was a year below me also go through Oxford and Emory. So right now she's a she's a junior. And having her around was fantastic because it was really nice to have that sort of sense of familiarity and also be able to impart whatever it was I had learned to be like, oh no, I know about that place. Do this XYZ thing when you get there. Or I know these tips and tricks about which machines break or um what the weather's gonna be like. But in terms of making new connections, that's something that I found and still find very difficult to do to initiate those kinds of relationships. So even though I had a nice relationship with my roommate my first year, uh, we weren't roommates my second year. And while I ended up finding a new roommate who we also had a nice relationship with, we don't keep in touch. And past that, I still find it very difficult to put myself out there to make those new kinds of friendships and relationships. And it's not for lack of infrastructure. I will say, especially at a small place like Oxford, there are lots of opportunities. Uh, different clubs, the school itself will make all these kinds of events, try to make it easier. But that's just something I've always really fundamentally struggled with.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And so you're you're getting into some of the like the social emotional reciprocity challenges that can, I mean, they are the core features of autism. You have to have all three of them to be diagnosed. So let's let's get into that a little bit. You were struggling with friendship. I know you were diagnosed at some point during college. What led up to that?
SPEAKER_08So I actually I very much grew up with the stereotyped image of autism that's very limited that we see in media. Overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly uh either tolerated for their genius or just a complete burden to society in big air quotes. And I didn't necessarily see myself in that and never really thought to question it because I didn't have autistic people in my life. And as I started to sort of challenge that for myself, one of the big catalysts was actually my friend from my hometown because I would establish routines of calling people at home to make sure that I was kind of getting that sort of social connection, even if I couldn't do it with new people. And my friend at home, she was still in high school, but she was kind of going through this process of realizing, oh, I'm autistic. And she's describing all these experiences that she has. Um, oh, now I have the support that I need, or in this area I'm feeling really challenged, or these are the experiences that I'm having or that I had. And I'm like, what do you mean that's an autistic thing? What do you mean? And I started to sort of seek out the opinions and experiences of autistic people, both in my life and then in social media as well, which can be definitely be a double-edged sword. But learning from other people's experiences, I was like, wait a minute, this thing I experienced, I'm not, this isn't something fundamentally wrong with me, that I'm just a weirdo and completely alone in the world. And the more that I talked to her, and eventually she came on campus uh with me, and she was involved with the Kloppon campus called Oxford Autism Advocacy Organization, which would then become, well, it would then become for those of us that moved to Atlanta, Emery's uh autism advocacy organization. But I was not initially as involved as she was. But as I started to come to meetings and talk with more people who had a better understanding of themselves and how their brain worked, I was like, hmm, maybe this is something I should discuss with the people in my life, and maybe there would be something to looking at an evaluation, looking at a diagnosis to see if this is really what we think it is. So I didn't actually realize I had to go back through my records because COVID has messed with all of our senses of time. I I was diagnosed in the spring of or the early spring of 2023. So right before I ended up graduating from Oxford. So I spent most of my time at Oxford with either no idea or some very small inkling of what was going on. Of now that I'm out of this very routine structured environment, what's going on? Why am I struggling in XYZ ways?
SPEAKER_07And were you able to access an evaluation on campus at Oxford, or was that something you had to go back home and find a doctor for?
SPEAKER_08It's a good question. Uh, I happen to live in Savannah, which is a four-hour drive away from Atlanta and roughly from Oxford. So I was having this discussion with my family while I was at home, and it made sense for us to sort of go through that process while I was at home, and I had access to my family, my support system. Um so we ended up doing the meeting, the evaluations, and all of that sort of stuff at home. And then I had that information with me when I returned to school.
SPEAKER_07So what was the evaluation like? Did your folks go with you to the appointment? Yeah, what did they have you do?
SPEAKER_08Uh it was it was very funny because I had already seen ahead of time that people who either took self uh assessments or got evaluated, that a common experience for people was they would read a question and they would have no idea how to answer it because they needed more context or because it didn't make any sense to them, uh, or they wanted to answer something that wasn't on like the scale that was provided to them. And while I thought it was funny, I didn't realize how true it was until I got there. And they can't be this large questionnaire of all of these questions. I'm like, I can't, I can't explain myself.
SPEAKER_07No, I do not struggle with socks, for you see, I have a system, sir.
SPEAKER_08Exactly.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, this is this is a common enough experience that my dissertation on assessment of college students is focusing on which measures are neurodivergent friendly and ethnographically observing people in clinic to see what confuses them. So your assessment was confusing. There were long questionnaires, and you got through it, and how did you get the results? And did they kind of make sense? Did everything click? What was that moment like when you found out?
SPEAKER_08Basically, they just email me this pages long PDF just of all of these like observations of my behavior. And uh I also I I went back through it and wrote down the I don't know if this is something that would be of interest to people listening, but I wrote down the different tests that they put on there. So I took the Weshler Adult Intelligence Scale, uh, the adaptive behavior assessment system, the social responsiveness scale, the autism diagnosis observation schedule, uh, the Offenbach Adult Behavior Checklist, uh, and the ADHD rating scale, and then there were some like self-reports. So it was one of the things that was very gratifying was taking those sort of like intelligence scale tests and seeing like 99th percentile, 99th percentile. I'm like, yeah, I'm doing so good. I'm so smart. Uh and then it got to processing speed and it was like 30th percentile.
SPEAKER_07And I'm like, hey, yeah, mine look almost exactly that. Um yeah, that'll make sense. That's a that is a gold standard young adult autism assessment right there. Um, and it sounds like maybe kind of a weird way to get their results. I certainly wouldn't email a diagnostic report without making time to speak face to face or on the phone with the person. Generally, best practices that you want to share the diagnosis that you're giving with them directly. Um, and it sounds like that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_08Uh, not entirely to my recollection. I believe we had like a pre-conversation before we did the things. Um but the the funniest thing was the sort of like individual observations of behavior because all she was doing was saying the things that I was doing, but through her eyes, there were there were uh, I guess like discrepancies or issues. So one of the things was she asked me how happiness feels.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_08It feels like happiness, that's what the word is for. Um, and I said, like, I'm having trouble understanding how to answer that question. That happened quite a few times where I'm like, I don't understand how I'm supposed to answer this. And that was a sign, apparently.
SPEAKER_07And that is a sign on the ADOS insight into emotions with self and others. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Um, so for one of the tests was, and this was one of the tests that brought down my processing speed. It was like a search symbol test, and they had like a set of symbols on one side, and then they had one specific symbol on the other side, and they were like, uh circle it, circle the symbol if you find it, or say that you haven't found it in each sort of set. And I was like, okay, well, before I do this, I have a question. Do what does it need to be the exact symbol as it's replicated, or does it does can it be like I see the symbol in a greater symbol, but there's other stuff going on? And she was like, just answer it however you want. And I'm like, but how am I supposed to get the right answer if I don't know what the right answer is? And that's what slowed down my processing time. So which is something that I think can be both useful in certain environments, that you have people who are not just intuitively going for what they think the right answer is. They don't, I guess, follow those, I guess heuristics is the word I'm remembering. Sort of like intuition version of that. Um, but on the other hand, if you need an answer fast, I guess what a lot of brains are adapted to do is compromise on that accuracy, still get fairly accurate, but be much faster. And that's definitely not one of my strengths.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So you have your diagnosis and you're heading back to college. Did you, you know, bring it to the Oxford College Student Disability Services and get started with accommodations? You know, what was your next step once you knew?
SPEAKER_08I think that's a very logical next step for a lot of people. For me personally, most of the accommodations that are sort of at the very least long-standing and more likely to be implemented are academic. And I was generally not struggling in academic spaces. There was a rise in unpredictability because college professors have a much greater sort of influence over what they teach and how they teach compared to my high school teachers. But I I was still pretty I was on solid ground in those classroom spaces. And I actually had a leg up in terms of living situations because, like I mentioned in the opening, uh I was a camper for 10 years at a sleepaway camp that was uh two months out of the year, and then I was a staff member for three more years. And while that can be incredibly daunting, I'm very thankful for the fact that I had been there from a young age because it sort of forced me into proximity with other people. It taught me how to live in spaces with other people. And there were people there who could understand if I was having a difficulty, but ultimately it meant that you can't shy away from conflict, you can't shy away from being uncomfortable. And so it provided me that sort of resilience that maybe not everyone has the opportunity to experience when they're coming into college for the first time and they're like, now I have to share my space with a whole other person.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So in hindsight, are there accommodations you wish were available that were not on offer that would have like persuaded you to go talk to student disability, or was it not on your radar at all?
SPEAKER_08I mean, my biggest area of struggle was really sort of initiating those relationships. And the idea of sort of going to a person or space or service to be like, please put me in contact with new people was almost antithetical because the avoidance, the anxiety was was there. That was the major pressure about initiating those, yeah, those sorts of relationships. Um, however, I'm not the only autistic student on campus, right? So especially as I'm learning from other people what their experiences are, how even when they do everything right and they have a diagnosis, which many of them didn't or didn't have access to, um even those supposedly like nicely in place academic accommodations were not always available to them or not implemented by every professor because, again, they have their sort of autonomy and often will refuse to comply.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And be and that's just the academic stuff. So even people who were trying to get a single because they would not be able to live a functional life for themselves or for other people if they were sharing that space with someone else, it was incredibly difficult. People who needed emotional support, animals or service animals. It was very difficult. So while it was not necessarily the kind of infrastructure that would have uh greatly benefited me, or at least my experiences on that campus, other things about that campus were useful for me. Uh, that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of room to improve.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Um also uh people who have been in this career space a long time tend to have very, you know, pathologizing attitudes. And there is the reality in your situation of, well, I want help initiating relationships, but I'm gonna have to initiate a relationship with someone in order to have them help me help. I'm in a double bind. Um, so it sounds like you stayed involved in the autism advocacy group after you were diagnosed. Did that create like a peer support network at least that helps you feel kind of held in the absence of institutional support?
SPEAKER_08Absolutely. So I think it's it's one thing to sort of in the abstract see people on a screen who might have similar experiences to you. It's an entirely other thing to show up in person once a week and see all these people who you may like pass in the hallway or you may share a class with who you know are seeing the world in a very similar way to you. Or if they're seeing it in a different way, they can enrich and enlighten your perspective. And that was one of my favorite things was sitting down and listening to how other people experienced autism in their own brains, or there was a lot of comorbidity. So a lot of people in Emory's autism advocacy organization had autism and ADHD, or autism and OCD. And so listening to their stories, their experiences, their special interests, we had PowerPoint nights. Um, so having that sort of space where you know you're not going to be sort of surveilled and punished for things that you can't even clock yourself was incredibly valuable to me to know that I wasn't alone. Uh, and I imagine is incredibly valuable to other people just to have that space to breathe.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Um, and speaking of neurodiversity groups on campus that allow people space to breathe, Autism Goes to College is so excited to be collaborating with Bruin Neurodiversity at UCLA for a live podcast taping next month in order of Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month, April. So we love student-led uh efforts for inclusion. Um yeah. Were there surprises in the wake of your autism diagnosis? Things that you didn't expect, changes that you heard that you didn't see coming?
SPEAKER_08Uh yeah, I mean, a lot of it has to do with diagnosis can be very useful as a tool for people in different ways. And one of those ways, more directly, can be acquiring the support that they need. For me, one of the things that it did was allow me to completely recontextualize my past, my present, and my future. Um, to look back on experiences in childhood and be like, that's why I did that. Um, or that's why I was so upset about that. And then in the present, be like, oh, I wasn't just feeling really upset about that for nothing. Next time I'll go and I'll wear earplugs. Next time I'll go and if I want to leave early, I can. Next time, if I don't feel like I can take doing XYZ thing, I just won't. And then I will supplement in some other way. Um, and it allowed me to plan for for the future, to know those things ahead of time and really set myself up for success. Um, and it's also been very funny uh in discussions with my parents, God bless them, uh, because they'd be like, that's why you did that thing when you were little. Um and my brother, who has ADHD, went through a very similar thing. He's still in high school, but he was diagnosed fairly late. He is also realizing that's why I was struggling in this way in school. And this is how I can now sort of take that in stride as I'm preparing for the college experience.
SPEAKER_07Have your parents begun to identify with the neurodivergent paradigm? Because it sounds like your whole family is on the, oh, a little weird to oh, one neurodivergent child, to oh, all our kids are neurodivergent too. No, no normal bananas in this household.
SPEAKER_08So it's very funny because um my my mother and I are, at least at this point in my life, we're very much on the same wavelength. Um, and so she's she's been very much by my side in this. Um, and she also has ADHD. My father, I I've uh been playing this game of, you know, autism is hereditary, right? And he's like, Yeah. And he'll he'll uh be like, but I'll be like, you're the culprit. I'm like, he's like, no, I'm not the culprit, I'm not the culprit. Uh and he'll he'll say or do something, he'll be like, oh, and I'm I'm really stressed when there's this break in my routine. And I'm like, interesting. He's like, no, no, it's not interesting. We all have something going on in in our brains in different ways. Um, but for them, well into their adult lives, sometimes having that diagnosis or that identification can be good because, like in the case of ADHD, it means that my family can get the medication that they need. And sometimes it's not particularly useful. So we the important thing is that we have all learned to support each other even more now that we understand how our brains work a little more and we're able to give each other tips. So now, uh, if we go out somewhere that's loud, I can be like, just so you know, it's gonna be overstimulating. And we all know what that means, and we're all able to plan for it.
SPEAKER_07You graduated at the end of the fall semester in 2024, just a few months ago. What have you been up to since? How's it going?
SPEAKER_08Uh well, there have been sort of two, I guess, projects in my life. Uh, one of them is I am currently employed at a law firm part-time. Uh, and I thank you. Uh in this economy, I think employment is a huge accomplishment. Thank you. Uh, and that's another area that can be really difficult because it's another area that's like sell yourself to all of these people. And even though you just put everything down on your resume perfectly, write all of that again in this entirely new system. Um, yeah, I'm I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here.
SPEAKER_07But no, I I really struggled with interviews. I was not diagnosed at the time as autistic, and uh ultimately the job that I got was was through a neighbor who was able to kind of vouch for me that I wasn't as weird as the first impression that I make, frankly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Um the other project is that my my father and I, we actually have our own podcast uh called EduMication, which is why I have the earphones and the fancy microphone. Uh and we are looking to sort of provide different experiences and perspectives to the world of education. So we've in and we're very much in our fledgling stages, but we are looking to teachers, we're looking to administrators. My father is a school counselor, he was also a teacher. It's very fun, uh, and we're enjoying ourselves. Um, but we also have a lot of connections through camp because a lot of those people at camp uh who can make that time to be upper staff members are teachers because they have the summers off, but also because they have that sort of experience with child management, with yeah uh conflict management and resolution.
SPEAKER_07Um because their vocation is to nurture the potential of children. So now that you've done it um and you know what it's like to navigate college, knowing that you're narrative, Rich, and also not knowing, but just knowing you have some specific needs. What are your tips in hindsight?
SPEAKER_08I think two major things. Uh, but the first is going to sound very obvious, which is there is so much that you can't control, obviously, when you're in this new environment and there are so many people that you won't be able to control. Control what you can. So those routines and structures that you might have relied on from having uh an institution with a more authoritative presence, like in a high school, they're not going to be there anymore. And if you know that ahead of time, you can start working on setting up your own calendar, or you can look ahead of time and see these are the places where I could eat, or these are the places that are within driving distance if you drive. Personally, I have a lot of trouble driving. And so that was something that I needed to know, especially in my first years at Oxford, was what's within shuttle distance and how would I get there? So knowledge is power, information is your friend, but you are entering a space of broader freedoms and independence. And that is going to both be a useful tool for you, and if you let it, it can be very sort of oppressive in its own way. So knowing as much as you can ahead of time about your class schedule, about places that you think might be safe for you, about your options for food, your options for laundry, the sort of day-to-day things, uh, having all of that as close as you can uh to within your sort of sphere of control will then give you the space to adapt to the things that you can't control because then you only have to deal with one or two overwhelming problems as opposed to 10. Um The other thing is there's a balance between comfort and extending yourself or pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. And that's something that can be very difficult to navigate as an anxious person, which I am, or as an autistic person, which I also am. Um but in the beginning, I was, especially on the Atlanta campus, where there's so many more, just because of scale, there's just so much more opportunities, so many more events. I was trying to go to so many different things because I felt like I was missing out, or because I felt like I wasn't pushing myself enough. And at a certain point, I realized there's no point in me doing this. I'm not getting anything out of it. Just because I'm quote unquote supposed to go.
SPEAKER_07You reach your point of diminishing returns.
SPEAKER_08Exactly. Um, but on the other hand, I'm also, I know, an avoidant person. And there are going to be things that if you stick to the if you create that routine or if you challenge yourself to go a little bit outside your comfort zone because you think those returns might actually bring something good into your life, that even though it's hard, building the habit makes it so much easier. So for me, something that I appreciated about starting treatment for social anxiety was that it allowed me to say yes to more things.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And it's also okay to like try something and realize that in hindsight, it's not worth a second go-around.
SPEAKER_08Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's also okay to try something like it and then never want to do it again. So one of the biggest things that I put myself out there for was uh in the, I believe, fall of 2023, I went with my friends to Atlanta Pride. And it was a big deal. There's a lot of people, it's very overstimulating, but I got a lot out of it, and I never want to do it again. I I still very much enjoyed it, but you don't have to go again just because you did it once. You don't have to be part of the club just because you showed up once. Because you're learning about what works for you as a developing adult.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on our podcast. Thank you for having me. And now, as promised, here are ways to see the documentary. The documentary film Autism Goes to College is currently available through many channels, but the easiest way to see it today is to rent it on Vimeo On Demand, which you can access from your Apple TV or most smart TVs by going on the Vimeo On Demand app. You can also find a direct link on our website at www.autismgoes to college.org. The film is also available for educational use and live and hybrid screening events. All the relevant info and links can be found on our website. Thank you so much for listening, following us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and especially for adding your reviews on Apple Podcasts. Our show is specifically for students on the Spectrum Navigating College, and we really appreciate your support for Autism Goes to College. Thanks for listening.