Autism Goes To College
Autism Goes To College
EPISODE 44: LIVE FROM UCLA! With special guests from the Bruin Neurodiversity Collective - peer groups, DRC teamwork, and building community on a big campus
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In this special edition ep, Autism Goes to College goes to college with this live event taping recorded at UCLA. Two students, Jenny M. and Danny N. share their stories of navigating from community college to UCLA with our host, Katharine O'Brien. Insights include hacks and how-tos for transfer students, accessing evaluations and accommodations, and how mental health counseling might make all the difference. Bonus: Ryan Neale returns with an update on how it's going as he heads into his junior year, and the latest developments with the student self-advocacy and social space he founded on campus, the Bruin Neurodiversity Collective. Have you heard of body doubling? You probably want to know about this.
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.
SPEAKER_06It takes work. Join 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_05There were a lot of black children on the spectrum who were also deaf. She's not the first one.
SPEAKER_10I researched all of the majors and I eliminated the ones that sounded not interesting to me. So then I changed it to chemical engineering, did to work with 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 sustainability and stuff. So then I changed it to finally environmental engineering.
SPEAKER_00Especially in a college town like OutdoorDash. Like, just go out and get the food. That's good exercise.
SPEAKER_01Hey 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_04At 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_08For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ryan Neal. I'm 21 years old. I'm a junior at UCLA studying communications and disability studies, and I'm a proud autistic ADHD student. When I first got to UCLA, I genuinely had a really difficult time. UCLA wasn't always super supportive of neurodivergent student needs. The supports that were in place were oftentimes inaccessible and information about them wasn't always widely available. And most importantly for me, I didn't feel like there was a strong sense of neurodivergent community and solidarity among the students. At least not one I felt particularly comfortable and easy that was easy to engage in. So at that time in struggle, I connected with members of administration and essentially advocated for myself and others on how UCLA could be better. And that type of advocacy effort sparked what would later become known as the Bruin Neurodiversity Collective, UCLA Neurodiversity Organization that, to my knowledge, is the first and only one that is exclusively neurodivergent student-led and exclusively neurodivergent student members. What's been really cool about BNC for me is that over the course of the almost two years we've been around, the type of advocacy and supports and community that I really craved when I first got to UCLA, myself and other BNC members were able to create. So since we got started, we have an over 170-member Discord server of exclusively neurodivergent students who are able to share stories of experiences in classes, ask each other for help on accommodations and supports, and just generally talk about neurodiversity and autism and their experiences in an open and supportive environment. We've also done a lot of advocacy within administration to make information on accommodations more accessible and to engage campus partners on making sure there are programs and supports specifically tailor-made for neurodivergent students. Along the way, I got in contact with the Autism Goes to College team. And a year ago, I actually had an interview with Catherine where I spoke about the beginning stages of starting BNC and my own experience coming to my own as a neurodivergent student advocate. So, what a treat it is a year later to come back to highlight some other students with incredible stories and to share little updates of what I and BNC have been up to. This event is primarily composed of two student interviews, both of whom are autistic members of BNC. We have Jenny and Danny. We'll have a brief intermission. We'll have a segment where I sit down with Catherine and give a couple updates of where I've been since the last time we had our interview, and then have a brief QA section with participants in the original Autism Goes to College documentary. Without further ado, I pass it off to Catherine for the main portion of the program. Please enjoy, and again, thank you all for coming.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Ryan. All right. As Ryan said, I am Catherine O'Brien. I am so excited to be here during April. I'm just gonna call it Autism Month because we don't have a consensus on whether we're accepting or aware or some other thing. The lesser the better. But quickly, a little bit about me. I'm currently a graduate student at the UC Riverside School of Education. I'm in my mid-30s, so before coming to do my PhD, I was a classroom teacher teaching science and specializing and working with younger autistic students. Now that I'm in graduate school, I teach a course during the summer to teach your ed candidates about autism in the classroom. I also have several lines of inquiry, including supports for autistic students and their teachers in grades K through two, increasing access to diagnosis and a study that will comprise my dissertation about increasing access to diagnosis for college students and centering the experience of autistic college students themselves in understanding our diagnosis needs. Without further ado, I want to welcome to the stage our first guest of the evening, Jennifer Mayaki, who's a departmental scholar in linguistics here at UCLA. She has a bachelor's and she is soon to graduate with her master's degree, pardon me, in linguistics. So congratulations, you're about to be a double Bruin, a double graduate. But your college career did not begin here at UCLA. Like many of the students in the UCs, you transferred from community college. And like many of the students here tonight, your journey was affected by the COVID pandemic. Jennifer is incredibly involved on campus, including creating a Discord server with over a thousand students during the pandemic. She's an academic peer advisor on the Bruin Mental Health Advisory Committee, an executive board member of Hands On, which is the uh UCLA ASL Club, and a coordinator for both UCLA Disabled Student Union and Bruin Neurodiversity Collective. And you are also the president for two peers of the Bruin Linguistics Society. That is so cool. Welcome.
SPEAKER_11It's an honor to be here.
SPEAKER_04All right, I'm so glad to have you. So, as I said in your intro, the road to UCLA wasn't direct and you transferred from community college. I also heard that you took a gap here. So, how did you end up here? Can you talk us through it?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, so actually in high school, I almost didn't graduate. So in high school, I was struggling a lot with my mental health. And at that point in time, I didn't realize uh a lot of the things I was experiencing could be related to being like neurodivergent. And so in high school, I actually was hospitalized twice during my senior year. In addition to being autistic, I also have a very severe OCD. And um, I ended up being hospitalized in my senior year, and then I went to a partial hospitalization program, and I was in a lot of treatment, I missed a lot of school, and I used to be S3A students, and I was taking the honors classes, I was in an international baccalaureate program, and then suddenly I was basically not gonna graduate.
SPEAKER_04That's a lot to take on, especially for somebody who had so many accomplishments. Um, so what happened next, right?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, so um I was able to graduate, but I will say that like my self-esteem was really, really down, especially in high school when I had like kind of tied my identity so much to my grades. Um, and after my hospital experience, which wasn't a good one, I decided to take a gap year. Um, more of like not really like decided to take a gap year. I just didn't have any motivation to really go forward with school. So I took time off and uh kind of rebuild myself and then kind of focused on like doing like daily tasks, like just trying to kind of restart uh life so it do things like I don't know, like baking or hobbies and yeah.
SPEAKER_04So how did you get back on track? Did you always know you wanted to be a UCLA student? Was that always the goal?
SPEAKER_11Oh uh so actually uh funny story, I did not know. Well, I had only heard about UCLA. I knew it was a good school and it was something I had wanted to apply for when I was back in high school. Um, but because of being hospitalized, I actually didn't end up pursuing it. And uh during my gap year, I took time and then applied for community college, and then I decided to transfer and I applied to most of the UCs.
SPEAKER_04Um so how was starting out at community college? Did it work well?
SPEAKER_11Actually, I really loved community college. I really did. I had uh I liked the small classes, I liked the teachers in which they would like work more one-on-one, and like really I feel like they really focused a lot on teaching. And so I really liked that environment. And plus, my community college also had different success centers. They had like one focus on like just language, and they had that's actually where I learned ALCL originally. Yeah, they had a language success center, and all the tutors there were deaf, and my ALSL teachers were also all deaf. And I really, really like enjoyed like the class, and someone who had always like kind of like an like auditory disability, like I I didn't really fully identify as being part of the community at that time, but that's how I kind of got into like ALSL.
SPEAKER_04And it seems like that's been very helpful for you. So you mentioned the success centers at community college being a good thing. What was it like looking for support when you got to UCLA?
SPEAKER_11Uh, I will say that like uh well at my community at college, we had a disability, uh disability program that I was part of. And then uh when I transferred to UCLA, uh it was during the pandemic, so it's a little bit different, but things were very hard to navigate, especially online. But even when we transferred to in-person, I still found it difficult to navigate. It was just like there's so many things out there and so many resources I didn't really know. And I felt like my orientation was a little bit rushed because it was online, it was during the pandemic, it was a lot of recordings, and so I actually didn't really, I wasn't part of CE, which is the disability program um at UCLA when I first started. I didn't register until about like two years ago. Yeah. So basically about half of my time at UCLA, I didn't have accommodations. And then I finally registered and then I had accommodations, but then I was a little bit like, I don't know, I was not used to it. I was like not sure if I wanted to use my accommodations or and uh but yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sidebar about CE. Last year I was at UCLA doing a fellowship for graduate students, and I found the registration process so confusing and intimidating that I simply never did it and just made do with informal accommodations for the entire year. So you're not alone in that. Yeah, but how was the transfer for you academically? Did it go okay?
SPEAKER_11I'd say uh, I mean, to be actually, I so transferring the pandemic, I know that a lot of people struggled in the pandemic. I will say that as someone who's really anxious socially, it actually was nice. Oh, yeah. No, I can see how that would be. Uh, I liked my Zoom classes actually. Uh, I liked the fact that I couldn't see like the other hundred students. Uh, and that I could communicate through the Zoom chat instead of having to like raise my hand and speak in class. And like if I felt like really nervous, I could just like private message the professor to ask my question. So I didn't have to like even put it in like the like the full like class chat. So I actually had like a relatively smooth process given the circumstances of the pandemic.
SPEAKER_04So what about your living arrangements? Um, did you move to campus during the pandemic? And how did that go?
SPEAKER_11Oh, yeah, that was uh so it was confusing. So during the pandemic, we didn't know if we were gonna when we were gonna move back in person or we were gonna stay online for longer because we it was the middle of the pandemic, we didn't know how long this was gonna last. And uh so things were uncertain. I did uh uh plan to move. So I actually like got an apartment by campus, but because we stayed online, I kind of just like would move back and forth between like being at home and being like by the apartment because there's not really a need to be at the apartment. Uh, but I also kind of wanted to live independently, so I was there at the apartment uh and uh I kind of got to know a little about Westwood, but in the pandemic when it was very empty.
SPEAKER_04So I'm hearing that academically Zoom worked really well for you, but you were navigating some anxiety at that time. Did you identify as autistic yet? Was that something you were thinking about?
SPEAKER_11No, I actually had not identified as being autistic at that time. I knew I always felt like a little bit different. I mean, in when I was in elementary school, kids would bully me and they would actually, they'd be like, Oh, like you're mute, you're deaf because you don't respond, or because I was like not really speaking. And then middle school, the teasing still happened, they'd call me like weird or strange, and uh kind of like socially, I would know, like, kind of realized like, oh, they didn't really want to hang out, and kind of happened throughout high school a little bit, and so I kind of already realized that I was like different, but I thought it was because like maybe I'm just like not cool, like maybe I'm not like a cool person. That's why like they don't want to hang out with me or something. I don't know. Yeah, and uh it was really more towards maybe like my senior year of college, in which actually my my uh my boyfriend mentioned that uh he was he also thought he was autistic. Oh, okay. And he had pointed out some traits of mine in which he thought I was also autistic. And at first I was like, me? I was like, huh, like I never really thought about it that much. And I mean, I as I seen like the media and how the media usually portrays autistic people, and I was like, oh like I'm not sure. Uh and but then he would like kind of add on like more traits and like hmm, and okay, so we were slowly starting to understand what he was saying.
SPEAKER_04What was it like? And when did you get that evaluation for autism?
SPEAKER_11I mean, so at the time when my boyfriend had mentioned it, I kind of like had it in the back of my head, but I was like, oh, like, you know, uh not whatever. And um, I was going through mental health treatment still through college, and I was having uh actually a lot of a hard time with depression and anxiety, and I was trying multiple different kinds of medications, a lot of different therapy, and nothing was helping me. I didn't feel like I could relate to my therapist. I feel like my therapist didn't understand me. And um, I was basically, you know, having like one treatment after another, after another, after another, and nothing was working. And my psychiatrist and my therapist were like confused, like, you know, why isn't this working? Sometimes they would like, you know, I've had a therapist say, like, oh, it was like I wasn't trying hard enough. And I had people tell me like I wasn't trying hard enough. And and that kind of of whether I was autistic kind of came back and I was like, Oh, like maybe this is the missing piece. Maybe this is this thing that is like I am just like neurodivergent. Maybe that's why I'm not able to connect with my therapist, maybe that's why I'm like not responding to treatment. And um at first I was diagnosed with OCD and actually came first. Uh, second was autism, and then most recently was ADHD.
SPEAKER_04I see. Okay. And what changed for you when you got those three pieces of information about yourself?
SPEAKER_11I actually it was very hard to get the autism diagnosis or evaluation first. I spent maybe two years trying to get an autism evaluation. Like I was on a wait list for 10 months at the CAN clinic, the USA CAN Clinic. Only for them to tell me that they actually don't take my insurance. And because Kaiser is your primary, you have to work it out with Kaiser. And then so they were like, okay, so we're gonna have cancel your appointments. So they canceled my appointments three days before, and I already, it was a two-day evaluation. I already like took off work and I had arranged to like to like go to the appointment and stuff, and they're like, Nope, canceled. And so then I had to search again for like another year, uh, trying to figure out how to get tested for autism, and it was very expensive and uh eventually found a cheaper option, but it took a very long time. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So it it was a multi-year process while you were a college student. How was your college career going while all that was unfolding? And you were dealing with a lot of what sounds like frustrating setbacks medically?
SPEAKER_11It was really rough. Um, I so my master's program is actually a one-year program. I see. And so it's like a special, like accelerated program. It's like kind of like a plus one program. You get the bachelor's and masters like simultaneously in a way. So I was expected to graduate in a year, but all this medical, like all this like mental health things were all happening in that year. And actually, the first quarter in the first week of class, the fall quarter of my master's year, my grandma ended up in the hospital. And so I was with her in the hospital and then she passed.
SPEAKER_04I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_11I thank you. And um after uh that uh my OCD, um part because of the stress, my OCD symptoms intensified. They were like really bad. I was housebound for like a long time. I had a withdrawal. I've withdrawn like twice, and I at the same time, so I was going through a lot of treatments, so I went through another partial hospitalization program again for five months. Well, partial hospitalization plus IOP was five months.
SPEAKER_04I think so. That was quite a long time that you were off of school. But did you find that helpful, or did you still not have the right supports?
SPEAKER_11Honestly, uh, despite the fact that I did five different outpatient programs, was doing individual therapy weekly, and had done 14 different medications at that time. I also did TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation. I think it was 76 rounds. So, sorry, two rounds, 76 treatments in total. Okay.
SPEAKER_04What did you find that was finally helpful? Because you seem to be doing very well today.
SPEAKER_11Honestly, it was partly getting diagnosed and understanding myself better. So I got the OCD diagnosis, then the autism, and uh, and then later the ADHD, and understanding that I had OCD, I was able to do OCD individual therapy and they do exposure response therapy. And so that actually benefited a little bit. They also changed up on medications a little bit. And so instead of trying more antidepressants, I tried something a little bit different. And then when I got diagnosed with autism, it maybe kind of realized, okay, maybe this is why I'm not connecting with my therapists, maybe this is why my therapists don't understand me. Maybe they don't understand that I can like, you know, mask. And so when I'm like really depressed and I say it with a smile, I don't necessarily mean that like I'm not like lying to you. I'm just like, I just kind of learned to pick up these behaviors where I just like very commonly and almost always mask.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and it was causing misunderstandings with your therapists who were trying to use your affects as a clue to how you were doing, and it wasn't working.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then uh, and then the final thing that actually did work was getting diagnosed with ADHD. Oh uh, so I actually got diagnosed a month ago, so it's actually very recent. Oh wow, okay. How's it going? Actually, it's going really well. Great. So I actually got ADHD meds a month ago. And something about ADHD is that my ADHD was I had responded a little bit to the OCD medication, but not as much. And um, my OCD therapist has suggested that I might have ADHD because part of my intrusive thoughts, because OCD has like intrusive thoughts, then you do get anxious, then you do compulsions. And um, so my intrusive thoughts were like they were just like happening like like constant all the time. So I had really Like um, and he was like, that's kind of like if they were happening so quickly, it was like my my mind was had a bunch of jump ropes. I was like, like instead of double touch, I was like playing like like jump ropes with like 10 different jump ropes, and then um that's how I kind of felt like I was like he kind of suggested that I'm gonna have an ADHD, yeah, and then um I was like, okay, time to look for an evaluation, and then that was also difficult. But eventually I did get evaluated. They did um say I had an ADHD, and then with that I was able to get medication for my ADHD, and actually that almost made all the intrusive thoughts go away. And that was like a big change. Like I like, I've never been happier, honestly, than the last two months. You know, after trying like 15 different medications before that, it was such a big change and something I wish I had gotten earlier because I, you know, I had spent at that point 10 years in mental health treatment with nothing that had helped, nothing and almost like nothing in the slightest, no therapy, no like outpatient program, no inpatient program, no psychiatry, nothing had helped. And so it was really just like getting like I got the correct meds, I got different kinds of therapy. And also in my therapy, now that I understood I was neurodivergent, I could understand why certain things didn't work for me, why maybe like I would communicate a little bit differently and I could explain myself a little bit better. I had like the language that I could use to kind of explain.
SPEAKER_04That's that's wonderful. And I I have to salute your persistence. The things you described here are not uncommon, but the fact that you are on track to complete your master's despite them is just a testament to who you are as a person. So you've had tremendous success here academically in particular, and in terms of taking on leadership roles on campus as well. Now that you're almost done, what advice do you have for students who might be earlier in the process?
SPEAKER_11I would say community, finding community has been like in addition to the medication, um, I actually community was has been a huge help because even when during times when it was really like really rough, like even when the meds weren't working, even when the therapy wasn't working, community really helped in terms of getting support, like mutual support from people that actually understand you. And that's also one of the reasons why, you know, I didn't start identifying as being autistic, because I can relate to other autistic people. And then I could relate to other people that had OCD and ADHD, and then I could talk to them and be like, oh my God, you struggle with this too. We have the exact same like story or the same similar story. And that was so like it feels so warm and so empowering to be like, oh my God, like we have the same exact thing. And it was, it was like, it's so wonderful. Like I love being part of Bernard University Collective B and C. I love being part of the stable student union. Um, like I just like honestly love it so much because I just like love that kind of community. And it's something that I didn't have at all. Like all these years, I didn't have anything. Like I didn't really meet anyone who was openly autistic, never met someone else who had also had OCD or anyone like so, like I just didn't have people to talk to. And I I really it was just community that like helped bridge the like bridge the gaps where maybe medication and therapy wasn't helping. And I'm a little glad that like therapy medication is helping now, but the community was really such like a huge support um throughout all this time and still now. And um, yeah, so I mean, even for like neurotypical people, uh, community can be such a big help in terms of like finding your community here at UCLA or any school or any college.
SPEAKER_04Wonderful. Thank you, Jennifer. Um, I'm gonna take back the mic now and we'll pass it to the architect of some of the community that has been so helpful for you, Ryan, to hear a little update about how he's doing. So, as Ryan promised you guys earlier, you're gonna hear from him with an update about everything that's gone down since he was on the podcast last year. Ryan, thank you for being instrumental in pulling this event together, for hosting, and for joining me here for the update. So let's start with the academics. How's it going? Working towards your major.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's it's it's going pretty good. Um I think since we've spoken, I've started most of my upper division classes.
SPEAKER_03Fabulous.
SPEAKER_08And what's weird is I've done better in my upper divs than my lower divs, which is kind of the opposite of how things are supposed to go.
SPEAKER_04Weird for typical, typically developing students, not weird for autistic students. Almost everybody I talk to says this.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Because it's because our passion makes us more effective as students. When we are bored and we do not care, we do not perform particularly well.
SPEAKER_08Absolutely. And I also think I just learned a lot more about like how my executive functioning works. Like I'm always gonna have executive functioning challenges, but like in my freshman year, I couldn't sit down and pay attention to doing readings. This was actually before I got an ADHD diagnosis, which like Jenny really changed my life and experiences. But I also didn't have a lot of crucial executive functioning skills. And it took three years and some tutoring and body doubling executive functioning support for me to kind of start to learn and internalize those skills and just become a much better student. So that's been like really helpful.
SPEAKER_04So, what are the supports that are helping now? What are you doing that's working?
SPEAKER_08I think the the biggest thing that's really helped has been, I think, like I said before, having a body double.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_08So, body doubling for those of you who don't know, it's an experience of basically having someone physically or like I suppose digitally, but be present with you and be working alongside of you in a way that creates accountability, especially for a deadline. So, because of my executive functioning challenges, if I have an assignment or task that's got kind of out in the future, let's say I have an essay that's due in a week and it's five pages, it's gonna be really hard for me to kind of generate the desperation it takes for me to do it until it's right up against the deadline. But if I have two essays due the same day, then it's like, what am I supposed to do?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you have you can't do them both at the last minute, the last minute's the same minute. So what are you the what is the body double do?
SPEAKER_08So what the body double does is if my essays do on like Sunday, I'll schedule an appointment with my body double for Thursday. We'll have one or two hours scheduled on the docket. And I'm and because I'm there, I'm accountable for their time and my time, and and like sometimes the amount that we'd pay to have that person present, it would create a very strong sense of accountability for me to sit through and get the work done. So, because of that, by the time Thursday night was done, I'd actually have a draft of my essay that I never would have without the body double. And what's been cool about that is over time, like this process mostly started for me in sophomore year. By the time of like winter and spring quarter, I've started to be able to do that on my own without needing a body double to be present, which I think is really cool because it's shown that I've been able to internalize some of these skills over time. And it shows it's like your like level of quote unquote functioning, it's it's not fixed. That doesn't mean that this movie doesn't exist. Yeah, the challenge doesn't exist, but you can get better at things and develop skills with support.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I particularly because I I hear that you're having to pay for it, that this is not an accommodation that is funded by UCLA. How many hours a week are you using your body double?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so yeah, like you said, this this is an accommodation that is for me hasn't been paid for by UCLA, but it's it's only like one to two hours a week, maybe more during finals week. What'll often be is like an hour, half hour like kind of consultation ahead of the week to like map out all my assignments and tasks. Like, especially now I'm part of clubs, I'm running BNC and net doing all this neurodiversity advocacy. Like my schedule is a nightmare. And then like one hour later in the week for whatever assignment I have. But body doubling isn't something that you need to necessarily pay a person for. At BNC, we already have like BNC sponsored body doubling sessions with our own students and kind of the community offering as that support. But we've also been in conversation with some folks at UCLA on seeing if that type of body doubling support or executive functioning support program could be offered by like academic counseling or student mentor services.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So how is that advocacy process going with the uh university administration? Have you have you made some headway? I know you already were successful in founding an organization, but has it continued to go well?
SPEAKER_08Yes, it 100% has. I think a big part of that's been thanks to the RISE Center, which has partnered with us on this event. They're a mental health organization at UCLA. Um, and they've been partnered with us on this thing called Net, which is the Neurodiversity Empowerment Team, which is kind of the administration side of neurodiversity advocacy that BNC was uh kind of an integral part of helping move forward. And we've had a lot of net meetings and meetings with different campus partners over the last year or so, with uh CAE that offers accommodations with the mental health service, with residential life, academic counseling, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_04Oh, great. So, really all angles of the student experience.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're we're still in the early stages of really working on making those changes. Like right now, a lot of it's conversations, but we've already been able to advocate for improving access to mental health support. There's the the website and intake process on the website.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Neurodivergent students and all students have said it's overcomplicated and difficult to navigate. And we've had BNC's had some meetings with the mental health team, and they've been able to use some of those information to recommend changes to those services. So it's yeah, it's kind of a small, humble change, but every little bit helps.
SPEAKER_04Just to wrap it up, can you give us a snapshot of how things are going at Bruin Neurodiversity Collective? Is membership growing? How's it going?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, um, it's going really well. I think this these last two quarters, especially, we've had really good turnout at our events, usually between 10 and 15, which for a group of people that tend to have executive functioning challenges, including myself, that's that's no small feat. Um, our our Discord server, which is kind of the main community uh-based server we've we've gained. Uh, I think at least like 75 months since we've last spoken.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And like maybe third, like 30 or so who are actively using it in a given month.
SPEAKER_04That's fabulous.
SPEAKER_08And this is without having done any real, like proper advertising, especially to freshmen, because again, executive function.
SPEAKER_04I was gonna say, is it the executive function, perhaps? But you you know, you know. Yeah. Okay, that is great to hear. So congratulations, Ryan, and congratulations, BNC members in the audience. All right. I'm with Danny Wen, a third-year UCLA student. He is majoring in neuroscience, and his major choice is actually a part of his story. So we'll get right to the conversation to hear about how Danny ended up in neuroscience. Thank you for being here and for sharing your story.
SPEAKER_09So glad to be here.
SPEAKER_04I have heard through the grapevine that you came in as a psych major, but now are in neuroscience. How did you slide from psych to neuroscience?
SPEAKER_09So I was an ABA therapist, which to many of you guys is uh is a um traumatic thing to say.
SPEAKER_04It's an activating statement, perhaps.
SPEAKER_09So I kind of had these experiences with psychology and kind of I felt this antagonizing sense that uh in psychology, at least in the in the practical clinical setting, we tend to over-categorize uh people's emotions and individual experiences, and that kind of like reduces them, and then also they're subjugated to miscategorization. And I didn't really appreciate this top-down kind of thinking of people or view of people, because I think people are so much more complex than that, especially within the uh the mental health field or world.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, um, a trauma-informed perspective tells us that likely those things did not occur in a vacuum. Yeah, okay. So so you switch to neuroscience. Has that felt less uh reductive for you?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, uh I appreciate seeing things, parsing things from the individual biological perspective because it's hard, you can't really discriminate a neuron and you can't really misunderstand a neuron as you would in an ABA setting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I can see how just from my understanding of autistic learning styles, the bottom-up way of understanding the brain might be just more intuitive and also more true. So rewinding a bit, did you always aspire to UCLA or how did you choose this school?
SPEAKER_09Well, I I'm from the Bay, and the two schools that took me were Berkeley and UCLA, obviously. I did not like the Bay Area, so I wanted to go as far as I could from the Bay Area.
SPEAKER_04Valid.
SPEAKER_09And well, there's only one other option, so that's why I'm here.
SPEAKER_04Did you I'm I'm processing because I feel like you alleged that there are two places in the world, San Francisco and Los Angeles. And I'm from the third place in the world, Boston, which is actually heaven. Anyway, um, so but so you chose UCLA because it wasn't in the Bay Area. And did you begin your college career here?
SPEAKER_09No, I I began in the Bay Area. I was uh I was a uh community college student, just like Jennifer. Yeah, and uh kind of was there for three and a half years, fortunately.
SPEAKER_04Got it. And how was community college?
SPEAKER_09The first two years were uh fine because it was the pandemic had to interact with anyone, but actually I overall I actually really liked my community college experience just because smaller classrooms and you get a one-on-one kind of relationship with your professors and they kind of see who who you are as a person. You aren't a number, and they kind of see your circumstances. So even before my understanding with my experience with neurodiversity, uh, they kind of saw me as a person and kind of understood my challenges, and so that definitely helped navigate my academics.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and for the podcast listeners at home who cannot hear Danny's face, the face he made when I asked him about community college was like a half smile, half frown emoji. Yeah, so you were at community college primarily during the pandemic. Was that when you were working as an ABA therapist?
SPEAKER_09That was so ABA therapy was after pandemic.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I see. Cool. So how did that experience working in the ABA space go for you? Was it a job that you found you were good at? Did you like it? You can admit that if you did, this is a safe space.
SPEAKER_09Well, I was underpaid, first of all. But uh I was providing therapy to kids on the spectrum, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_09Um, and very early on, I can kind of sense this qualm I had with uh the nature of the work I was doing, specifically because of the way that uh their behaviors were approached. There was kind of like a set norm of what was expected of behavior, and anything that deviated from that behavior was more often than not pathologized. For example, one of my kids, my my favorite kid, if I can add, he was he had oppositional defiant disorder. And uh first of all, I don't think this exists, but secondly, the nature of how this was diagnosed was I very much disagree with because I believe that he had a past, well, he did have a past of many, many ABA therapists, and over the course of this ABA therapy, he became more and more oppositionally defiant. And if you just took a minute to kind of just uh listen and understand him and and actually see him as a person, a six-year-old boy, you would see that he doesn't have oppositional defiant disorder anymore, he just has a history of not being listened to, and it's just a very human response to uh feeling misheard for such a long time, and especially when you have a uh challenges with uh communication, then of course this will present itself in ways that may seem maladaptive and um easy to be pathologized.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I see. And so what from one perspective, this is a child with the label ODD, and from another perspective, this is a child who's traumatized and rightfully doesn't trust the relational partners and the therapist because the therapists are manipulating his behavior. I got that. So when you were working in ABA, did you understand yourself to be a neurodivergent yet?
SPEAKER_12No.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So how did that come about from working with autistic people to becoming autistic people?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that's that's something I'm still navigating right now. I mean, I was only diagnosed a month ago.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_09So I don't really have like a chronology of like, you know, yeah, me finally coming to terms of what it means to be autistic because I barely know that I'm autistic.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So it's a well welcome. Your uh certificate is in the mail. Um so with all that in mind, you're here at UCLA now studying neuroscience. How's the transfer living situation? Did you move to campus when you came to the LA area?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, so my first mistake transferring here was uh electing to live in an eight-person uh that's a lot of person apartment. And it just it was a big adjustment. This is the first time I was living with other people.
SPEAKER_04Not one other person, but seven other people I can see really multiplying the potential for roommate conflict, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Um, are you still or was that last year? And are you still living in an eight-man suite?
SPEAKER_09Definitely not. So last quarter, um, I actually experienced a whole lot of well, my roommates didn't maybe appreciate my differences, or maybe they kind of sensed that something was a little bit off about me um socially in the way that I communicated um kind of my ideas and stuff like that. And this kind of led to like some like a lot of bullying in my apartment. And uh it got to a point where I was kind of sick of it. So I just actually last quarter, like there was a time when I actually when I actually stayed at Powell Library for like a certain amount of time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you kind of moved in to avoid the the drama from the roommates.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that was beautiful, I hear you. You know, it went yeah you're making it sound horrible, but it wasn't that it was no, I I I mean not bad.
SPEAKER_03I don't I I would not judge um they have nice, nice facilities.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I've used them all. Um but current but current since then I'm so grateful to have friends and support within my circle, and we managed to uh move to a different place, and now I'm off campus.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Do you have fewer people that you're sharing space with now?
SPEAKER_09Yes, and I'm also living with my one of my closest friends. Also, um, one thing. It's how I actually encountered the DNC. So while I was at Powell Library, um I would frequently kind of wander campus to kind of find places where I can sit down and not appear to be living in the library, not appear to be living in the library, wearing the same thing for three days, um uh and kind of just find that safe place. I eventually encountered Rice Center, you know, which I thought was just the basement somewhere, but actually it turns out well, it is a basement.
SPEAKER_04No, it's it is in the basement, that's true.
SPEAKER_09But it turns out to be just this amazing lively community. And one day I was just kind of sitting in the corner and um I encounter Ryan and and um Lauren and Etel, and uh I just hear them over or I overheard them talking of them talking shit about ABA therapy.
SPEAKER_04And so naturally I came in because um He overheard them analyzing the pros and cons of ABA therapy.
SPEAKER_09And so naturally I uh I joined the conversation and I learned about the BNC and the very next week I joined the club and I've been a member since then.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Okay. And so it sounds like that happened before you got your diagnosis last month. Was there like a pathway from joining BNC and getting linked up with those folks to getting your diagnostic appointment?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_09So during last quarter, I was referred to CAPS to kind of um figure out my situation. And they, you know, as you know, CAPS is a therapy service at UCLA. And we kind of talked about my therapist, it is so great. Um, she began probing about, you know, my childhood and how I grew up and how I saw the world, and she was very curious about me. And for the first time, I finally began to feel that I was being seen in context. And after multiple sessions. recorder she kind of she kind of led with the conclusion and with the psychosis that I had autism yeah I see and you've had a month to process you're continuing to you know do your major is it feeling different now that you know you're autistic knowing that I am autistic I I find it to be a very experiential thing I don't see it as like a thing to be pathologized um and when you begin to see things outside the scope of being you know this clinical thing you stop seeing yourself as a set of symptoms and you begin to see yourself as more so a set of experiences and things that are not okay with you and are okay with you and this presented itself as me learning about overstimulation which I previously had framed as a symptom of some illness that I must have had but now I just actually see it as my body telling me that you know I like certain things and I'm okay with being in certain situations and I don't like being in certain situations.
SPEAKER_04Yeah okay and so you're able to take steps now um to combat the overstimulation and to to manage the situations that are better and maybe to some degree avoid the situations that are hardest. Okay. So that's all fascinating and you were able to get your diagnosis at CAPS.
SPEAKER_09Uh yes officially I would have to go off campus but the therap therapist at CAPS provisionally diagnose me with autosy.
SPEAKER_04It's great to know that there are multiple routes to getting that information about yourself because increasing access is critical and it sounds like you've been able to take some good steps in terms of your experiential identification since then. Did the diagnosis come as a surprise to you having worked with autistic kids?
SPEAKER_09No and that's because um my therapist kind of began to drop hints that she suspected I was neurodivergent. I see I guess it became obvious when she started referring me to an autistic social brain just before she diagnosed when she uh formally diagnosed me um it was not a surprise.
SPEAKER_04Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks Danny so that's it for our show tonight. Thank you so much to everybody who joined us here at uh UCLA and the Champkin Theater. Thank you for listening to our podcast. Please give us a review. I would like to give a very special thank you to Ryan of the Bruin Neurodiversity Collective to Nadine Punyone of the Rise Center, which has been talked about with such love by the students here UCLA RISE is doing great work. To Yesiman Valorian of the Tarjan Center, a co-sponsor of this talk tonight, um Spencer Scruggs of the UCLA Center for Accessible Education. And all of the team members here at UCLA who helped make this happen including our team of ASL interpreters. The executive producer of Autism Goes to College is our own Dr. Jan Blatcher. The director of this project in tonight's show is Mr. Eric Linthorst Jesus Alvarado is our producer and Jody Becker is the senior producer and editor of Autism Goes to College. I'm Catherine O'Brien your host visit our socials on TikTok, YouTube and Insta to hear bonus content including candid backstage QA with our guests and some of the stars of the film Autism Goes to College 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 tocollegeorg. 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