Hey all I literally just registered to find somewhere to rant. I'm sorry if this violates any community rules.
TL,DR; Autism ruins your scientific careers.
A little bit of background - I was diagnosed at 18ish as ASD level 1 in the US and unofficially diagnosed with Asperger's in another country. I have a long-term interest of biology and chemistry that I would spend 2hr commuting to get the tutoring session when I was a middle school kid, while couldn't sit down for more than 20 mins during the class I didn't like plus a tons of other behavioral problems.
Then I got in into some prestigious college as a biochem major, and the biggest problem was I DONT KNOW what the exam was asking about. I tried so hard to memorize and wrote down everything just hope I might have the correct answer that looked "correct" besides of numerous issues like executive functions and mood disorders... I graduated with a really mediocre (terrible for grad school applicants)grade yet... I was delusional enough to apply for PhD programs and rejected everywhere, except one school decided to take my money and put me into a Master's program.
In this program what I saw was a bunch of PhD students that started working in the research lab since Sophomore/freshmen, knows how to connect with the professors (while I almost couldn't find anyone to write me a recommendation letter because I didn't know what I should say to those profs!), and of course a 4.0 GPA. I was shocked. Someone was doing research at the age which I was trying hard to not banging my head against the wall. Wow.
I did mostly well in my thesis based Master's. I came up with new hypothesis, proved it, and got good data, currently working with senior PhD student to publish a paper as co-first author. Besides of the fact that my PI told me so many time I have to talk to lab mates, talk to the professors, participate more, to the point she worried that I was bullied. "just wonder how do you usually interacts with people" (sic). it's always about something something socializing with others yada yada. People in our lab has offered to train me a little bit about how to behave during conferences/symposiums/interviews, but I don't know should I be happy that a lot of people want to help me improve my skills or I'm so frustrated that I'm obviously "different".
I'm applying PhD this year, not surprisingly, I doomed another interview; none of my previous interviews were good. And my mediocre grade plus the "lack of motivation"(I just don't know how people make this up) doesn't look good. Academia is never the place you can focus on your research only; it requires tons of socialization outside of the labs.
It sucks. Almost 60% of my life struggle comes from autism, and push me away from what I love to do.