Hello I'm new here

The trouble with Aspergers is there are so many variations, or rather different people are affected to different degrees for different attributes. So rather than being mild, you may not recognise some of the traits you see in others in yourself. But you may have some marked traits you are not able to look at detachedly and recognise.

That possibly undermines the success of Asperger social groups, we don't have much in common in terms of symptoms, let alone interests!

One of the big difficulties for universities when it first became apparent they were recruiting AS students (which they must have been doing for years without knowing it) was there was no template to work with. You can draw up a template of what you need to do for any other disability based on common traits. When the intake of diagnosed AS students began academics were writing guidance papers based on their experiences of ONE student - most not surprisingly were utterly useless.

I remember being so appalled by one University's Guidance Booklet they had sold to other universities that read more like a David Attenborough programme on the lifestyle of a jungle creature - they were treating their one asperger student like a laboratory specimen. I wrote to them in protest and got back a lot of self-righteous indignation from the authors about how they were making progress and I was obviously jealous. In just several years most of these guidelines were redundant. There is no stereotypical aspie.

I guess this process must have happened in schools, further back in time

I'm not sure what to advise when it comes to socialising with other people on the spectrum. Like anything else, it will work some of the time but not at other times.

But you've got a job and you can drive - don't let the socialsation get you down.

The trouble with Aspergers is there are so many variations, or rather different people are affected to different degrees for different attributes. So rather than being mild, you may not recognise some of the traits you see in others in yourself. But you may have some marked traits you are not able to look at detachedly and recognise.

That possibly undermines the success of Asperger social groups, we don't have much in common in terms of symptoms, let alone interests!

One of the big difficulties for universities when it first became apparent they were recruiting AS students (which they must have been doing for years without knowing it) was there was no template to work with. You can draw up a template of what you need to do for any other disability based on common traits. When the intake of diagnosed AS students began academics were writing guidance papers based on their experiences of ONE student - most not surprisingly were utterly useless.

I remember being so appalled by one University's Guidance Booklet they had sold to other universities that read more like a David Attenborough programme on the lifestyle of a jungle creature - they were treating their one asperger student like a laboratory specimen. I wrote to them in protest and got back a lot of self-righteous indignation from the authors about how they were making progress and I was obviously jealous. In just several years most of these guidelines were redundant. There is no stereotypical aspie.

I guess this process must have happened in schools, further back in time

I'm not sure what to advise when it comes to socialising with other people on the spectrum. Like anything else, it will work some of the time but not at other times.

But you've got a job and you can drive - don't let the socialsation get you down.