The Autistic Me

As September ended I was involved in what seemed to be a minor traffic accident. I was rear-ended while driving our 18-year-old Jeep Cherokee. Unfortunately, the accident was too much for the Jeep: the frame was bent by the impact. The Jeep was the "real" last Cherokee Classic. Not a Sport. Not cheap decals of the model name. A 4.0L in-line six-cylinder 4-by-4 we took off-road and used for everything. It hauled furniture, cats, trees, bikes, friends, and family. Over the 18 years, it was like a family member. We knew it couldn't last forever, especially since moving to states with salted roads in the winter. But, we wanted it to keep running for another two or three years. Losing the Jeep is weird. I knew how it should sound. I knew how the steering and braking should feel. I could recognize its engine when my wife drove it to and from work. Now, it's sitting in a lot, waiting to be hauled away to an unceremonious ending. It doesn't seem fair, for some...

It is that time of the year when I check the job market with the goal of being employed after the school year ends. The anxiety is accompanied by the self-recrimination for not obtaining a STEM degree to qualify for the jobs I know I could do, including teach in those fields. The disappoint in myself never fades, though it should. I'm a success, by many measures, with a great wife, good (feline) kids, and a nice house. But, I always know I could do more, and could have done more, with my skills. I lacked discipline, I suppose, along with people skills. Given a chance, I am going to fix things… somehow.

From the "Ask a Question" area… My son has Aspergers and he is very bright. However, I think what is difficult is that he has difficulty in Executive Function and I feel this will affect his learning as he grows older. Did you have the difficulty in EF and how did you cope with it? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Executive function (and, therefore, executive dysfunction) refers to one's ability or inability to organize daily routines required to function optimally in relationships, at school, at work, and within any community. When someone lacks impulse control, focus, and the ability to prioritize tasks, that individual suffers from impaired executive function. To describe me as "scattershot" would be generous. Finishing projects requires Herculean efforts, and I admit that more often I fail than succeed when it comes to my to-do list. Projects end up almost done, and I have the boxes of work to prove it. Getting through the day can be a challenge...

A new study seems to support the stereotype that autistic students and scholars are drawn to the STEM disciplines.  Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Participation Among College Students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder , by Wei, Yu, Shattuck, et al, indicates I am not alone in being drawn to the STEM fields. While I love writing, and consider myself a "writer" before most other roles I might have in life, even my writing tends to embrace my "geekhood." I am a geek. When I'm not writing, I'm experimenting with programming tools, new hardware, and reading all I can on websites like Slashdot and Ars Technica . My bookcases reveal my split-personality: books on art theory sit above books on database programming. I tell myself that programming is simply a special form of writing, but few of my colleagues in English or communications would agree. The idea of a programming poet confounds people, especially in an academic world with traditional di...

Skimming this blog, as well as my handwritten journals, I'm reminded that I seem to be stuck in a loop that I keep vowing to escape. For nearly a quarter century, the cycle has repeated. The number of blog and journal entries like this one is maddening. I enjoy writing, so I declare to myself (in writing) that I am going to be a writer (1987, 90, 92, 96, 98, 2004, 06, 10, 11…). To subsidize writing, I turn to teaching — which many writers do. I convinced myself, and my wife certainly hoped, that teaching in a tech-based program at the university level would end the cycle. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's too early to know for certain. I was hired to launch a scientific and technical communication program. Unfortunately, science and technology are a small, tiny, minuscule, microscopic, aspect of what I am teaching. NOTE:  I don't mind teaching writing, and I study the history of philosophy (mainly the philosophers) as something of a hobby. But, what I want to t...

Are you autistic because you're a geek? Or are you a geek because you're autistic? Would you even mention it during an internship interview? I've been asked numerous times if my interest in technology is somehow connected to having an "autistic" brain. However, I'm reasonably certain no one had asked if technology made me autistic. Yet, the question was asked last week. Now, I can't really argue the point too much. I'm a techie or geek or whatever you want to call me. I've loved computers since I first sat down at an Atari 800. Asking a diagnosed autistic programmer about a trend among programmers? I'm not sure I can be objective. Seeking to clarify, the programmer asked me if there was now a somewhat nonchalant, or reckless, impulse to think of all "geeks" as autistic. He described self-diagnosed Aspergers as "trendy" among some of the young programmers he has interviewed in the last year or so. It's as if codin...

Brier Dudley's Blog | Kindle so-so for students, UW study concludes | Seattle Times Newspaper Seven months into the study, more than 60 percent of the students had stopped using their Kindle regularly for academic reading -- and these were computer science students, who are presumably more sympathetic to an electronic book. I'm not surprised that an eReader doesn't replace books. Taking notes and highlighting are part of the reading process that a Kindle or other eReader doesn't easily replicate. I recall what a page looks like, from the graphics to the pattern of paragraphs. On an eReader, I can't always locate where a bit of information is. You can't say it is on "Page X" because the pagination changes with font size and other choices a user can change. Maybe my visual memory would learn to use an eBook? Does anyone else use visual cues the same way? I also use multi-color "Post-It" notes to mark sections of books. They obviously sel...

Me : Why are people so personally rude via e-mail and blog comments? I'm deleting more mail and posts than ever lately.  Friend : What are your blog topics? Me : I maintain websites on economic theory, political rhetoric, technology, autism, creative writing, and philosophy.  Friend : You do realize only creative writing and technology aren't likely to trigger hate mail. Me : It seems Linux is a religion.  Friend : Says the person with an Apple sticker on every vehicle.  Sometimes, it is easy to forget a personal zealotry. I am having a strong reaction to the fact my future employer is an all-Windows campus. Yes, I use Windows sometimes — but I just uninstalled Boot Camp from my Mac and removed the last Windows software.  Turns out, I am a fanatic, too. 

I maintain several blogs, all started as part of a class project some years ago. (See Four Years as an Autism Blogger for the history.) One of the things you have to accept when writing in public forums is that some people will feel compelled to insult and attack an author instead of his or her writings. Also, you have to accept that though you are writing from one perspective (which should be painfully obvious to all readers) someone will be upset that you don't share his or her perspective. These are the "whatever" moments of writing, especially of blogging. I write a monthly column for a regional magazine. The column has nothing to do with autism or special education. I write on technology issues. But, as any technologist will affirm, technology preferences and biases are accompanied by a religious fervor. Armies of zealots, the true believers, will descend on any writer daring to question their beloved operating system, hardware, application, or programming langu...

A simple question as the new year approaches: What path should I take? More importantly, what is best for both my wife and me? I am out of ideas. The past offers lessons of what I should not do, if I pay attention. But what should I do? In general, I'm just annoyed. I feel like the last 20 years have been wasted, professionally. I'm unemployed and overeducated. My wife and our "kids" (the cats) deserve so much better than I've been able to deliver. It seems an inescapable conclusion after 20 years that education is not a field for me, at least not in the humanities. I don't fit politically, philosophically, temperamentally, or in almost any other way within the professions of education. I don't even fit physically or intellectually. I love learning a lot, but that's definitely insufficient in a field dominated more by political views than intellectual curiosity. They say you should learn from the past. There are many years I dislike and will ne...

Increasingly, I am aware of the "communities" to which I don't belong. An overused word in the humanities, "community" is more than a group of people with some minor similarities. A community has to have some manner of unified sense of purpose. I belong to several organizations without any desire to interact with other members or associates. I don't attend any regular meetings of any organization. When I attend conferences, I try to arrive close to when I am scheduled to speak and then depart as soon as possible. Bluntly, people often annoy me. People are cliquish. They want to be around people like themselves, which means I find myself outside most "communities" to which I am expected to relate. When my wife and I first moved, I tried to attend one social gathering of an organization -- but left before the event began. I couldn't tolerate the setting, which was a restaurant with a decidedly political decor. Maybe that doesn't matter to mos...

I spent the last two days working on two versions of my résumé: techie me and teacher me. I feel "incomplete" when I read one or the other, as if I'm not being honest about who I am. The technology résumé is modeled on samples I found online at two executive job sites. It does look nice and I am working on the wording. The special education résumé is going to take a bit more time to refine. Generally, a long curriculum vitae is the standard in higher education; trimming content to two pages was a challenge. As I edited these new career documents, I found minor errors in my full CV, errors that also existed in my online CV. It is frustrating, since my CV has been maintained since the mid 1990s. You would think a document that is updated every year wouldn't have any errors. Somehow, careless mistakes do slip past my eyes. The worst error was a misspelling of "university." The automatic spellcheck in Word should have caught that one...

The Autism Hub is the best guide to autism blogs on the Internet. However, it is primarily a way to track the latest posting and topics on blogs. It is not really meant to discuss the nature of blogging or the technology challenges. To help autism bloggers keep in touch and share ideas, I am helping with the launch of a Facebook group. This group is not for discussions about autism itself, but mainly a way for the autism bloggers to locate each other. Other blogging directories and Web rings have had some issues, so this is an attempt to connect and nothing more. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129009840455825 Autism Bloggers on Facebook

Yesterday, I defended my doctoral dissertation and paid the last $120 in fees to the University of Minnesota. For the cost of tuition, they really should include the dissertation filing, even though the money is technically paid to a private publisher. Here is a portion of the "ETD" report you receive after submitting the final project: Print Date : 05-12-2010 _____________________________________________________ Campus : University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Program : Graduate School Plan : Rhetoric/Sci/Tech Comm Ph D Major Degree Sought : Doctor of Philosophy Plan : Supporting Program Minor Dissertation: Online Pedagogy: Designing Writing Courses for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders Dissertation / Final Research Categories ______________________________________________________ 736 : Speech & Rhetorical Studies 810 : Educational/Instructional Media Design 835 : Special Education 864 : English Education It is complex enoug...

While working on the research for my dissertation, I have read page after page on writing pedagogy asserting that the goal of a university writing course should be to teach students that knowledge is socially constructed and that "truth" is relative to culture and community. The problem with this assertion is that students with autism and similar conditions (my scrambled brain, apparently), are not relativists. Various researchers (Wellcome 2008, Frith 2001) have found that individuals with these conditions are more logical, unaffected by emotional inputs or rhetorical framing. I've found quite a bit of research on this aspect of brain trauma and autism and am including these findings in my dissertation. If a group of people are "wired" to think there is a "truth" -- that knowledge is not created but discovered and then applied creatively -- who are educational theorists to consider such people "immature" or "simple-minded" in s...

Hunting for work is never easy, but for individuals with disabilities the question of "disclosure" arises. Do you tell an employer you are disabled? Do you assume certain group memberships or activities reveal the disability? What if people offering letters of reference mention the disability? Honestly, I don't have any answers for what is or isn't best. Since I use a cane at times, have a mildly noticeable limp, and one arm doesn't swing when I walk, I would have to say that most face-to-face interviews are going to reveal the more obvious (and minor) physical issues. None of them affect writing or technology work. Neurological issues are a tad more complex, as are those things that might be considered "different" about me. My wife says that intelligence is a disability, and I do agree that at some point you are odd because you're rare. I've thought about removing my American Mensa membership from documents, but that should actually be a good th...

This week there is a major national conference on campus, sponsored by the academic department in which I (in theory) reside. However, either I missed the announcements or didn't understand them earlier this academic year. So, while other graduate students and instructors are meeting administrators from across the nation, I will be doing other things. I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative. Honestly, I wasn't sure about my schedule this summer, so I probably would not have volunteered to help at the conference or registered to present a paper. In fact, I did have a medical procedure last week that included minor surgery and a biopsy. I knew that summer would be busy. On the negative side, I do realize networking and making contacts is important. The problem is that I am never comfortable in social settings. I do much better with a formal interview than trying to make a good impression in an unstructured setting. Since I am looking for a professorship next year ...

I appreciate the power of passion -- but I also recognize its limits. I can seem passionate about a few things, but the general reality is that being "excited" and "enthusiastic" is not the same as being passionate. I'm interested in the language arts, visual design, and technology. But, my passion is not the passion of a missionary out to change the world. I might be opinionated, but that's not uncommon among artists. Reading blogs and columns by "autism advocates" sometimes leaves me uneasy. Their passion is angry, an unsettling bitterness pervades some of the writing. Even when I agree with a general claim or viewpoint, I find myself wishing the arguments were made in a more moderate tone. Maybe it is because I think everyone faces some challenges. I don't see any obstacles I face as particularly horrible. Insensitive, rude people bother me, but that's life. Because I realize there are costs to accommodation, treatments, and e...

The thing I want most... sleep. I want at least a routine cycle of sleep, regardless of the hours. Instead, I sleep randomly and it annoys me. I'm exhausted much of the time when I am awake. To sleep... perchance to dream! I spent the last few hours learning about a database tool. I experiment with technology when I cannot sleep. Really, I should be writing or focusing a lot more on other projects. I have a long enough list of projects that nothing new should be allowed. I need a lot more focus when I am awake. The "ADD/ADHD" label enters my mind at these hours. What if the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD was correct years ago? Was I any more or less productive with that label? With the medications? I don't remember. Too many things I do not remember. I want focus. I want to finish projects.

I wish I could educate far more teachers on developmental disorders and brain injuries so we don't keep pushing away some of our most gifted students. Autism spectrum disorders, frontal lobe traumas, and other conditions can cause an individual to struggle with a great many social situations, while also apparently contributing to "savant-like" gifts in other areas. The problem is pedagogical, but educators have adopted strategies for more than 30 years that encourage groups, collaboration, role playing, and other valid techniques that isolate and even alienate those with ASDs, lobe injuries, etc. In the past, we dismissed these students as "super geeks" — and like me, many were placed on "independent study" projects because teachers ran out of options. We really need to find ways to use technology to get past the social barriers, which I compare to being a non-native speaker of English. Probably a bad comparison, but I often feel I do not speak the sa...