Being autistic in grad school

I graduated high school two years early. I succeeded in a computer science undergrad program and got my bachelors. I went on to have a successful 15-year career. I applied to and was accepted at a graduate program for library and information science. I’m currently in my first semester. But something is different going through the academic process this time around: I know I’m autistic.

No one identified me as autistic growing up. Looking back, the signs were obvious to me, and to a lot of people around me. But it wasn’t until I was almost finished with my undergrad that someone suggested I be evaluated. I had been struggling academically and socially, having trouble finding my footing without the structure provided by my K-12 education. My GPA was around 2.5, and there was a 50/50 chance that I would fail one of my classes each semester.

Getting diagnosed changed that. I finally had a reason why there were some subjects I could be absorbed so fully into that I would forget to eat or sleep or go to class, while others I couldn’t engage with at all no matter how hard I willed myself to. I had a reason why I had so much difficulty relating to my peers and the way they absorbed information, which seemed so different from how things made sense to me. I could understand myself, had a context in which I could understand how my mind works. I was able to free myself of the expectation that the lecture presentations and study groups and all the ways that non-autistics learn information should also apply to me. I was free to discard those learning strategies that I had tried to hard to emulate without success. I was free to find new strategies that worked for me, for my mind.

And an amazing thing happened. My GPA went from a 2.5 to a 3.8. I stopped failing classes. I was able to better participate in group projects and build friendships with faculty and my peers. So many doors opened to me through this new label. I was able to thrive.

But I need to be clear: the school did not offer me any accommodations related to my diagnosis. Even though it was the student health department and psychology department that had joint diagnosed me, the school did not provide me with extended test time, quiet environments for studying or test taking, or modifications to learning environments or materials. All of the accommodations I requested were denied. I was able to succeed in that undergrad environment not because of the support my diagnosis unlocked, but in spite of it.

In the 15 years since then, I’ve learned a lot about myself and the way my mind works. I’ve found coping strategies for academic, business, and social situations. My toolbox is full. But living in a world that isn’t designed for me, where I constantly have to fight for recognition that I do in fact need accommodations, where my disability is invisible, has left me exhausted. Autistic burnout is a real phenomenon, and I have been mired in it for the last two years.

Choosing to return to academic pursuits is a risk and a challenge. My school of choice has an accessibility office, and I reached out to them even before I’d started my application to see what we could work out. I am situationally mute; sometimes I cannot get words to come out of my mouth. Despite knowing this, my contact at the accessibility office insisted on a phone call to discuss my situation and needs, which I had to handle by using an AAC device. I ended up having a meltdown after the conversation was over because of the stress.

The good news is that I have received some accommodations from the school. I was allowed to use AAC for the audio portion of a video presentation I had to give, and the group projects so far have used text communication. I email my instructors once a week to keep them up to date on the challenges I’m facing and what I’m doing to deal with them.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean the program is easier for me than it is for the other students. The accommodations I have don’t reduce the difficulty of tests or the word count of essays or the pagecounts of reading assignments. I still have to work much harder than my neurotypical peers to reach the same levels of success. The accommodations don’t make things easier; they make things possible. Without them, I wouldn’t just get lower grades, I wouldn’t be able to pursue the program at all.

Even with all the support they’ve given me, I struggle. If I had fewer resources or coping strategies, or if my needs were greater, I’d be unable to do this. From the pre-application contacts through the course material all the way to graduation, universities need to do better.