Diary of an Autistic Boy

Ripples of Change

I wrote about something similar before about the importance of routine. However, in this chapter I will be focusing on the reasons that I believe affect me the most when it comes to little Ripples in my standardised way of living.

In most people routine is something that is important in how they live their lives however in people who are on the Autistic spectrum they may have the importance of routine magnified up until the point they struggle to cope if their routine is disrupted or changed without prior knowledge of it going to occur. As I said in my previous chapter on the topic (Re: the importance of routine) on most days I am participating in an activity such as college, work, meeting people, etc. I will consciously or subconsciously plan out my day from that point onwards.

It began in truth by accident, I was walking to school in the first week of year 9 or year 10, I can't remember, and in an effort to memorise my timetable for the year just read out in my head what lessons I had that year. Over the course of the next few days I continued doing so until I did it out of habit and more in a way to calm myself before going into school than any other reason. It also allowed me to figure out any lessons I may have forgotten and ask someone before I got there and figure them out. This then carried on into something that I continued expanding on so instead of reciting what lessons I had that day I would recite everything I knew I had that day including things happening after/outside of school. At this point however, it became something that my day going smoothly became dependent on.

With the transition to college being a lot harder and more tenuous than I had originally thought it would be being able to plan out every day was not possible. I will be using the example of when I went to enrol as my story of choice.

The day began as any other day did at that point. It was the middle of the summer holidays and I had finished school around 2½ months before. It started off pretty normally. My dad went of with my 2 oldest sisters to work at the shop and I went downstairs to go on my Xbox before any of the others was awake. I then went on it for maybe half an hour to an hour before my everyone was awake and them went and made breakfast for them. I then went to my room for a while on my phone whilst my brother and sisters where watching TV downstairs. I then got ready and helped my mum get my siblings ready to go to my college of choice to enrol. This particular college future was up in the air and was me and my mum weren't sure whether or not I would go there even if I was accepted because of that. This was because if the college closed then I would have to do one of two things. Move to another college and carry on the same courses I did, which would be fine but the college I was moving to was probably going to be a further distance away, or have to redo a year at a new college closer and basically just waste a year. Basically, before I even had the interview it was looking pretty bleak.

When we actually got to the college campus to enrol the lack of staff at the entrance should have been enough warning for how this would pan out. When we arrived I first when and signed in and filled out the necessary paperwork and then waited for my slot for the interview. When my slot finally came up I went and started it. The guy was extremely pushy and trying to push me into options that I did not want to do. Namely making me chose another subject over history. The one subject I was set on doing. This made me annoyed and even more so because he was trying to make me pick up a subject that I did not want to do at all and one in which I had absolutely 0 interest in. I then asked if I could go and get my mum because quite frankly the person conducting the interview was overwhelming me with what he thought I should do instead of actually listening to what I was saying I wanted to do. (I know that sounds pretty childish and self-centred but he was effectively saying no you can't do this because you bad at it, I had got a 6 or B in said subject so make of that what you will) when my mum came in to the interview he finally realised what I had been trying to say for the entirety f the interview before that. That if the college did not offer what I wanted then I would just walk out and choose another one. Which is what I did.

I then dropped my little brother and sisters of at my grandparent's house with my mum as we went to the other college. This was a college that I had thought about going to and even though I never put a no. 2 on my list this was the closest that there was to it. It was a college that although big managed to spread out through different buildings and so was a lot more manageable than others. I was fortunately able to enrol into the college doing history, Psychology and Chemistry however I will be dropping chemistry going into second year and picking up graphic design, which I probably should have done to begin with however had a bad experience at high school basically doing a Product design course instead of graphics. I also was able to do an extra-curricular football which was something that I probably would not have been able to do at the other college as it ended up having a lot fewer people enrolling in it and closing after one year.

This made my first year at college a lot more difficult than it would have been as I had been all set on going to a specific college and instead ended up going to a completely different one and having my plan get flipped on its head. This had a lot of ripples into everything as I had had none of the pre-transition prep for the other college and had not met any of the teachers or people going to that college and had very little idea of the layout and atmosphere of the college. This made it a lot harder to do the work and focus in the first few weeks and made the entire experience which probably would have been overwhelming inn the first place even harder and more difficult to deal with.

This is one big example of how change can affect me however even small things such as something being cancelled made it a lot harder and more difficult to deal with any thing else throughout that day. For example, if a lesson got cancelled then I may struggle more than usual with the crowd on the bus home from college. I like to think of this as a sort of error/failure tolerance that I have. I can deal with 1 or 2 small things but then once another thing that I can normally deal with comes up then I can't manage to deal with said thing as my brain has already had some sort of overload. This may be as small as just needing some time on my own or may be as big to a large meltdown once I'm home. This makes multiple changes in a short space of time even worse and even harder to deal with. For example, if the bus was late in the morning then a lesson got cancelled and then football got cancelled all on the same day, it would be highly likely that a meltdown would ensue. However, it may just be that during the space of a week I had a couple of lessons cancelled and then on a weekend had some sort of meeting or something cancelled then I would be unable to cope and would probably have a big meltdown or have a few days afterwards in which I may be extremely irritable and be unable to do much social interactions.

Although I do not write this for all People on the Autistic spectrum I hope that this gives you perspective on the mind of an autistic person. If I can change the way that one person thinks of autistic people or help and change the way that they treat them then for me that is enough.