Asperger's and College Life: Great Panel at AANE yesterday

I enjoyed participating in a panel sponsored by the Asperger's Association of New England yesterday in Watertown, near Boston.  Other panel members included parents, two college students, as well as Megan Spencer from Brown University's Counseling Center and Korrine Hertz of Middlesex Community College.  One of the parents, Gina Minks writes a blog worth checking out.

So, in addition to zipping over to Faneuil Hall in Boston with my daughter for Thai noodles, I also listened carefully to what the other panelists had to say about surviving College with Asperger's.  Here are a few critical points I picked up from others:

1. Join Clubs

2. Have a key support person

3. Make use of the College Disability office

4. Use technology (I.M.ing, texting) to keep in touch with each other (Parent and child)

5. Use social coaching

6. Use tutoring services

7. Read the book "Colleges That Change Lives" by Loren Pope to help pick a school

8. Be up-to-date with documentation about your diagnosis

9. Check with your state Rehab. services to explore financial support of college

10. Get a single room if possible

This old blogger wrote in Early 2002 about "The IEP generation growing up" and wanting to go to College.  Well here they are and it is good to see organizations like AANE tackling inherent problems and issues.

Comments

[gminks]

It was so nice to meet you Sunday!

[planet3rry]

now that I look back at my college life with 20-20 vision and see how my AS affected my College Career (although I didn't know it at the time).

I had a core of 5-6 friends that I routinely visited on a daily basis.

The Theatre Club/Fraternity is very understanding about people with social quirks

The Social Fraternity I joined was the new "rag tag" group of guys. This worked well as there were a couple other of my fraternity brothers that would be DX with ASpergers if they haven't already got it.

Being a Disc Jockey on the radio was great. No one to look at and I could pretend to be who ever I wanted to be plus at a college radio... playing what you wanted was much more liberal.

Single room was nice, but having suite mates were good because it was an easy way to get "some" social practice daily. If not, you might result in being a hermit.

Tutoring was good... I just happened to be the tutorer (math, science) as it was a scheduled (i.e routine) social (with 1-2 people) event that was short (1-2 hours) about something that I liked and was confortable for me (math and science).

[Julia]

Thank you so much for that list -- my AS son is a junior in HS and we're just starting to look at which schools would be good for him . . . if you are ever in the Washington, DC area, please let me know! I'd love to hear you speak on this subject :)

[w2r3er]

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