Well, maybe you could say I have a learning disability if I was forced to learn things the same way neurotypical people do. It’s a good thing that the majority can cram in a lot over a short period of time and can regurgitate what they absorb.
Most people learn best by listening to a teacher and/or reading books. I never considered how much easier it is for others to be educated the typical way or how much less they cared to understand the “whys” of everything. I also had no idea they were multi-tasking while I’d be stuck by whatever happened to be demanding most of my attention at the moment.
Most students take it for granted that they can easily combine listening to the teacher, read what’s being written on the board, write down notes, and follow along in the book. For me, all it would take was something like the smell of bleach down the hall or the sound of a lawn mower outside to cause me to lose track of everything going on in the classroom. Then, if that’s not bad enough, add to it all, a freak’n big clock tick’n nearby!
Time pressure will freeze most aspies’ thought processing in no time! Tests are timed, but what’s maybe worse than that is the way questions are asked on exams! Most questions always stumped me because I craved putting side notes along every one of them with multiple answers to match all my “it depends!”
Here is an analogy: You can see two lakes. Both look alike from the surface, but one is deeper (that’d be Lake Aspie) than the other. Unless you dive in, you’re unaware of this difference. This is why Asperger’s is often referred to as being a “hidden” complex of concurrent things (syndrome). It’s also why aspies are misjudged as much as they are and why they often times struggle getting through school.
