This guest post is by Ayden Costello, a young man on the autism spectrum who was diagnosed with autism at 17 years of age and attends Texas A&M University. Ayden is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4, and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, was released on March 29, 2022, on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
Ever since I was small, my parents knew something was present that made me unique and different from the rest of my siblings. But, due to how technology was at the time, they couldn’t immediately identify the reason until they took me to the doctor. At first, My parents believed that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, but the doctor stated that it was ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I was only three years old when I was given the ADD diagnosis; it wasn’t until fourteen years later that we tried again for another diagnosis, and I was officially diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.
When I was 17 years old and diagnosed with Asperger’s, the primary emotion I felt was clarity about my different behavior. Unlike my siblings, I’m usually quiet and anti-social, which is why I don’t have that many friends, and most of the friends I DO have traditionally started as only friends of my siblings. After my diagnosis, however, I feel that the knowledge that I’m on the Spectrum hasn’t changed me as a person.
I have been the same person, and the diagnosis does not change who I am. I have not experienced any hardships or struggles with having Autism. However, it may have been a struggle for other people. For example, some teachers found it hard to understand how I moved or thought. I knew my brain worked differently, but I was unaware of how different it functioned compared to others. Teachers did not understand how or why my brain worked differently; looking back, they may have been a little impatient with me; this was made clear to me when I entered my first year in high school. I was in Honors English and had no idea how different the comparison between Honors English is to a regular English class. Not understanding this proved to be a challenge for me. Some of the obstacles were in projects, and the teacher assumed I could not focus on the details as expected. Although I would get As and Bs in my Freshman English class, I could not continue in Honors English without the teacher’s recommendation. However, I was able to continue Honors Spanish for the rest of my high school career. I was able to do this by relying on the skills I had learned during my first year.
Later in my senior year, my parents and I were informed that Texas A&M had programs made exclusively for soon-to-be students with disabilities. So naturally, after my diagnosis, we thought it best to take advantage of such an opportunity. So, last summer, I participated in an event called the WACO Project, which was made to help A&M students on the Spectrum adjust to college life. I was pretty intrigued by the other students around me because that was the first time I had encountered others on the Spectrum like me. I am currently a sophomore at Texas A&M University, and despite my being on the Spectrum, I feel like I can endure college life with my family by my side.
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, Tiktok, Youtube & Instagram.
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum. I started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
