This guest post is by Eli Robinson, a young man who is diagnosed with autism and plans to attend The University of Central Florida. Eli is applying for the Spring 2024 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.
Growing up, I felt mostly the same as all the other kids around me, and didn’t feel any different in the slightest. I don’t remember much from those early years, aside from my mother telling me about my Autism and how it would affect me as I grew older. She said things along the lines of how I learn things differently than others, and that “my brain just works differently”, which is mostly true, or at least it feels like it for the most part. Sometimes I’ll forget I even have Autism, as I feel as though it doesn’t affect me all that much. Not to say that it doesn’t though, as it can be quite evident at times. I’m not all too good at remembering things, and as such will need reminders from time to time, although I am currently working on improving that aspect of myself.
Most of my earlier years in school and with at-home life were fairly simple, as I was helped out by family and teachers alike as they knew that I was “different” from other children, and they tried their best to help me as I went along and tried to learn what was being taught to me both at home and at school. I would later on be told that I couldn’t use my Autism as an excuse for anything, and as harsh as that might seem to a kid who, at the time, didn’t even fully comprehend what Autism is, it’s true. This goes for anyone with any type of disability. There’s no need to use it as an excuse for anything, not because your friends and family are worried you’ll use it to get out of troublesome situations, but because truthfully, you are just as capable as everyone else out there in the world, you just handle life a bit differently, everyone does, as everyone has their own struggles, whether that be from a mental disability or something in their personal life.
Later on in my intermediate to Middle School years, the reality of my Autism was made a bit more clear. This is about the time where I had some trouble socializing with new kids and thus making new friends. Partly because I had just moved to a new school district in the state, and partly, again, because I had Autism, which affected how I had interacted with many people in my life. When it came to people I knew well, either I would choose not to socialize or I would talk for long periods of time, although usually because I was actually interested in the conversation topic at hand. In my Highschool years, it was made very evident that even with Autism, I was going to be treated the same as all other students, aside from a few exceptions due to my IEP which allowed me some Accommodations such as being able to take a short break if needed, being able to use a calculator when I otherwise would not be allowed to, or having extra time on tests and various assignments.
My first year of highschool was not the greatest when compared to the years I would later have, with all my grades ending up as a D or a C. If I were to guess, it would be a combination of both the difference in teaching and class schedules due to Covid being at its peak around the time, and the fact that I just hadn’t fully adjusted to High School yet, and again with how much Covid had changed that year, it wasn’t helping me in the slightest. My next years in High School, I would see better grades, ending in usually B’s or C’s for the most part. It may have taken me a whole year to adjust due to a whole lot of different factors, but once I did, I was doing pretty well, for my standards at least. I know that moving forward into College and/or University Life will be quite different for me, and like all my other years of having to go up into more higher-level schools, I will have to adjust to how it all works, although I believe I will be able to pull it off and fare decently well with college life. Just because I have Autism doesn’t mean I can’t attend, or shouldn’t be able to, as I, and everyone else with Autism, ADHD, you name it, are all equally, if not even more, capable of continuing our education so that we may learn more, learn what we’re interested in learning, and get out into the world to do something we love.
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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.
