This guest post is by Nicholas Sean Munno, a young man on the autism spectrum who was accepted into the New York Institute of Technology. Nicholas is applying for the Spring 2021 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.
I hope you can support my nonprofit like I’m trying to support these students with scholarship aid for college. Learn more on how you can help our cause with a small donation (just asking for $3 today, equal to your daily cup of coffee) here.
While I have become a well-rounded individual now, the road to get there was paved with hardship. I’ve overcome many obstacles to get here, and the fruits of my labor are about to pay off. I intend to surpass the norm of peaking in high school, no matter the low chances. If I seem to express myself profoundly, this is the work of over a lustrum’s time. I used to have trouble expressing myself, and as such, felt hostility when I needed to ask for help. Just as Rome was not built in a day, no one man can build Rome. I have spent quite some time trying to remember to ask for help when I need it, and in the end, it paid off.
I used to be unable to express my ideas and desires, but now I’ve gotten the hang of it. I’ve made it my goal to assimilate, but now I must find a new goal. I’ve chosen education to fill in this role, despite the possibilities seeming countless. I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades, master of none archetype, but I shan’t succumb to such greenhorn naïveté. Education is important, and anyone that can’t recognize that is a blatant fool, and I do mean that literally. However, this isn’t all there is to me. I can code, I can draw, I can do voice acting, I can stream, I can learn, and I can thrive.
Unlike many who excel at wordsmithing, I started from the bottom and worked my way up: the exemplar of the American dream. When I first started, I had no clue how to forge requests, or demands, anything. I felt trapped in the limbo of space, with no one to hear my figurative screams. As a result, I swapped them out for literal ones. It wasn’t the brightest choice, but it worked for the time. However, it soon diluted into a crutch, then a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario, then a catch-22. Once I had this brought to my attention, it took a while for me to drill it to memory, but I got the hang of it. This would change my life forever. With such a simple action, I felt as though the world was my oyster. My mood was great, I could go on calls with online friends now rather than just text, the list goes on.
Now that I knew what the missing piece of the puzzle was, my world was flipped upside down. I could finally breathe, interact, socialize, and even party. The pandemic being an exception, of course. My experience with autism was a winding road wrought with twists and turns. It wasn’t always easy; I used to be horrible at expressing myself properly. I would cry and shout for something without saying what it was I was pouting for. These days, however, have dwindled down to zero a long time ago. The status quo of communication may be here, but I kept going. I went from spouting incomprehensible gibberish to spouting incomprehensible philosophy. Yes, I may have gone too far, but etymology and language are my new passion, derived from a long myriad of overcompensation.
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, & Instagram!
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum that started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue a 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.
