This guest post is by Seth Adams, a young man who was diagnosed with autism at 3 and who plans to attend the University of Arkansas. Seth 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.
Hey my name is Seth Adams, and this is what it was like growing up on the autism spectrum for me. When I was only 3 years old, I was diagnosed with high functioning autism. In my elementary school years, even though I was a great kid and got good grades, I needed to go to therapy during those years for occupational and sensory as well as speech. A few years later, my sensory stuff started to get so much better and as a result, I no longer needed to go to occupational and sensory therapy but I still needed to go to speech therapy for a couple more years. Then, a few months later, I started to learn to talk to people more and in improving ways, so speech therapy was over for me as well at that point. In later middle school, I started to slowly make friends and talk to people to get to know me better and help me out in class more as a result of socializing more. When I was in the late 8th grade, I really started socializing and making a whole bunch of friends and getting to know a lot about them and finding common interests with them such as basketball. I was interested in basketball at the end of 7th grade, in which I tried out for the team but didn’t make it since I hardly knew anything about the game and wasn’t skilled enough. I was extremely upset after not making it in which I started grinding and improving my shot as well as my dribbling even though I still didn’t know half about the game. Then at the end of my 8th grade year, I tried out again doing better but still didn’t make it since I still lacked a little skill and didn’t know enough about the game and the drills at tryouts. However, I became the manager my freshman to senior year and got to know everyone on the team and helped them out in practice as well as games such as running the clock, picking up balls, and sometimes doing the laundry. I still have trouble doing some things with autism such as asking girls out, asking to hang out with friends, and asking parents/trusted adults if I could go do something but this is why I’m taking the EMPOWER program so I can better ask girls out and learn to live on my own. I think during this EMPOWER program, I’ll start to see my life of living on my own improving a whole lot and I’ll start to be more confident in asking ladies out and asking to hang out with my buddies. Finally , I’m excited to take this EMPOWER program so I can learn living independently and start to be more ready on asking girls out as well as hanging out with friends but I’m also nervous since I’ll be away from home in a dorm, but I’ll still be able to go to my parents houses.
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.
