This guest post is by Joshua Ankney, a man who was diagnosed with autism at 36 and who currently attends Ivy Tech Community College Northeast. Joshua 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.
A little boy of Defiance, Ohio was misdiagnosed at the age of 2 with ADHD and Tourette Syndrome. By the time he was three years old, he had his first clubfoot surgery in Chicago, IL. He was also interested in computers by the time he was three years old. He met his best friend in preschool and started running computer programs. From kindergarten to the fourth grade, he was bounced from three different schools (Defiance, Ohio Holgate, Ohio and Napoleon, Ohio). In Holgate, his teacher taught him how to cook, clean, make beds and dance. (He thinks of her like a second mom). In the second grade, the teacher and the principal were mean and treated him lower than dirt. They abused him by putting him in a cubical and pour water on his head. They thought it would calm him down, but it was making him more angry. He also struggled in Junior High School. The teachers and the assisstant Principal were mean and rude to him. One teacher told him that he would never amount to anything after he told her that he wanted to be a computer technician. Once he went into High School, he swore to never get a detention for four years. He had no trouble making friends his entire time in school. He friended people with Autism, Bipolar Disorder, Tourette Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and even Down Syndrome. He also started enjoying cooking. Making foods and desserts. He also started getting into Website development. He was the only student in his Website development class in his High School to embed music on his website. Since then, he graduated from High School. Took and passed A+ certification in trade school and earn two college certificates. He is fluent in the operating systems: MACOS, Windows and Linux. In his spare time, he repurposes old and out of date Windows laptops with Linux so they would be supported and able to be put back online without the fear of getting a computer virus and/or being hacked as easily by a hacker. He also is teaching himself how to program using the Python programming language. The languages he learned to write websited are: HTML, CSS, Javascript, MySQL, and PHP. Since 2017, he has been running several Single Board Computers called Raspberry Pi. They can run on several distributions of Linux (Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, RetroPie, KanoOS, Pop! OS, Kali Linux, Raspberry Pi OS, Manjaro Arm, Elementary OS, Lakka Linux, LibreELEC, OSMC, LineageOS and several others). He can also repurpose networking cables (Ethernet and coaxial cables). He can also setup entire networks which include a cable modem, router and a DNS server. He wants to learn more in the next several years of his life. He knows that computers change every eighteen months and he wants to keep up to date with them. He would love to see how technology will evolve when he reaches one hundred years old. He already lived through the 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and now living in the 64-bit era.
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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.
