My pigeonholes

As some of you may know, the exam season is upon us. Students all over the country, are living on a mix of caffeine pills, Ibuprofin and energy drinks while they try and cram in one more iota of information into there throbbing brain. And I am one of them.

Ok, well I don’t pop caffeine pills, Ibuprofin and energy drinks, but I do work my socks off (such an unusual expression, and does it mean you cant work hard if you have your shoes on? because you cant take your socks off without taking your shoes off, but I digress). And, so, over my last brief holiday, I set myself a lot of work to do. And something very scary happened. I didn’t do nearly as much as I wanted. In fact I barely did any work.

Now as you can understand, this got me very worried. Was there something wrong with me? Was I no longer a good student? What was keeping me from my regiment? And it wasn’t until I came back to Farleigh that I worked it out.

You see, just cannot do good work at home. Sure I can read through some psychology notes, just passively absorb information, but when it comes to some hard core revision, I just can’t seem to get my brain in gear. It is like trying to wire a plug with boxing gloves. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not bring myself to fully concentrate, and I kept giving up easerly.

But what caused this? Well, I think I just associate home work rest and relaxation. You may remember telling you in previous blogs how I could not do home work at home when I was at secondary school. I think this relates back to that. there, I associated home with escape, relaxation, rest. This changed when I was doing satellite school, and it became a mix, but it was still hard because I still had that impression that home was for rest. And now, when it comes to revision, it means I cannot revise at home.

But I am still a good student, or so I am told. Take the other day; I got up at 7:30, got to college for 9. had lessons 9-11. went for a walk for an hour. Then revised from 12 to 3, and then had classes 3 till 4:30. And after getting back to Farleigh, I worked 6 till 9:30. And so I can work in some environments, but not others.

But how can I apply this theory to my life? well, firstly (and for me this is VERY hard) I have to learn not to beat myself up when I cant work at weekends. In fact, I have to plan NOT to work at weekends. When I get to exam leave from Bath College, I will still be going to Farleigh, because I know if I stay at home, I wont be able to work. And the weekend before I have a load of exams, I am going to be staying at Farleigh, something that is totally unheard of for me.

So what can you do as parents or as people with aspergers to help your kids/yourself? Well for parents it is easy, you know when you kid is working or isn’t working well. But for fellow aspies, it is harder. You see, many of us push ourselves hard. And if we try and push ourselves hard in the wrong environment, then it can have disastrous consequences. Depression, anxiety, anger can all originate from not knowing where you work well. So the only thing that you can do is asking others where they think you work well and not so well. Or if they don’t feel you work well in any environment, then find a new one. The library is the obvious one, but that doesn’t work well for everyone. Hunt around for a good quiet spot and work there. Even see if you can work in a classroom where you have lessons – that may help too.

Ok, I will admit, some of what I have said today may seem a bit obvious. A bit pedantic. But I cannot stress the importance of this enough. And most troublingly, teachers tend not to see this. And so they assume that we can work happily for hours at home, when we may not be able to. Going into school/college during exam leave may seem like heresy, but I know it works for me, and it just might work for you too.

Joshua Muggleton – Heretic.