Autism Awareness and Acceptance Piece 2021

Part 2

Photography 14: Pink Flowers in a Border with a logo for Ariel's Action Shots Photography

"Sometimes, Autistic brains are neurological more susceptible to anxiety issues. But sometimes they are not. Sometimes, anxiety is just a standard human reaction to growing up being made to believe you are WRONG. That your way of experiencing the world is WRONG. That we need to find a cure because your very existence is WRONG. Personally, my anxiety issues are not some kind of neurological child of my autism. My anxiety was done to me, by those who made me believe I wasn't good enough."-Unknown

So, the last 10 years have been the second part of my Autism journey. I officially got off my Ritalin when I graduate of high school. After high school, I enrolled at the local community college in the Spring 2008. I did Student Orientation on my 19th Birthday. The first semester was Fall of 2008, I took Student Development Skills and Reading Development. It was not until that point that I had a teacher teach me the purpose of reading. The public-school Reading resource teachers could not figure out a way to teach me how to read so instead of being bothered with that, they just passed me along through the system. In most recent years, I figured out audiobooks and digital book instead paperback book. In the last 2 years, I have fall in love with reading even more than I did in community college because I am able to have discussion with my friends about stories we are reading together. Over the next couple years, I gained more skills, and I came out of my shell more. My grades were good enough to be invited to join Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) Honor Society in Fall 2010. In Spring 2012, I had a friend who was involved in Student Government Association (SGA) suggest that I get involved as a senator.

When I graduated in Spring 2016, I was vice president/president/co-president for SGA for the school year of 2015-2016. After being senator for 2 years 2012-2014 and 1 year as the treasurer 2014-2015. In the Spring of 2014, I joined Student Ambassadors Program which added new skills on how to be part of my community. In the Spring of 2015, I was invited to join The Nation Society of Leadership and Success (Sigma Alpha Pi), which was based on my Student Leadership skills and grades. To become an inducted member of Sigma Alpha Pi was a four-step process completed in about 6 weeks. During the 2015-2016 school year, I was Student President for Sigma Alpha Pi. In the Fall of 2015, I was invited to Sigma Kappa Delta Honor Society for my English grades. The more I was involved on the campus, the more I figured out my differences made it easier for me to look at Student Leadership situations differently. But those differences also made others question whether I could handle being certain Student Leadership situations but that did not do anything for my confident about those differences.