Chapter 4-- "Progress is Not Linear." My name is Leo. I am 29 years old, and I was diagnosed at the age of 10. I had a lot of struggles with hypersensitivity when I was younger. I struggled a lot in elementary school and I eventually got kicked out of elementary school due to behavioral issues-- mainly because I had some anger problems. I struggled a lot in the classrooms because a lot of things annoyed me that people didn't understand.

Then those situations would escalate, and I didn't have a way to escape. It was just one incident after another, and eventually I was not able to complete elementary school. And I got sent through several programs. First, I went through several government programs where the teachers clearly did not know what they were doing. And a lot of them didn't seem to care.

It was there that I met a lot of kids like me who had anger management issues. After that, I ended up in conservative Christian private school, where they still didn't quite know what they were doing, but they cared, and that was enough for me to get through. I missed a lot of socialization and a lot of education during that time. But once I got to middle school, I stopped throwing fits.

I don't want to believe it's because of anything the school did, because they were really bad at de-escalating. I think it was part of late brain development-- specifically whatever part of your brain controls emotional impulses. So with that part of my brain finally developed, I was able to start taking classes in the local middle school and transitioned to going to a full-time public high school. It started out all right, but then things got increasingly worse as class times changed and became shorter.

There is a thing called the SLCs, where you would have multiple classes with the same kids. And that ended, which was hard for me. At the same time, I had an IEP that was not being managed well. Eventually, I just started taking fewer and fewer classes. In the end, I got my GED instead of fully graduating. But when I made it to college, things were a lot better managed. And I did better there.

Expectations were a lot clearer, and that was the main thing. Once I have clear expectations, I'm able to perform very well. Long story short, I graduated from college with honors. It wasn't all perfect. I still struggled a little bit in college, but it was less than high school. I feel like I had some control, and I think it was just a matter of concreteness.

In high school, even the classes that I would have otherwise enjoyed, I didn't do well in because of the lack of concrete expectations. It's kind of hard for me to hit the mark if you don't know where the mark is or even what direction it's in. If assignments were left open, I ended up just not doing them.

In college, everything is concrete. This is how long your paper needs to be. This is how many sources you need cited. This is the font you use. This is the size font you use. The spacing size is double spaced. All very, very clear expectations there. I don't have to go above and beyond every time. I can just get it done and get an A.

I remember back in my chemistry class in high school-- they gave me a huge packet full of work, and it overwhelmed me. I dropped the class pretty much immediately because they didn't give me any expectations or directions. They just gave me the packet and said, go. Another issue I had in high school was that I had the same classes every single day. Every class was 45 minutes long and you would have to worry about every class' homework for every day and remember to turn in all of those assignments.

In college, your classes are once a week, and each class is several hours long. They give you more homework, but it's way easier to keep track of when the due dates are, especially when you have bigger but fewer assignments. I would say to other people that, overall, colleges will care about your grade point averages and SAT scores, but your high school experience is not indicative of your college experience.

"Landing a Job." So after college, the first thing I had to do was figure out some way to make money. I think it was during my last term of college that I got an internship at a small indie gaming company. After I graduated, I was able to work at that company for another three months. But then our game came out, and it sold so poorly that we were shut down.

That's when I was lost. I was getting no callbacks, nothing. I was unemployed for I want to say 9 or 10 months. Then someone pointed out to me problems with my resume, one of them being that the dates were in ascending order instead of descending order. The instant I fixed it and kept applying for jobs, I got three job offers at pretty big companies. I also had a portfolio that I was constantly adding things to even while I was unemployed.

If you're hunting for jobs, I would really highly recommend having someone look over your resume. In my opinion, I think the biggest obstacle is making sure your resume isn't thrown out, because so few people actually get to the interview stage. I'm still with the company that hired me after the year of unemployment. There is a problem in the fact that I don't have very specific expectations, but I deal with it.

I'm not being graded. There isn't a grade at the end. So that is a little different from most companies, I would guess. I get feedback saying I'm doing a good job, and that's good enough. I do what I'm told and what's expected of me. That's all I really can do. I've gotten to the point in my life where I know now that even if you're bad at things because of your disability, you will get better at those things when you practice them. Even if it's always going to be a little bit more of a struggle for you than for neurotypical people, you're still going to get better.

"My Path Wasn't Straight." Making progress in becoming independent isn't a linear thing. Personally, I'm very sensory sensitive. And when I am in a loud environment, it can be difficult to regulate. I can't go to a bowling alley. I can't go to arcades. I've never tried to go to a music concert, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to. Some restaurants I can't even go into because of the acoustics in there.

Lots of loud noise will bother me to the point that I will get a headache. I remember being in a Korean barbecue restaurant, and there was a really low pitched fan going on constantly, and so I had to leave. Even now, I'm sensitive to music being played by other people in my apartment complex.

In terms of other adulthood skills, cooking has always been something that I've been absolutely terrible at. I lowered my expectations for myself, so I eat a lot of frozen meals. And every once in a while, I order out. I'm slowly moving up to the point that I recently started eating meals that are cooked by boiling water. So that's a step up.

When I feel comfortable, I might move on because eating frozen meals gets really tiring. You can only get so much of something before you start to get tired of it. And just naturally by getting tired of these things, I start expanding my horizons and going outside of my comfort zone in terms of how much work I'm willing to put into preparing something.

Most of the people I have lived with have encouraged me to try things that are on the road to independence. From the age of 21, I had a very good transitionary period when I was living with my brother-in-law and my sister. That was a big step up for independence because I was doing the majority of the stuff on my own, but I still had people there who could help me.

If you do live with your parents, I would encourage people to start trying to become independent while they're still at home. I had to do that a bit, but I wish I'd been pushed a little more on that. Still living with my brother-in-law and my sister, I was able to make up for that and take a lot of steps towards independence.

I think even if people are kind of doing it on their own, YouTube is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Not only can I find out how to run a washing machine, I can find out how to run my particular washing machine. I've had the internet my whole life, or at least as long as I've needed to look things up.

You do have to be careful because the answer it gives you is not always accurate. But a lot of the times, if you type in a question, it will give you websites that will try to answer that question. It's really good for life skill stuff. Also, if there's something I don't know as a problem but I want to just make sure, then you can find out if something's normal or if something's not normal.

Even apart from the internet, for a lot of things, if you haven't done them, the biggest obstacle can just be doing it for the first time. For example, with laundry, once I understood how to do it, it's the exact same thing every time. The same goes for cleaning toilets. Some of the logistical things can be a bit trickier. It helps that my job had come with insurance when I got hired and that the people at my work and helping with that.

But in the past, my brother-in-law and my landlady have helped me with that. Bills are a hard thing because I have missed payments in the past. I have a lot of redundant reminders. Many of them come in the last 10 days or so of the month. And so when you get the first bill in the mail, you can make a mental note that you need to pay the other bills.

I also have calendar events set up for paying rent and other bills-- although, even then, I've had some close calls and still missed them, but I haven't had anything super bad happen yet. I've only missed rent once, but it's always good to set up redundant reminders so you have it in your calendar, in your alarms, in your email, and a notification by snail mail.

"Advice for Others." If your child is struggling or you are struggling, encourage them to hold on. Encourage them to try to learn small, minor things. Have your kids do chores because it's important for them to learn how to do chores and for them to learn that chores are not that bad. Because when you are by yourself, you are going to want to know how to do them and be able to do them.

Even if it's not my favorite thing to do, I still need to be able to clean my toilet because there is mold build up in it, and that causes problems. Then when you are by yourself, you don't have to do as many chores because you have fewer people to clean up after. And you can have standards that are a little lower if you want. It's amazing how much easier things are when you are in a position where you have to do them.

One of the weirdest lessons I've had to learn is that so much of the battle is just working up the courage to start. When you're in a position where you have to do something, you don't need to work up the courage because you just have to do it. You might be uncomfortable with it, but you can still do it. You can always do it.

When I was learning how to ride the train, I had no one to help me in person, but I had people that I could ask. Strangers, especially if they are doing the same thing as you, are often happily willing to talk you through the process. Living on your own, there's a lot of things that you don't know how to do, but you can learn and ask questions. Asking for help and asking questions is so important.

Like I said, when I'm stuck, I ask my brother-in-law. If he doesn't know, I'll ask my coworkers. If they don't know, I'll ask internet friends or a safe stranger. If all else fails, I have Google.