How to Beat the College System As An Autistic Student

I never liked being told what to do because the 'why' of it all never made any sense to me, but I have always found comfort in structure. I think that is why I enjoy education so much. The curriculum is structured (in most cases), and then I can run with it on essays, papers, projects, and dissertations. It speaks to all parts of me: the rebellious side that thinks the 'system' is an absolute crock, the autistic side that wants ALL the knowledge, and that ridiculous side of me that is a bit of an achievement junkie-I just want to do/know it because I can. My special interest is knowledge, itself.

My mother can attest to the fact that as a kid I did what I had to do because I had to do it (there were times that this concept did not even apply), but I never liked doing it. I was not a terribly unhappy child, but, even as young as 4 or 5 was maybe just very confused about why the world was the way it was and why people made the choices they made. I lived in a state of confusion mixed with disbelief, because I did not understand the world and I did not feel like I really belonged in it, yet people kept telling me I was so good at the things I was doing in their reality. It was a very conflicting existence: highly academically inclined, but extremely socially challenged. This was the 1980's.

Fast-forward to the early 2000's and after several years of being away from college, I decided to go back because I had finally 'figured out' what I wanted to do with my life - or so I thought. I had not yet realized that the burnout I experienced after several weeks in a semester and the shutdowns I had during classes when I couldn't ask a clarifying question in the moment were ASD related (and quite frankly, I am only remembering some of the instances just now), but they just kept happening. On a few occasions I had to take an academic leave-of-absence and withdraw for the semester. I was working harder, not smarter.

I held a full-time job and went to school at night, which I am sure also contributed to the burnout-and-meltdown-inducing stress. The tight schedule meant that I could really only attend college 1/2 to 3/4 time each semester, and so it took me a lot longer to get through my program than it would have ordinarily. A 4-year undergraduate degree lasted 7 years. However, once I moved into the upper-level classes, I started to figure out that when I had a genuine interest in something, I did not have to trudge slowly through the subject matter or wade drearily through the semester. There was a genuine desire to obtain the knowledge on the topic and studying was easy, if not fun.

The epiphany just described helped me to translate each class into its own mini-version of a special interest, though I had not labelled it as such at the time. I discovered that I had an interest in physics, despite having been terrible at science in secondary school (though I could blame that on the science teachers I had), and I discovered that I had a deeply rooted interest in philosophy and religious studies, despite having never encountered them previously in formal education or in private life. The latter subjects would become a lasting academic special interest, which took me into a successful Ph.D. program.

Beating the system, for me, meant that I had to find something that I was genuinely passionate about in order to succeed. College was not a means to financial end, as it can be for so many people. I was not in classes simply because it meant I would have a well-paying job at the end. It was a means to personal happiness, completely removed from any financial interests. College was about gathering knowledge so that I could use it to make the world better, safer, and happier, especially for people who think and see the world differently than their neurotypical counterparts.

The plan I had at the beginning of my college career looked far different than the multitude of plans I have now. As I have gone through this process and learned so much about myself and the world, I have had to adapt a bit, but I and my plans have truly evolved. My original plan was made through tunnel vision, and as the evolution has taken place, the lens through which I see this world and all the possibilities in it has widened dramatically. If you, the reader, are neurodivergent, I encourage you to beat the system by leaning into your special interests. Break the game, so to speak.

Circular Soul-Making: Which Came First...

...the Virtue or the Suffering?

The concept that the soul-making theodicy (SMT) in the Philosophy of Religion is circular has recently been brought to my attention as a question.  There will be a forthcoming paper on this, but I want to work out some thoughts on paper here first.  A theodicy is an approach to reasoning the problem of evil in the world.  Soul-making simply means that the approach in the theodicy is for the purpose of creating the soul into something.  I have written on this topic in the past and my dissertation will offer a full explanation of the SMT as well as how to overcome the idea that gratuitous, or excessive and needless, suffering exists in the world.

The soul-making theodicy was first brought to the attention of the philosophical and theological communities in-part by church father St. Irenaeus (c. 120-c. 203 apx), then again in part by classical philosopher and theologian Origen (c. 185-c. 253), and finally in full by philosopher and theologian John Hick (1922-2012) in his book called Evil and the God of Love (1966).  The tenets of the full version of the SMT are that God exists, that humans were born imperfect (not perfect followed by a fall from grace, as the Church claims), that there is evil in the world, and that the reason for the evil in the world is that it is a tool for the creation of our souls into something divine and perfect.  The circular reasoning, which was claimed to me by a professor friend of mine, comes into play when taking into account that, while suffering assists in developing virtuous character, we need a virtuous character to help us overcome suffering.  We still do not have an explanation as to why there is suffering in the first place or what the highest goal of society or mankind really is.

There is no specific philosophical data to come to the aid of anyone claiming that people are basically good, as no one keeps track of the levels of virtue within each of us.  We could speculate about the level of virtue in the world using social or crime statistics, or even diving into psychological data with respect to violence or kindness, but not everyone sees a psychiatric practitioner or even tells the truth to the practitioner he or she sees.  In lieu of statistics I submit that we can use the idea that there are those people in the world who are simply born psychologically broken, who will never be capable of seeing the good or participating in a worldview which supports or strives for the good.  These are the people who do not possess a virtuous character at all.  There are also those who are born without the capacity to participate in society without some aid, due to some mental challenge or delay.  However, nearly all philosophical views (especially this one) pertain only to people of normal mental and psychological capacity, and do not speak to outliers of any sort.  To be sure, the percentage of the world's population which falls into either of the aforementioned categories is small.

My response to the question of circularity is that this is very much a question of which came first; the chicken or the egg, rather the virtue or the soul-making.  The point was made to me that if the purpose of suffering is to build virtuous character, then once one fully attains a virtuous character one no longer has any need of or use for suffering.  Yet, there is still suffering in the world.  Not all sources of suffering effect all people equally, however.  Simply because there are people still suffering in the world does not mean that these are the same people who have already attained a virtuous character.  As well, who should be the judge of the level of virtue within each person?  Surely not you or me!  If the purpose of suffering is to build virtue (to the point of divinity, not just a basic every-day level), then suffering must have come first.  This is made clear when considering Hick's claim that we are born imperfect.  Additionally, Hick claims that soul-making, or virtue building, is not complete at the time at which a person dies.  Hick might have said that we, as human beings on this earth in this life, cannot know what true and full virtuous character actually looks like.

More to come on this topic in the future, but for now I can say that the virtue comes later and the suffering comes first.  The only way to argue that a nugget of virtue is in all of us is if one appeals to mystery, meaning that the argument is based on something divine, previously hidden within all of us, but that contradicts the idea that we were made imperfect.  If we possessed the divine, we would have already been perfect.  A case could be made for this divine nugget within us, but it would not be a strong philosophical argument.

-Christine Ratzlaff © May 6, 2018