Ros visited me recently. She left to go to Newcastle to study occupational therapy a year ago. So I have taken the opportunity to talk to her about her experiences of autism and university. I also asked her for her tips for autistic university students.
I did my degree at Scarborough university between 1996-1999. Unaware that I was autistic at the time. In many ways it was a positive experience. I had some good friends, and gained lots of independence skills after being thrown in the deep end. Moving far from my home town, with no additional support.
However it was also extremely challenging. I struggled with everything from managing my workload, and schedule. I also found independent living (remembering to eat) and self care difficult to manage. Additionally the social demands of university caused some upset.
So I was interested to see how Ros is finding the experience, going into university with a diagnosis and disabled student support. I’m sure you will agree we made an interesting and useful video about autism and university.
Here is some information from the National Autistic Society for autistic students.
Here is a post I wrote about Leeds, near where I went to university.
Very helpful guide/video, I’ve done a similar thing to yourself. I am a physiotherapists and have worked with OT’s frequently. Some advice that might be helpful obviously as an OT you’ll be treating patients with complex conditions and because of the way your brain works I found working with complex conditions easy because I could see patterns easily within the patient and how each part of the condition linked up…. However, found this very over stimulating and when working with chronic/complex patients, multiple times a day one after another regularly had meltdowns multiple times a week. This might be something to take into consideration for the future for work timetables/type of patients etc.