Hi

I am trying to find out if there are any PhD students who are AS, 8-)

I am an AS and i am doing a PhD. In fact Asperger Syndrom have never been a problem untill i started doing my PhD ! it stoped me from thinking in the big picture sort of way,

If you are out there, please share your experince.

can you elaborate on what AS is for the like of me who are not familiar with the term

Smrh: it's Aspergers syndrome: a mild form of autism (I think? I may be wrong).

Sue, I know a couple, but I don't think they subscribe to this forum! My ex-boss was an AS and he did pretty well on the scientific stuff but had trouble dealing with people like laywers/accountants etc. Mind you I think we all do...

======= Date Modified 08 Sep 2008 16:08:29 =======

what is AS:



Simply put, Asperger Syndrome means that the person have some traits of autism, so AS people are not totally off yet they experience difficulty with communication and social settings and organisation problems.  The difficulties differ from one AS person to another. It is said that AS people's brain is different and they process information differently.



Actually AS is thought of as the genius gene because people with AS have extraordinary abilities specially in focusing on specific subjects and in minding details, Albert Einstein and Socrates among other famous people are thought to have been AS.



The main difficulty which we, AS people, face is with trying to 'fit in'  because we are expected to think and process information like the normal people





AS and doing a PhD



Students with AS may be easily distracted by focussing on irrelevant information and detail. This may lead to key concepts being overlooked.



also thinking in the 'big picture' sort of way is difficult to AS students.



I personally had this problem.  my supervisors insisted that i need to lay down a big picture of what i need to do in my PhD and what my PhD would look like, but i couldn't, i had to work through tiny details until i reached the big picture, this annoyed my supervisor very much, they didn't know that i have AS so they expected me to 'fit in' and do like the rest of the PhD students do ,



Some other problem which can emerge is misunderstandings in spoken language

i see, thanks for explaining

i am just curious, but obviously you will have certain advantages as well, i mean do you think you excel in certain way from your other colleagues. what is your area of research?

Hi Smrh


Well, i do have some strenghts but i have weaknesses as well and it seems that my abilites are not balanced :p

I have the ability to focus on one certain topic for an extended amount of time, digging information and reading about it and stuff, perhpas the normal people get easily bored doing the same thing for an extended amount of time, the bad side is that i can looooooooose my self in the data !! and forget that i need to move on into some other things, topics or just practice my life ..

Actually my strenghts which are mainly artistic in nature (music and painting) are not that much of a help for doing a PhD in some social sience related subject because Aspergers are not good with people :-(

But hope things go smoothly (up)

======= Date Modified 11 Sep 2008 09:56:39 =======
Sue, I know nothing about AS...but most PhDers end up having problems of one sort or another trying to disseminate information, and going off on tangents (never to return)...so this is certainly something that will blight you.

I don't know if this will be helpful...but possibly the use of a sophisticated mindmap/flowchart software (that may also tap into your artistic side) may help. Some links here: http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/product-directory/ and www.smartdraw.com.

Hi Missspacey

Thanks for the link, Yes mind maps really help. (up)

wao
so u have the basic strength or let me say key strength
ability to dig deeper....here you go

and timing issues...like deadlines or spending too much time, can you set reminders for your self...and keep tallying your amount of time spent...with orgiginal time tagets
i mean if you become more conscious about your tendency to get over involved, it may help, eg if you would often stop yourslef and check whether you have spent too much time, and whether you need to move on, do you think it will help

wao
so u have the basic strength or let me say key strength
ability to dig deeper....here you go

and timing issues...like deadlines or spending too much time, can you set reminders for your self...and keep tallying your amount of time spent...with orgiginal time tagets
i mean if you become more conscious about your tendency to get over involved, it may help, eg if you would often stop yourslef and check whether you have spent too much time, and whether you need to move on, do you think it will help

Smrh

The problem is while the normal peole CAN become conscious of time and can easily switch off, I become conscious of time a bit late and when i realise that i need to move on, i have to letrally PULL myself from what i am doing otherwise i can get STUCK and continue reading or digging for hours !

Believe me it is not helpful espcially for those who want to finish thier PhD in 3 - 4 years time! cause time become wasted on things which are not nessesary to acmplish the task at hand.

But like you said, gadgets may help but again it is not a stright forward thing, for example you need to know when to stop reading about a certain topic and need to know when is the point to move on and gadgets dont help in this case

but switching the spell check and grammer check in word helped me a lot , because having selling mistakes annoyed me and i was distracted fixing the document instead of writing and producing something