Note For Anyone Writing About Me

Guide to Writing About Me

I am an Autistic person,not a person with autism. I am also not Aspergers. The diagnosis isn't even in the DSM anymore, and yes, I agree with the consolidation of all autistic spectrum stuff under one umbrella. I have other issues with the DSM.

I don't like Autism Speaks. I'm Disabled, not differently abled, and I am an Autistic activist. Self-advocate is true, but incomplete.

Citing My Posts

MLA: Zisk, Alyssa Hillary. "Post Title." Yes, That Too. Day Month Year of post. Web. Day Month Year of retrieval.

APA: Zisk, A. H. (Year Month Day of post.) Post Title. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/post-specific-URL.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Hard To Learn

I'm answering thAutcast questions again! This time, it's this one:
Tell the story of a time when something was so hard that you thought you might never be able to learn it, but you did anyway. How did you do it? What made it possible?
Some things are hard. Others come easily.
Long division is one where I felt like it was hard, but that was more in relation to other math. Math is kind of my thing, just a bit, so what I meant by "Long division took a while" was that I actually had to sit through the whole explanation of it twice, though the first one was apparently a five-minute one?
Yeah, that doesn't really count. At all.
In third grade, we had to learn our multiplication tables.
Despite being the top of the class in all things theoretical (My record of being the only person to win math challenge champion by default and the only person to get it three times in a year still stands, as far as I know, getting these two things both by independently coming up with the formula for the nth triangular number the same year as the incident I am about to describe,) I was the last person to learn them in the whole grade.
We had to have the teacher quiz us, table by table. Ones, twos, threes, I remember being fine. Tens and elevens and fives were fine. Everything else took forever.
It didn't help that the whole class could see me take the quiz, that it was done orally, that I jumped and flapped as I gave each answer, and that I got bullied about the jumping and flapping.
It was the same jump and flap that I do when answering questions in Around the World.
Or did.
I'm not sure. I haven't played Around the World in class since tenth grade, and I still did it then. I assume I still would. (Yeah, I'm actually pretty obvious if you know what to look for...)
In fourth grade, we were supposed to learn all the states, all the capitals, and be able to write the states into a map, the capitals of the states into the correct state. These were to be done separately on a blank map. You got your name on the board for states when you got all 50 states right in the same test. Capitals worked the same way. You got a sticker next to your name on the relevant board if you spelled every one correctly.
By January, I was the only one whose name wasn't up with a sticker on both boards.
In June, I had still yet to get more than 20 states right on any given test, and I hadn't even attempted capitals.
In 7th grade, they tried to have us learn the states on a map again.
I couldn't do it then either. I still don't know all 50 states.
Some things that are hard to learn are worth the effort, and those ones I keep trying for.
Others really aren't.

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