Hello,
I'm somewhat new here. I have visited this forum before, but have only read other people's threads and have never made my own account, but decided to make one to create this thread, so here we go.
This may be somewhat of a lengthier story, but I think it's necessary to know the context in order to get the full picture. I'll try to keep it short while still getting my point across.
(I decided to add some headings and grey out the less important stuff in order to make it more digestible.)
My School Life
When I was in school, I'd notice that I would excel at subjects that interested me (mainly English and computer science), while struggling really bad with subjects that didn't. I assume many of you will relate. People with Asperger's tend to develop certain “narrow interests” that they find very interesting (almost to the point of obsession) while struggling with things they find less interesting.
However, I think there is more to that. It almost seems like, at least in my case, I really enjoy doing things that I'm intrinsically motivated to do while struggling really hard when the only motivation for a certain task is extrinsic in nature.
As a result, I'd often do very well at English or CS exams despite not having studied at all, while feeling completely helpless when it comes to German or French, for example, as no matter how much I'd study, I'd get horrible grades regardless.
My Studies
Fast forward to the year 2017 and I'd finish my finals and start my CS studies at a local university. Finally, I had found my true calling. The first semester was actually quite great. The courses were challenging, yet I found them very interesting and did very well regardless.
At the end of the semester, I had to take four separate exams (one for each course). The first one was from the course that I had found to be the hardest (it was an algorithms course), but it was also the one I was most interested in. The grade I got was 1.3 (which happened to be the second-best grade you can get). Things were going up!
Either way, there was no way I'd take all four exams at once, especially since two of those were literally just one day apart, one of which was actually a math exam, which was fairly difficult. I, therefore, decided to still attend the math exam, but not attempt to actually pass it and instead planned to study for the post-exam, which I'd actually try to do well in.
This is actually quite common. Pretty much everybody, including all my friends, would choose one exam that they'd try to pass in the post-exam so that they'd have enough time to study sufficiently for all their exams.
Unfortunately, my parents weren't pleased about this decision (something about the fact that things were different back in their day made them dislike it) and wanted me to take all exams at once, instead. Their ego was so big, that when I tried to argue with them, they entered some sort of survival mode where the only thing that was important was them getting their way as if they'd drop dead if they were to admit to being wrong. When I argued that I wanted to get good grades and managing my study time properly was the only way to achieve that, they'd forbid me from trying to get good grades since that was the only way to get their way at this point.
I was still very passionate about CS, though, so even without trying to get good grades I'd still get 2.0's (in non-math-related courses, at least) in my second semester simply from learning about relevant topics that I found interesting, despite not actively trying to do well.
Things changed in the third semester, though. My grades have dropped a little, mainly due to me taking networking-related courses that I wasn't as passionate about, but they were still fine-ish considering I wasn't even trying to do well.
That said, the entire time I really had hoped my parents would reconsider their decision and allow me to get good grades again. I guess you've gotta be careful what you wish for because somehow I've gotten into the conversation with my mother where we'd talk about my grades again and she asked me something along the lines of how good of a grade I thought I'd get for one of my courses. I said that I only cared about passing and didn't care about the grade (as I was told to do), and she exploded. She insulted me as an autist, pretended that the conversation at the end of the first semester had never happened, and ultimately made me lose my passion for computer science.
In the fourth semester, I had failed all my courses, and that's despite the fact that I knew that I would have found the material I was studying very interesting just a few months ago. I fell into a death spiral of getting really stressed out about the fact that I didn't manage to learn things that I knew should have interested me, which in turn only served to make it even harder to study the material, thus stressing me out even more.
I had no intrinsic motivation at all anymore, and getting things done powered by extrinsic motivation alone seemed impossible. I felt like I was in school again, except worse, because there were no subjects I was interested in anymore, only subjects that I should have been interested in, but wasn't.
My parents would then try to pretend to try to help me get better by sending me to a psychiatrist, who then prescribed me some medicine that didn't help at all, and getting me to get in touch with the “Contact and information center for students with disabilities and chronic illnesses,” (“KIS”, for short) which was a service that my uni was offering. All the time they lied in my face that at the end of my first semester they had only told me to “not overstress things” or something like that and that I had somehow misinterpreted that as them wanting me to take all my exams at once and not care about my grades anymore, which obviously makes no sense at all.
The only good thing to come out of it is that I saw that the psychiatrist they sent me to had a portrait of Super Meat Boy hanging on their wall, which I found really funny. Getting in touch with the KIS may have helped somewhat, as I did pass some of my exams over the course of the next few semesters, but my grades still weren't close to what they actually could have been. Granted, they did tell me that it's possible to increase the number of semesters you have to complete your studies somehow, so that's definitely a plus.
My small family business
I believe it was in my seventh semester when my father decided to start a small business together with me. It was an embedded systems company that developed IoT devices. He was supposed to be in charge of creating the hardware while I was developing the software. All in all it was an interesting endeavor, however, my father's oversized ego would turn it into a nightmare.
He'd come up with ridiculous ideas, ... [This segment was cut due to the 10000 char length limit, see uploaded file for the uncut segment]
... since he (again) seemed to believe that he'd drop dead if he didn't get his way, so eventually, I just stopped trying to argue and did what I was told.
Eventually, I found myself in the position where the company we were developing a product for was pressuring us to finish it, however, unsurprisingly, the code was a buggy, untested and non-testable mess that couldn't be released in the current state. It required a refactoring of the entire codebase to even get to the point where it could be tested. For 2-3 weeks I was working 10+ hours per day to finish the project (and that's according to WakaTime, a plugin that only counts time actively spent typing new code, while not taking into account the time reading code, planning things, or reading documentation, so it's likely even more than that in reality), and by doing so I have completely neglected my studies. Around that time I was expected to host a presentation for a seminar I was part of, and I simply didn't have the time to finish it, so I had failed the seminar completely.
Today
This brings me to today. I have recently completed two feature requests from different companies and this time around it actually went quite well. My father didn't mess with my work and I was just allowed to do my thing. Of course, the damage is already done, and the codebase is a mess that is difficult to work with (and oftentimes doesn't even work the way it was intended), but at least the new code could now be properly planned out and unit tested.
The issue is, I now need to study for an exam that I will take in just a few weeks. I haven't had any free time for months and for my last exam I've got a poor grade because I didn't finish it in time (I expected it to have 4-5 questions as it did the years before, but instead it had like 7), and that's after putting so much effort into studying for it.
I keep regretting the fact that I let my parents walk all over me like that. I should have stood up for myself when they told me that I wasn't allowed to try and get good grades. When my father messed with the way I was writing software, I should have told him that I'm willing to abandon the project if I'm not allowed to do my job properly. I've had others make decisions for me while suffering the consequences of those decisions myself. But it cannot be undone now, can it.
I feel completely burned out by now. I'm trying to save my studies, but my grades are much worse than they should have been and I'm running out of semesters to complete them. I'm no longer as passionate about CS as I used to, and I don't know if I'll ever get my passion back.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to achieve by creating this thread. Obviously, it won't fix my problem, but I hope that at least talking about it will help me come to terms and fill me with (hopefully intrinsic) motivation to keep going. So yeah, any input is welcome.
I'm somewhat new here. I have visited this forum before, but have only read other people's threads and have never made my own account, but decided to make one to create this thread, so here we go.
This may be somewhat of a lengthier story, but I think it's necessary to know the context in order to get the full picture. I'll try to keep it short while still getting my point across.
(I decided to add some headings and grey out the less important stuff in order to make it more digestible.)
My School Life
When I was in school, I'd notice that I would excel at subjects that interested me (mainly English and computer science), while struggling really bad with subjects that didn't. I assume many of you will relate. People with Asperger's tend to develop certain “narrow interests” that they find very interesting (almost to the point of obsession) while struggling with things they find less interesting.
However, I think there is more to that. It almost seems like, at least in my case, I really enjoy doing things that I'm intrinsically motivated to do while struggling really hard when the only motivation for a certain task is extrinsic in nature.
As a result, I'd often do very well at English or CS exams despite not having studied at all, while feeling completely helpless when it comes to German or French, for example, as no matter how much I'd study, I'd get horrible grades regardless.
My Studies
Fast forward to the year 2017 and I'd finish my finals and start my CS studies at a local university. Finally, I had found my true calling. The first semester was actually quite great. The courses were challenging, yet I found them very interesting and did very well regardless.
At the end of the semester, I had to take four separate exams (one for each course). The first one was from the course that I had found to be the hardest (it was an algorithms course), but it was also the one I was most interested in. The grade I got was 1.3 (which happened to be the second-best grade you can get). Things were going up!
Either way, there was no way I'd take all four exams at once, especially since two of those were literally just one day apart, one of which was actually a math exam, which was fairly difficult. I, therefore, decided to still attend the math exam, but not attempt to actually pass it and instead planned to study for the post-exam, which I'd actually try to do well in.
This is actually quite common. Pretty much everybody, including all my friends, would choose one exam that they'd try to pass in the post-exam so that they'd have enough time to study sufficiently for all their exams.
Unfortunately, my parents weren't pleased about this decision (something about the fact that things were different back in their day made them dislike it) and wanted me to take all exams at once, instead. Their ego was so big, that when I tried to argue with them, they entered some sort of survival mode where the only thing that was important was them getting their way as if they'd drop dead if they were to admit to being wrong. When I argued that I wanted to get good grades and managing my study time properly was the only way to achieve that, they'd forbid me from trying to get good grades since that was the only way to get their way at this point.
I was still very passionate about CS, though, so even without trying to get good grades I'd still get 2.0's (in non-math-related courses, at least) in my second semester simply from learning about relevant topics that I found interesting, despite not actively trying to do well.
Things changed in the third semester, though. My grades have dropped a little, mainly due to me taking networking-related courses that I wasn't as passionate about, but they were still fine-ish considering I wasn't even trying to do well.
That said, the entire time I really had hoped my parents would reconsider their decision and allow me to get good grades again. I guess you've gotta be careful what you wish for because somehow I've gotten into the conversation with my mother where we'd talk about my grades again and she asked me something along the lines of how good of a grade I thought I'd get for one of my courses. I said that I only cared about passing and didn't care about the grade (as I was told to do), and she exploded. She insulted me as an autist, pretended that the conversation at the end of the first semester had never happened, and ultimately made me lose my passion for computer science.
In the fourth semester, I had failed all my courses, and that's despite the fact that I knew that I would have found the material I was studying very interesting just a few months ago. I fell into a death spiral of getting really stressed out about the fact that I didn't manage to learn things that I knew should have interested me, which in turn only served to make it even harder to study the material, thus stressing me out even more.
I had no intrinsic motivation at all anymore, and getting things done powered by extrinsic motivation alone seemed impossible. I felt like I was in school again, except worse, because there were no subjects I was interested in anymore, only subjects that I should have been interested in, but wasn't.
My parents would then try to pretend to try to help me get better by sending me to a psychiatrist, who then prescribed me some medicine that didn't help at all, and getting me to get in touch with the “Contact and information center for students with disabilities and chronic illnesses,” (“KIS”, for short) which was a service that my uni was offering. All the time they lied in my face that at the end of my first semester they had only told me to “not overstress things” or something like that and that I had somehow misinterpreted that as them wanting me to take all my exams at once and not care about my grades anymore, which obviously makes no sense at all.
The only good thing to come out of it is that I saw that the psychiatrist they sent me to had a portrait of Super Meat Boy hanging on their wall, which I found really funny. Getting in touch with the KIS may have helped somewhat, as I did pass some of my exams over the course of the next few semesters, but my grades still weren't close to what they actually could have been. Granted, they did tell me that it's possible to increase the number of semesters you have to complete your studies somehow, so that's definitely a plus.
My small family business
I believe it was in my seventh semester when my father decided to start a small business together with me. It was an embedded systems company that developed IoT devices. He was supposed to be in charge of creating the hardware while I was developing the software. All in all it was an interesting endeavor, however, my father's oversized ego would turn it into a nightmare.
He'd come up with ridiculous ideas, ... [This segment was cut due to the 10000 char length limit, see uploaded file for the uncut segment]
... since he (again) seemed to believe that he'd drop dead if he didn't get his way, so eventually, I just stopped trying to argue and did what I was told.
Eventually, I found myself in the position where the company we were developing a product for was pressuring us to finish it, however, unsurprisingly, the code was a buggy, untested and non-testable mess that couldn't be released in the current state. It required a refactoring of the entire codebase to even get to the point where it could be tested. For 2-3 weeks I was working 10+ hours per day to finish the project (and that's according to WakaTime, a plugin that only counts time actively spent typing new code, while not taking into account the time reading code, planning things, or reading documentation, so it's likely even more than that in reality), and by doing so I have completely neglected my studies. Around that time I was expected to host a presentation for a seminar I was part of, and I simply didn't have the time to finish it, so I had failed the seminar completely.
Today
This brings me to today. I have recently completed two feature requests from different companies and this time around it actually went quite well. My father didn't mess with my work and I was just allowed to do my thing. Of course, the damage is already done, and the codebase is a mess that is difficult to work with (and oftentimes doesn't even work the way it was intended), but at least the new code could now be properly planned out and unit tested.
The issue is, I now need to study for an exam that I will take in just a few weeks. I haven't had any free time for months and for my last exam I've got a poor grade because I didn't finish it in time (I expected it to have 4-5 questions as it did the years before, but instead it had like 7), and that's after putting so much effort into studying for it.
I keep regretting the fact that I let my parents walk all over me like that. I should have stood up for myself when they told me that I wasn't allowed to try and get good grades. When my father messed with the way I was writing software, I should have told him that I'm willing to abandon the project if I'm not allowed to do my job properly. I've had others make decisions for me while suffering the consequences of those decisions myself. But it cannot be undone now, can it.
I feel completely burned out by now. I'm trying to save my studies, but my grades are much worse than they should have been and I'm running out of semesters to complete them. I'm no longer as passionate about CS as I used to, and I don't know if I'll ever get my passion back.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to achieve by creating this thread. Obviously, it won't fix my problem, but I hope that at least talking about it will help me come to terms and fill me with (hopefully intrinsic) motivation to keep going. So yeah, any input is welcome.
