Roman - update?

[NaughtyMouse]

Roman,

When the board crashed, I had recently gotten back from being out of town and hadn't had a chance to respond to your last post in the conversation we were having about your graduate work. And after a few months now I don't really remember what specific issues we were discussing regarding that. So, how is everything working out with your education and research? I've been 'lurking' on the other board, but never had time to post there, and I don't think you mentioned it there anyway.

x<BO~

[NaughtyMouse]

...........

[Roman]

Well, just to remind you, what we were tlaking about back then was the fact that I am doing much better in courses than in actual research because part of doing research is learning to accept the fact that you don't know everything and you should accept certain things on faith value which I don't know how to do. So consequently this screwed up my career DESPITE the fact that I was doing wonderfuly on courses. But the point is that actually I did PLENTY of work, it was just irrelevent to anything advisors wanted me to do. In particular, I spent a lot of time rewriting existing physics in a way that it would make more sense philosophically -- since I viewed this to be a prerequisite of actually using it. This lead to few unpublished pieces of work that are still stored in my computer.

As far as most of the profs are conserned this is a waste of time given that none of my "findings" actually predict any new experimental results. So that was why my school was doing so horibly. However, I found someone in a different school who is being involved in a new area of physics that is only being worked on by 20 people worldwide and htey haven't had much luck either. So I decided that this might be a good apportunity to get people's attention to my ideas. All I have to do is tell these 20 people that I will be "a little bit" more successful than them if I will do what they are doing differently -- and a little bit more successful doesn't need to be a lot, since their own success is close to 0. And now that I got their attention, I can then incorporate all of the things I were doing within past 5 years into their framework. I am planning on taking another year or so and see how much I can do within that time, and then just get ph.d. in Spring 2008.

I am still planning on getting ph.d. from the school I am at right now, which is University of Michigan. But it turns out that it is allowed to work with advisor from different school as long as there is a professor at my own school who is willing to be "co-chair" of the dissertation committee with that other advisor. Even though my formal advisor in MIchigan knows nothing about the subject, he basically did me a favor and agreed to have that arrangement.

[NaughtyMouse]

Well, yeh, I remember very well what the basic issue was. I just couldn't remember the specifics of where the discussion had gone right before I had to leave and then the board crashed. But anyway, that doesn't matter now.

I'm thrilled to hear of the new possibility for success that your new advisor arrangement is going to bring you. I really hope this works out for you.

I understand what you're saying about not being intellectually able to 'accept' something you don't understand or about which you don't have complete information. I know that feeling of just getting 'stuck' mentally with your brain shutting down and absolutely refusing to move on to the next step until you understand the first.

That's one of those traits of the autistic brain that I think can be changed. I have been changing it myself over the years, and learning prioritization in my thinking and the process of 'good enough' thinking. This has made me much more generally functional in various areas of life, from casual social relationships to grocery shopping. But it's not without side effects. I believe my intellectual functioning (of the type that can be measured on an IQ test or manifested in isolated skills) has really declined during this time. And my ability to enjoy the world around me and learn and understand, unencumbered by superficial concerns has diminished. So I really have mixed feelings about it.

I think if an autistic person can find a "niche" career where he really fits (which I did for a while), he can be extraordinarily successful. The problem is, I think, that the chance of finding that just-right situation is relatively small. So I guess what's right for each person's life is a very individual thing, and we can just try to find the right answer (or, if we're so inclined, to try to discover who God wants us to be). For the current tasks in my daily life, the less autistic I am, the better!

Making the decisions for my daughter is more difficult for me, because I know that she will live with the consequences of the decisions I make. When she couldn't talk, it was an easy decision to give her therapy to teach her to talk. But now, when she would rather spend her time learning foreign languages and memorizing facts about the solar system, and I'm teaching her how much fun it is to crash cars together and play tag and she's responding to it and I see her growing socially and enjoying friendships with the other children and looking very "normal", I really do think it's a good thing. But it really is changing her into a different person (her math skills have actually decreased from what they were at three years old, which of course isn't a problem, but it does mean that some parts of her brain are working less as others are working more). And sometimes it makes me very sad and frightened to know I'm changing her basic personality in such fundamental ways.

Well, I'm rambling now. Thank you for updating me regarding the positive changes in your situation.

x<BO~

[Roman]

Well, yeh, I remember very well what the basic issue was. I just couldn't remember the specifics of where the discussion had gone right before I had to leave and then the board crashed. But anyway, that doesn't matter now.

Well as far as specifics, basically I was questioning my mom's intentions in finding me speach therapy. I guess I found it offensive that the implicit assumption behind all that was that she lumped all symptoms of Asperger together and decided that by "fixing" one of them (social skills) she would fix the rest.

But anyway, that thing was solved too. I simply weren't showing up to any of the speach therapy sessions she was paying for, so after 3 or 4 sessions she was forced to cancel the whole thing in order not to waste her money.

Now, between me and you, yes I do want speech therapy in order to improve my social skills so that, for example, I have better luck finding a girlfriend. But the whole point is that my mom seems to think that somehow this would help me with school, so I have to prove her wrong. This means that if I ever do get some kind of help, I would arrange it myself AND I would definitely keep it from my mom.

I'm thrilled to hear of the new possibility for success that your new advisor arrangement is going to bring you. I really hope this works out for you.

Thanks

I understand what you're saying about not being intellectually able to 'accept' something you don't understand or about which you don't have complete information. I know that feeling of just getting 'stuck' mentally with your brain shutting down and absolutely refusing to move on to the next step until you understand the first.

Yah, that is exactly what was happening all these years. I am glad it is over.

That's one of those traits of the autistic brain that I think can be changed. I have been changing it myself over the years, and learning prioritization in my thinking and the process of 'good enough' thinking. This has made me much more generally functional in various areas of life, from casual social relationships to grocery shopping. But it's not without side effects. I believe my intellectual functioning (of the type that can be measured on an IQ test or manifested in isolated skills) has really declined during this time.

I guess career-wise I no longer have to do any "good enough" thinking any more which is cool. In fact, my advisor is the one who often stops me and asks me to give more and more detailes. I guess it is a good sign right there.

Unfortunately, however, I still have to do "good enough" stuff in order to learn to be more successful with women. But then again, I am not actually learnng it, all I am doing is picking FEW examples of "good enough" thinking that women do (usually the ones that personally offend me) and analyzing them to death untill I PROVE to myself why they are "good enough". In other words, hopping to go East by first going west and circuling the earth. But I guess thats my only option.

And my ability to enjoy the world around me and learn and understand, unencumbered by superficial concerns has diminished. So I really have mixed feelings about it.

Well as far as enjoying the world, that is a different equation altogether. As it is, I just need to put my life together that will help me enjoy the world the most, LOL. So far it works.

I think if an autistic person can find a "niche" career where he really fits (which I did for a while), he can be extraordinarily successful. The problem is, I think, that the chance of finding that just-right situation is relatively small. So I guess what's right for each person's life is a very individual thing, and we can just try to find the right answer (or, if we're so inclined, to try to discover who God wants us to be). For the current tasks in my daily life, the less autistic I am, the better!

Actually, if I were willing to give up on "particle" physics and instead do other areas of physics (such as solid state), these would of probably worked, without any need of finding "nitches". I guess the problem with particle physics is basically that no one ever seen particles. So this is what opened plenty of room for people to claim that a lot of stuff goes on there that is too abstract to even visualize and this always put me off. This isn't even all of particle physics, only some particular areas of particle physics that are framed in that way. But unfortunately after my history in these particular areas I made myself bad reputation on the whole of particle physics group.

But the irony of the situation is that the reason I wantd to be a physicist on the first place is precisely BECAUSE i had problems with particle physics so when i was 9 year old I had a dream of "rewriting it". So that is why I totally refused to switch areas of physics even when they were trying to kick me out of school and stuff, simply because my life time goal was to do particles and nothing else.

So I guess it is kind of ironic. I insist on doing particle physics becuse I don't understand it, and at the same time I get stuck in that very field precisely becaues I don't understand it. So these two things put together basically put me in no win situation. And the reason my current career works for me is simply because that advisor whom I found, himself, is trying to rewrite particle physics from scratch. So I guess htat is the only match that would fit a combination of my interests and my difficulties all at once.

Making the decisions for my daughter is more difficult for me, because I know that she will live with the consequences of the decisions I make. When she couldn't talk, it was an easy decision to give her therapy to teach her to talk. But now, when she would rather spend her time learning foreign languages and memorizing facts about the solar system, and I'm teaching her how much fun it is to crash cars together and play tag and she's responding to it and I see her growing socially and enjoying friendships with the other children and looking very "normal", I really do think it's a good thing. But it really is changing her into a different person (her math skills have actually decreased from what they were at three years old, which of course isn't a problem, but it does mean that some parts of her brain are working less as others are working more). And sometimes it makes me very sad and frightened to know I'm changing her basic personality in such fundamental ways.

Actually my mom had ruined it for me in that exact way. When I started graduate school, my mom decided that I should go to Jewish club in order to make friends. When I finally gave in, I faced a lot of rejection due to my disability. Consequently, I decided to go to dating sites in order to disprove the concept that everyone hates me. But on dating sites I was hurt more and more, so this really consumed a lot of my energy, and contributed to the way my school fell appart.

Well to be fair, my mom never asked me to go to dating sites -- in fact I keep it from her that I did. But still, in terms of cause and effect, none of it would of happen if my mom never bothered me with Jewish club. If my mom haven't made "first move" so to speak I would of been 100% devoted to school, teh way I used to be as an undergraduate. So with all of the things I got "stuck" on, I am SURE I would of worked hard to get passed these things IF I weren't so much disracted by all these thoughts of rejection that WOULD OF NEVER BEEN THERE IF NOT FOR MY MOM"S INFLUENCE.

I guess the reason I am blaming it on my having been stuck is that the other obsessions CAN be viewed as "escape behaviors" since right now that I found a nice topic of research I am half way ridden of these disractions. But still the point is that the two things were feeding into each other, so who knows how much better I would of been doing if my mom just left me alone.