The legacy of Andrew Wakefield continues

[SheilaT]

5. Thank you.

Like so many with Asperger's he's brilliant in science. Physics was his first love, his first college major. He flunked out of Reed College in Portland, OR, because the Asperger's got in the way of his ability to go to school. He came back to Kansas, attended the local junior college until he pulled his grades up (and along with the wonderful help of his high school college counselor) to be able to get into Kansas State University into their engineering program. After about a year and a half he flunked out again, essentially because of the Asperger's.

He eventually completed a CAD (Computer Aided Design) degree at our local junior college and was able to find a temp job in the field. They really liked him there. They tried very hard to make his position permanent, but alas, that didn't happen. So after that job ended and unable to find another CAD job, he went back to school. He's working on a physics degree. Last year I asked him to come visit me (I live in another state about 800 miles away) over his winter break. He couldn't. He'd gotten a phone call from the people at the CAD job, and they had work for him over the winter break. As sorry as I was not to see him, I knew how amazing that was.

When he was in high school he went to the astronomy camp at the University of Arizona. Great program, still exists. Anyway, the first year he was attending I had difficulty getting the head of the camp to respond to me when I left a voice mail. After my son attended, my calls were always returned. A year later on a spring break trip to Tucson I called that man and he not only returned my call but offered to give us (me and both my sons) a tour of the facility at the UofA campus. Did you know they make telescopes there? I didn't until then. Anyway, the astronomer gave us a wonderful tour, and at some point he used the word "genius" in referring to my son, and it was clear that wasn't a word he used lightly.

Later on, when I visited the Reed College campus, in an effort to keep my son from flunking out, the head of the physics department there made it clear that he really, really hoped son could stay. Or return.

My entire point here is that kids with Asperger's face challenges. They do not mature on the same timetable as the rest of us. Heck, I moved out and was fully self-supporting at the age of 17, which even back then was a bit unusual. My son, now age 30, is finally able to live on his own.

Even though I have fantasies of my son winning a Nobel Prize -- and I long ago told him that if that happens he must, at the ceremony, say "I owe this all to my wonderful mother" -- I do live in the reality-based world, and don't worry about such things very much.

The other thing I love about my son is that every single time I discuss anything vaguely connected to astronomy I learn something new. The most recent thing was that in the winter we are pointed away from the galactic center, and so the Milky Way is harder to locate, compared to the summer when we (meaning the planet) are pointed towards the galactic center. Don't know about anyone else, but that was new to me.