<p>Re: “I’d love to talk more, but he’s busy, and I can see that he’s working hard to establish more independence.”</p>
<p>I understand your feeling. For several weeks last semester, S was extremely busy (partly due to his schoolwork, partly due to his club activities) and our regular call each week became very short for those weeks. The most important thing is for your child to become independent eventually, isn’t it?!</p>
<p>It is so sweet for your S to maintain a blog just for you. When my S moved to his new dorm room and sent us some picture he took using his digital camera, we feel touched even till today, as he understands that we would love to see what his dorm room is like (so that we can plan what we should buy and mail to him.)</p>
<p>To OP, If you have time, send some pictures of your room and your surroundings to your mother as a mother day gift (well, the mother day has passed this year, but you get the idea).</p>
<p>Excellent observation, VeryHappy - thank you for articulating it so well.</p>
<p>Galoisien, I think part of what people are reacting to is that it’s evident you love your mother, which is wonderful. And I think it’s evident you have empathy for how hard she has worked to give you the opportunities you have, and that you are appreciative of those opportunities. And I think that’s wonderful.</p>
<p>However …
You wish you felt closer to her, and you are hurt when she doesn’t seem to want to talk about the things that interest you (chemistry, linguistics, whatever academic subject is interesting to you at the time). You have a lot of expectations that she “should” be interested in certain things, which, conveniently, happen to interest you (for example, you think she “should” be interested in discussing Singlish accents when she is Singaporean Chinese). </p>
<p>Yet it is evident that SHE is hurt that you dismiss what SHE’s interested in hearing about you (where you live, are you eating enough, do you need more money, are you losing too much weight, etc.). She’s doing the very same thing – she’s trying to get you to engage in topics that are important to HER (the well-being of her much loved son!) and you dismiss them as “tedious” and “uninteresting” and you basically communicate to her that you’re bored unless the conversation swings back to those things YOU find interesting.</p>
<p>I, too, had the thought about Asperger’s. Part of a relationship is give-and-take. When you love someone, or even when you’re friendly with someone, you can engage warmly in topics that don’t necessarily engage you intellectually, because they are important to people you care about. I couldn’t care less about golf, but I listen to my dad’s stories about his golf exploits because that’s how you build a relationship. It seems like you want your mother to do this to you, but you’re not willing to do it with her, and it seems rather one-sided.</p>
<p>I have to laugh at the idea that the stoners who are figuring out the best way to hide the smoke and the smell from the RA are “engaged in intellectually curious pursuits.” Uh, dude, they’re trying to hide the smoke and the smell. If Lysol did the trick, they’d use that. I strongly suspect that some of them may be yanking your chain.</p>
<p>Maybe the difference is that I might just want to have fun with my friends and maybe a few laughs about how people in different parts of the country pronounce words differently, not “learn new concepts.” Every interaction doesn’t need to be a lecture about new concepts. There is a time and a place for everything, and from your posts, I sense that you turn the most mundane of interactions into lectures.</p>
<p>OP, let’s compare two quotes from your recent posts. In fact, you posted these one right after the other. </p>
<p>Quote Number 1:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Second, about the engagement in intellectual discussion of your college floormates:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now, I and my fellow middle-aged compatriots could get into a highly detailed discussion about the factors affecting our thoughts on refinancing the mortgage and what to do with the cash received back from said refi. Or, we could delve into the factors influencing how we’re restructuring our retirement choices. Or how recent political developments at the workplace will influence our future continued employment prospects. I can assure you that we can bring a level of intellectual detail encompassing legal, social, economic, and scientific expertise. We’re even engaged and passionate about these subjects, subjects that were boring beyond words when we were college students. </p>
<p>Oddly, nowadays we never seem to get around to discussing using marijuana in an undetectable fashion. It’s no longer our daily metro, boulot, dodo.</p>
<p>As for the vanilla: yes, I care for my own household. I am interested in cooking, in food, even in detailed food chemistry. But given the choice between spending my time and money on trying new recipes (so many of them, so little time) or trying to figure out how I can match the flavor of vanilla with a mix of other spices, I’m just going to buy a bottle of the real stuff and save my time and money for trying new things. I’d guess that’s pretty typical of parents here, at least for the ones who cook. If you want to discuss details of cooking that are not the passion of people here, go to a forum where these things ARE a passion. Those intimidating people on cooking forums, the ones who have lots of spices and lots of equipment once started out as poor college students too, you know.</p>
<p>galosien, you come across as arrogant. It reminds me of my old office, where the snobbery of the well-read was thick. A serious discussion and nothing that had to do with work: “What is your favorite Descartes saying?” After witnessing the holier-than-thou exchange, I piped in: "My favorite Descartes saying is ‘Don’t put de cart before de horse.’ " :)</p>
<p>Another time a very intelligent woman in the office whom I greatly admired didn’t know which sports champion would wear a green jacket. That didn’t make her an idiot; she just knew different kinds of things.</p>
<p>I think you’ll be much happier, galosien, if you’d quit looking down on people. Most adults have learned to accept people’s differences and don’t feel compelled to engage in intellectual argument. Doesn’t make them without passion; it just means they are aware they are not the center of the universe and don’t feel compelled to be “right.”</p>
<p>And I have to add that I’m sure your mother would be crushed (and then maybe amused) that you hold her in such little regard. Makes me sad for both of you. Does it annoy me when I have to yell at the phone when my 81yo dad calls because he’s deaf as a doorknob and refuses to wear any of the hearing aids he’s bought? Yeah, but I do it anyway because that’s what loving family does.</p>
<p>:D
You DO read CC, don’t you, Youdontsay? I mean you’re a Senior Member? Practically every thread on the Parent Forum/Parent Cafe involves “intellectual” argumentation, this one included! And in terms of adults not feeling “compelled to be 'right” please see the endless thread on “Chastity Bono changing gender”.</p>
<p>We’re all big wordy show-offs, okay, I am speaking for myself, yes! We all want to be right! The internet is a haven for childishness, and most of it is anonymous. There is bullying, ganging up, flaming, flouncing, lurking, stalking, the entire panoply of schoolyard behavior, writ large. Most of us are too old for e-spats, but it’s like we can’t help ourselves. We need Netoholics E-nonymous!</p>
<p>I have to disagree a bit AnudduhMom. While I do agree with what you’re saying in general, I don’t think it applies to galoisien. Just look at the title of this thread. He poses his question in the manner of an insult, and then appears to be bewildered at the response. </p>
<p>I’ve said this before, but I think he just posts here to mess with people. Either that or he really does have Asperger’s.</p>
<p>At my child’s circle, a small group of students believe that the college education should be all about such pure academic pursuits and despise those who are on any preprofessional tracks in college. – But they learn to live peacefully with each other. Heck, my child’s closest friend has this attitude and they are still best friends and learn a lot from each other.</p>
<p>At my work place, if you talk about this kind of stuff during coffee/lunch break, you will likely be regarded as an odd ball. Even mundane topics like refinancing or some details about how to interpret tax code (for preparing the tax return) are more popular than the intellect stuff.</p>
<p>I am not against the pursuit of the academic stuff especially while you are in college, but it appears to me that a lot of things that seem to be very important or interesting for a college student become not so relevant only a few years after s/he is graduated from college. It is as if they move onto the next stage of their lives. The next stage of life is neither better nor worse.</p>
<p>As the mom of a kid with an autistic spectrum disorder (nearly but not quite Asperger’s), I have to say that my kid definitely knows that a title such as the one used for this thread is insulting.</p>
<p>The OP doesn’t strike me as Aspie-ish; the OP strikes me as someone desperate for adult attention and trying to get that attention however it’s possible to get (hence the provocative thread titles). Of course I could be wrong about either side of the preceding sentence…</p>
<p>I was at a workshop yesterday that was designed to be an acting experience that eventually would lead to a local performance of Romeo and Juliet. I was irritated when the first part of the workshop was “What is a sonnet?”, something that seemed to have been brought up only so some literature majors in the group could show off their knowledge of the intricacies of literature. </p>
<p>Some people don’t seem to outgrow their need to show off intellectually. Fortunately, there are many people – including very smart ones – who don’t have to make every experience some kind of intellectual competition. There even are plenty of smart college students who aren’t into doing things like this. They probably are the ones who are really living their lives while enjoying the intellectual opportunities of college.</p>
<p>There’s also a big difference between intellectual discourse and pretentious b.s. :)</p>
<p>Owlice, peace. I am also a parent of a child on the spectrum and as you know, what one person with autism perceives does not equal the perception of another person on the spectrum. I might say “my child would get this joke”, therefore that doesn’t describe the characteristics of another autistic individual sort of negates what we think we know about the tricky nature of this syndrome.</p>
<p>My mentioning AS is in no way meant to disparage the OP or people with Asperger’s, but to say to him – if you feel misunderstood, there may be a reason beyond just differences in “passions”. There may be no “fault” or problem, beyond that of self-examination and understanding that differences vis a vis the mom may NOT be due to lack of will.</p>
<p>I am also somewhat Aspie, and I’m glad I know that at my advanced age. Lack of eye contact, perseverative thinking, arcane “passions”, wordiness (sesquipedalianism), the whole mishegoss, that’s me all right.</p>
<p>AnudduhMom, oh, I didn’t think your mentioning it was in ANY way meant disparagingly!! I knew how you meant it; the OP has just never struck me that way, is all, based on the Aspies I know, including my nearly-so son, and the OP’s posts. I recognize that one or both sides of my penultimate sentence above could be wrong. It’s a big spectrum with lots of variation, indeed!</p>
<p>I agree that the OP tends to look down on people. He’s sort of like Raskolnikov in that he feels smarter than the vast majority of people and believes that if he will allow his ambitiousness to overstep ethics, he will become another Napoleon. But no, that comparison fails, because Raskolnikov did care for others, which does not appear to be the case with galoisien.</p>
<p>In his more controversial threads, he’s been asking questions like how can he hide his college enrollment for a job application, how can he avoid confrontation from the 50 y.o. lovesick man he seduced for housing, how can he quickly attain a vocational degree from a community college by transferring his many credits there instead of being “lectured” (there’s that word again!) by “nobodies”…</p>
<p>It seems that the common trend is that the OP is egotistical, lacks empathy, and has problems understanding widely-accepted ethical standards. He can do and think whatever, but his surprise at receiving negative comments on his remarks surprises me. He’s intelligent, yes, but has a lot to learn about human interactions.</p>
<p>Okay, I have to step in here. That would just be part of the pain. I already have credits for the material … I wouldn’t learn anything. Actually it would also suck because I’d have to pay for all those credits, and also because the vocational job would only be useful while in school without a degree (or in grad school) or between permanent job searches.</p>
<p>I don’t really get how you think I’m looking down on people. My IMPRESSION of many adults is that they’ve lost passion and curiosity COMPARED with my peers. Of course, I want to know why this is. Impressions can be false. There are a lot of phenomena that appear to defy reality but can actually be traced to more subtle mechanisms (e.g. acupuncture, confirmation bias…)</p>
<p>I’ve never been tested for autism spectrum disorder. I do wonder though, because my father was essentially a psychopath to the family – his malicious acts were conscious and he displayed no love or affection, etc. (Except maybe, when he pretended to my mother, but I never got any from him.) Somehow the genes that lead to psychopathy are also factors for autism spectrum disorder? But no, I have noticed that am very empathyless and passionless at certain times, even when I don’t want to, contrasted by periods of a sudden surge in empathy, emotion, etc. It’s very annoying – gets in the way of good customer service and fun at parties.</p>
<p>This is why people wonder if you have some sort of processing disorder or are on the spectrum. You easily believe yourself to be OH so superior intellectually to the vast majority of people at community colleges, esp those on a vocational nursing track. You said that you didn’t want to be taught by “nobodies,” as if you were so superior to a community college professor. People with normal social skills and a sense of humility don’t call perfectly hard-working community college professors “nobodies.”</p>
<p>I don’t know where you think I want to break widely-accepted ethical standards. (An interesting point to consider is – how did those standards come about?) </p>
<p>You didn’t hear the full story about the 50 yr. old man. I was drawn in and then he did a bait and switch on me on 100% commitment – and my fault was playing along because I was already living in his house (without other summer housing) and suddenly he decides to mention it now! So I fled into an apartment I actually <em>had</em> to rent, but I wanted to know how to refuse him in the best way possible. I don’t want to be coerced into a relationship. And the housing was a perk – I was trying to avoid spending on rent (I ended up doing so anyway) – and I was looking for companionship. </p>
<p>It violates ethical boundaries to ask about transfer credit to a CC without forfeiting your existing transcript at your parent institution? Really? If you were applying to a vocational program while already in college wouldn’t you want to know if some of your college credits could apply to? Would you really be satisfied in taking general chem from a sketchy CC (I say sketchy because its quality is clearly questionable compared to NoVa community colleges) when you already have taken organic chemistry at a more reputable 4-year institution anyway? Why do you accuse me of arrogance when you would never send your child to such a school? I really think YOU ALL would be rather alarmed – I didn’t mean just myself, I expected other college students would know what I meant.</p>
<p>Galoisien, if people called my posts pedantic, boring, thought I was overly arrogant, focused on irrelevant detail, and thought I might be on the autistic / Asperger’s spectrum, I’d engage in some self-reflection. It doesn’t seem as though you are willing to entertain the fact that you’re not within the realm of “normal” in terms of your intellectual passions and your ability to connect with others.</p>
