The difference between learning and comprehension

As I've gotten older I have come to realize something,

There appears to be a massive, massive difference between learning something and truly understanding it.

You can learn pretty much anything simply by reading a decently presented book on the subject, a fact that people have probably brought up a million times, but understanding meaning behind something can really trip people up.

I've learned a lot about life from hearing about things, other peoples personal experiences count for a lot of peoples social development both growing up and once we're adults, but most would probably agree that social development is really aided by personal experiences, the pain and strife that people go through as they grow turns them into the people that they are when they get older.

So my thinking has been that does my place in an educational system actually mean diddly squat when considering my overall development as a human being, and my happiness as a person.

Personal experience for better or for worse shaped our feelings on pretty much anything, in fact other than as young children for most of us being told something has nothing of the same weight behind it as actually experiencing something.

From a larger perspective I have to realized that no matter what sort of education I or others have there is no reason that you cannot learn something from them, and no matter what no one way to do things or to live is the right way.

Being Autistic

A realization hit me today,

Mainly that I never really talk to anyone about being Autistic, or rather having an ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) called Asperges Syndrome. I am not a self-diagnosed case I was diagnosed by a psychologist/psychiatrist (not sure the difference) when I was 16 years old after I started to refuse going to school.

After I was diagnosed a lot of my previous behavior made way more sense, a lot of the tenancies I had written off as quirks turned out to be the usual signs of someone suffering from Asperges. A lot of people I knew had a decent amount of trouble dealing with the fact that I was Autistic, some because they couldn't see it, some because they didn't want to see it and one extreme case where they were annoyed that they hadn't seen it first (friend with some psychology experience)

Personally I had no issue accepting this new diagnosis, at the time it gave me an excuse to behave in certain ways, but as I grew older I realized that a lot of the problems I had before stemmed from not acting in these certain ways because I thought I wasn't supposed to act that way. Partially a deep hate of large crows, unfamiliar areas and sudden loud noises. Put in these situations I would often get sulky or moody and basically be a little arsehole to the people around me, once I realized that these things weren't something that I had to lie about or hide I found it much easier to deal with.

In the end it took me being diagnosed with asperges for me to really look into and fix a lot of my problems. I got over the long bouts of depression that characterized my early teen years, I managed to actually make some friends due to learning that taking people in small doses at first was the right way to go and I learned to just tell people when something concerning my asperges caused problems or lead to misunderstandings. 

I don't know why I wrote this by the way, it just seemed that I should try and put this into words for anyone who was interested, also so that people actually know slightly more about me instead of just seeing the few scraps of writing that actually get uploaded to this place.


P.s. for anyone in the US, please stop pronouncing it ASS BURGERS, in the UK we pronounce it ASS-PURGES which while still mildly hilarious is much less embarrassing when explaining to people who don't know what it is.

p.p.s also for all those out there who are self diagnosed asperges then you should go see someone and get a proper diagnosis. For people in the situation where they are actually diagnosed you are just causing problems and making people mistrust anyone who says that they suffer from it, same goes for insomnia by the way, pretty sure you can actually get diagnosed with that, it's not just something you can claim to have.

P.p.p.s did you know that one of the types of Insomnia is called 'Acute Sleep On-Set Insomnia'?  Because I was diagnosed with that when I was much younger, having said that it seems to have lasted like 10 years so I don't think it can really be counted as acute any more (acute means lasting like 1 - 7 days)