New School

I couple of months ago, I left London and started attending a new school up north. I am overall quite happy with my new school. However, it isn’t all perfect, and I have been wanting to write about my experiences at the new school for a while.

Enrolment Day

My first experience at the school with other students was on the enrolment day. I didn’t have a good impression of the school on that day, as all the other students seemed to know each other. That wasn’t a big problem. However, when I tried to say something to the other students, they ignored me. I enrolled for the courses I wanted to take and then I got the hell out.

First Induction Day

My second experience at the school with other students was the first induction day. That day was a lot better for me. I sat in an assembly hall full of other students, next to a student who said hello to me and introduced herself. I found that to be a very nice change from being ignored. When the assembly finished, the students were sent to their forms for class activities.

My mathematics form shared a room with the physics form for the class activities. In the beginning, the students were given pieces of paper with questions to ask the other students. The purpose of that activity was for the students to remember each other’s names. It was a bit pointless, as I forgot most of the names quite quickly.

Later on, the students in the room were split into groups to attempt to build the tallest freestanding tower out of paper and a length of sticky tape. Each tower had to be able to support an egg on the top, and the height of each tower was measured by how high it could hold the egg. That activity was also pretty pointless, but I enjoyed it and I got to know some of the other students.

Second Induction Day

On the second induction day, I had to go to a university. I didn’t know I had to go straight to the university, and I assumed all the students would be going together. I was given a map to find the university walking from the school, but like a genius, I left the map at home. However, when I went into the school, there was a teacher in there who was quite happy to take me to the university.

When I got there, I went into a lecture hall and there was a teacher in front of a PowerPoint presentation talking about when we would have to apply to go to university. I found it quite boring, and I was also quite hot, which didn’t help. When that assembly finished, the students were sent to different rooms, according to what their main subject was.

My main subject is mathematics, and I got to know some of the other math students at my school. In that time, the students went through their math summer homework. I didn’t bring in my summer homework that day, as I had no idea what the day was about. However, I could still help with solving some of the questions in the summer homework, and there were other math related activities.

Daily School Life

As I said, I am overall quite happy at my school. I understand most of what is said in class and ask my teachers about what I don’t understand. However, there is one problem I am having and it doesn’t seem like it will go away any time soon. I am finding it hard to make friends at the school, and I like having friends now more than I did at my previous school.

A lot of the students seem to ignore me. I don’t know why that is. My best guess is that the other students already have friends and don’t need any more. However, I don’t see that as a reason to ignore someone else, and I am still trying to figure out the real reason why other students ignore me.

Thankfully, I have made a couple of friends. In my physics class, someone noticed that I don’t have that many friends. She isn’t a crazy computer geek like I am, but in any case, having one friend is infinitely better than having none. My other friend at the school is another student with autism. He read one of my blog posts about autism and was interested to get to know me. I don’t know which of my posts he read, so rather than guessing, I’m just going to link them both below:

How My Mind Works Living With Autism

Posted on Tuesday 20th November 2012 - 1 comment