hello thanks for listening to our podcast autism goes to college my name is El Nash and I graduated from Emory

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University in December of 2024 I have a bachelor’s degree in Classics and English with a minor in linguistics as well as an associates degree in Liberal

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Arts when I started the process of planning for college I knew I might face some obstacles with such a big transition but I’d been lucky to have

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spent many summers at Sleepaway Camp which helped me feel prepared for the day-to-day of living space with other people Once I arrived however I

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encountered unexpected challenges at college and in life and after discussions with friends and family and a lot of self-reflection I came to

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understand myself as autistic in other words I went through all of high school the application process and nearly half

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of my undergrad experience unaware of this fundamental part of Myself by the time I graduated I had an Autism

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diagnosis I had found a community and I truly felt like belonged on this episode I’ll share how

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all all of that unfolded for me how it changed my college experience and how it continues to impact my life as I start to become an independent adult I’m here

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with Katherine O’Brien the new host of the autism goes to college podcast and I’m going to hand it over to her hey

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everyone welcome L and congratulations on receiving your degree um thank you so you you went to Emory which is in

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Atlanta uh I think of it as a happening Urban culture center um but you started

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at the satellite campus called Oxford College which I understand to be a smaller Li arts program can you talk

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about how you ended up at Oxford and then chose to transition to the big city big university so part of it has to do with

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how the program itself Works um the Oxford College program is a two-year program by Design there are freshman and sophomores on campus it’s very small

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there’s a graduating class of roughly 500 and then all of these students receive a an associates degree in

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Liberal Arts and then they transition onto the main campus and depending on what you are looking for in the college

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it can be useful for a variety of reasons a lot of people who enjoy leadership positions or want to take that on for them themselves find a lot

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of difficulty early on uh starting at a place like Emory where maybe all of those positions are filled by Juniors and seniors and they don’t want to wait

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and with that sort of space they are able to immediately take those first steps for me um the draw was a little

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different I’m a Humanities major at heart and I also come from a very small high school and I grew up at the same

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school for for 15 and our graduating class was 60 so even though the uh graduating class of my Oxford class was

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500 that was still almost a 10 times increase so for me there was even though it involved more transitions than most

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people have in that period of time it made the transition a lot more gradual and gave me time to adjust so it was really helpful for me uh trying to

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navigate this space in a way that was both functional for my development and also didn’t break me down

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inside so um you mentioned in the show open that you weren’t cognizant in the

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college application process of looking at schools from a neurodiversity and accommodations lens because you weren’t

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identifying as autistic yet um so what was that like um in high school and transitioning to college without that

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level of insight well and this will probably be a running theme I’m very fortunate to have

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the world’s best parents um and so my my parents have always been very supportive of me uh and understanding of my brain

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even if we didn’t necessarily have the language to say oh that’s why this works this way um so when it came to the

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college process uh the way that my brain works I’m generally a high achiever in a structured academic setting and I like

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to plan ahead and so the idea of applying for colleges was the the issues that were

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more daunting for me were a writing about myself having to sort of sell myself or present myself um and B when it came down to the

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colleges I was accepted to knowing ahead of time what I would want to commit to because it’s such a big decision it’s

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amazing to me that we ask really anyone at that threshold of adulthood really on the edge of childhood to make such a big

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decision with their lives um yeah I I personally really struggle with the UC system asking High School seniors to

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apply to specific major um speaking of the college application process you selected Emery but where else did you

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apply so I applied to many different places uh but I ended up accepted into four uh on the surface very different

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schools um so I was accepted to Emory accepted to the University of Miami which is where my parents both

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went and it’s where they met um down in Miami Florida not the one in Ohio and I was accepted to you La so you know alternate universe where I was in a

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different time zone uh and I was finally I was accepted to brimar um and as you can imagine very different uh in terms

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of size in terms of environment U um was it hard to choose and how did you

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decide it was very hard um because one of the things that is supposed to feel reassuring and really

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ultimately is reassuring but can give you that sort of choice paralysis in the moment is the idea that oh well you you would find your way in any of these

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schools you would you would fit in any of these places if you really put in the the effort I see I see potential in each

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of these sort of spots and so it was it was a rough couple of days of just back and forthing with my very

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understanding parents of but how am I supposed to know how am I supposed to know if it’ll be the right fit for me if I if I’m not there already uh and

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ultimately we decided on Oxford and Emory because it provided that sort of

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transition for me so even though I didn’t have the language of oh I’m autistic I like XYZ things I my brain is

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structured in XYZ ways I did already know about myself that the transition was going to be hard and this was going to make it more gradual and it gave me

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the most versatility it gave me the options to explore what a small setting looks like what a more rural setting looks like what a more liberal arts

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focused setting looks like and then it gave me the opportunity to expand and push myself uh so ultimately it came

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down to allowing myself that kind of Versatility because if I don’t know what it’s going to be like then giving myself

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that room to kind of Wiggle around uh was useful yeah yeah um seems like you had a

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lot of wisdom in your approach so when you got got to campus and at the Oxford

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College uh location did was that an oncampus living dorms uh traditional

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first year college experience for you absolutely did you have a roommate I did uh and I had a roommate that was

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randomly matched and one of the things that I was a little worried about but ended up pleasantly surprised by was the

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roommate matching because I had heard that other people did all of this research and matched ahead of time and found each other on social media before

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and they were all compatible but as I was there for those two years it turns out that the people with the highest success rate at least at Oxford were the

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people that matched randomly because if you try too hard ahead of time to figure out who’s most compatible with you eventually you’re going to run into

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difficulties no matter what and you haven’t anticipated them so I yeah so I matched randomly with my roommate and we

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are we were and are not similar at all really but we were able to respect each other’s space and we actually ended up becoming

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friends because we were able to kind of start with that distance and respect and then work our way in instead of coming

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in with preconceived notions I think part of it too is that while I definitely advocate for being able to

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control as much as you can in terms of your own life your own structure at College because there’s so much freedom and that can be paralyzing

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um it is very very true that you cannot control other people and so your your efforts need to be focused in the right

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spaces or you’re going to just drain your energy and if you spend yeah if you spend all that time trying to select for the right person and then they are or do

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or say things you can’t control and you are or do or say things they can’t control you’re setting yourself up for failure yeah there’s almost no way to

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meet the expectation of like I have Matchmaker my perfect friends and everything is going to be perfect now um

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yeah make speaking of of finding friends and making friends and the pressure to have one did you have any friends from

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your your hometown or um your prior school I know it was a small school so maybe not at college and did you make

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new friends pretty easily well I like I said I grew up with the same 60 people um right up until I

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graduated and I had a very longstanding but very small group of friends in my high school uh and then we went our

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separate ways but I did end up actually having one of my friends who was a year below me also go through Oxford and

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emera right now she’s a she’s a junior oh interesting on the Atlanta campus um and having her around was fantastic

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because it was really nice to have that sort of sense of familiarity and also be able to impart whatever it was I had learned to be like oh no I know about

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that place do this XYZ thing when you get there um or I know these tips and tricks about which machines break or um

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what the weather’s going to be like um but in terms of making new connections

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that’s something that I found and still find very difficult to do to initiate those kinds of relationships so even

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though I had a nice relationship with my roommate my first year uh we weren’t roommates my second year and while I and

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and while I ended up finding a new roommate who we also had a nice relationship with we don’t keep in touch

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and past that I still find it very difficult to put myself out there to make those new kinds of friendships and

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relationships and there it’s not for lack of infrastructure I will say especially at a small place like Oxford there are lots of

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opportunities uh different clubs the school itself will make all these kinds of events try to make it easier but that’s just something I’ve always really

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fundamentally struggled with yeah and so you’re you’re getting into some of the like the social

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emotional reciprocity challenges that can I mean they are the core features of autism you have to have all three of

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them to be diagnosed so let’s let’s get into that a little bit you were struggling with friendship I know you

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were diagnosed at some point during college what led up to that so I

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actually I very much grew up with the stereotyped image of autism that’s very limited that we see in media andly male

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overwhelmingly white overwhelmingly uh kind of taken into the branches of either tolerated for their genius uh or

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just a complete burden to society in in Big Air quotes um and I didn’t necessarily see myself in that and never

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really thought to question it um because I didn’t have autistic people in my life or at least I didn’t know I had autistic

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people in my life and the people in my life didn’t also necessarily know that they were autistic

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and as I started to sort of challenge that for myself one of the big catalysts was actually my friend from my hometown

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uh because I would establish routines of calling people at home to make sure that I was kind of getting that sort of social connection even if I couldn’t do

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it with new people and my friend at home she was still in high school but she was kind of going through this process of realizing oh I’m autistic and she’s

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describing all these experiences that she has um going through like oh now I have the support that I need or in this

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area I’m feeling really challenged or these are the experiences that I’m having or that I had and I’m like what do you mean that’s an autistic thing

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what do you mean um and I started to sort of seek out the opinions and experiences of autistic

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people both in my life and then in social media as well but learning from other people’s experiences I was like wait a minute this this thing I

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experienced I’m not this isn’t something fundamentally wrong with me that I’m just a weirdo and completely alone in the world um and the more that I talked

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to her and eventually she came on campus uh with me and she was involved with the

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club on campus called Oxford uh autism advocacy organization which uh would then become well it would then become

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for those of us that mooved to Atlanta emy’s uh autism advocacy organization but I was not initially as involved as she was but as I started to come to

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meetings and talk with more people who had a better understanding of themselves and how their brain worked I was like H

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maybe this is something I should discuss with the people in my life and maybe there would be something to looking at an evaluation looking at a diagnosis to

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see if this is really what we think it is um so I didn’t actually realize I had to go back through my records because Co

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has messed with all of our senses of time and um I I was diagnosed in the spring of or

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the early spring of 2023 um so right before I ended up graduating from Oxford so I spent most

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of my time at Oxford with either no idea or some very small inkling of what was going on of now that I’m out of this

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very routine structured environment what’s going on why am I struggling in XYZ ways

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yeah yeah and were you able to access an evaluation on campus at Oxford or was

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that something you had to um like go back home and find a doctor for it’s a good question uh I happen to

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live in Savannah which which is a 4-Hour drive away from Atlanta and roughly from Oxford I was having this discussion with my family while I was at home and it

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made sense for us to sort of go through that process while I was at home and I had access to my family my support

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system um yeah so we ended up doing the meeting the evaluations and all of that sort of stuff at home and then I had

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that information with me when I returned to school um so what was the evaluation like did your folks go with you to the

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appointment you know what did they have you do uh it was it was very funny because I

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had already seen ahead of time that people who either took self-

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evaluative uh assessments or got evaluated that a common experience for people was they would read a question

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and they would have no idea how to answer it because they needed more context or because it didn’t make any sense to them uh or they wanted to answer something that wasn’t on like the

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scale that was provided to them uh and while I thought it was funny I didn’t realize how true it was until I got

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there and they hand me this large questionnaire of all these questions and I’m like I can’t I can’t explain

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myself no I do not struggle with socks for you see I have a system sir exactly yeah this is this is a common

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enough experience that my assertation on assessment of college students is focusing on which measures are

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neurodivergent friendly and ethnographically observing people in clinic to see what confuses them so your

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assessment um was confusing there were long questionnaires um you know

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and you got through it and how did you get their results and did they kind of make sense did everything click

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what was that moment like when you found out basically they just emailed me this pages long PDF just of all of these like

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observations of my behavior and uh I also I I went back through it and wrote down the I don’t know if this is

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something that would be of interest to people listening but I wrote down the different uh tests that they put on there so I took the wesler adult

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intelligence scale uh the Adaptive Behavior assessment system the social responsiveness scale the autism

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diagnosis observation schedule the forgive me the aimak yeah the aach I feel so proud of

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myself the Akim Bach adult Behavior checklist uh yeah and the ADHD rating scale and then there were some like

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self-reports um so it was one of the things that was very gratifying uh was taking those sort of like intelligence

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scale tests and seeing like 99th percentile 99th percentile I’m like yeah I’m doing so good I’m so smart uh and then I got to processing speed and it

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was like 30th percentile and I’m like hey yeah mine look almost exactly that um yeah that all makes sense that’s a

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that is a gold standard young adult autism assessment right there um and it sounds like maybe kind of a weird way to get

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their results I certainly wouldn’t email a diagnostic report without making time to speak face to face or on the phone

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with the person generally best practice is that you want to share the diagnosis that you’re giving with them directly um

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and it sounds like that didn’t happen uh not entirely to my recollection we had like a pre

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conversation before we even did the uh before we did the things um but the the

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funniest thing was the sort of like individual observations of behavior um

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because all she was doing was saying the things that I was doing but through her eyes there were there were uh I guess

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like discrepancies or issues so one of the things was she asked me how happiness felt uh and I’m like what do you mean

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how does happiness feel yeah it feels like happiness that’s what the word is for um and I said like I’m having trouble understanding how to

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answer that question yeah and that that happened quite a few times where I’m like I don’t understand how I’m supposed to answer this and that was a

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sign apparently and that is a sign on the insight into emotions with self

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and others so for one of the tests was and this was one of the tests that brought down my processing speed it was like a search symbol test and they had

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like a set of symbols on one side and then they had one specific symbol on the other side and they were like uh Circle it Circle the symbol if you find it or

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say that you haven’t found it uh in each sort of set and I was like okay well before I do this I have a

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question do do does it need to be the exact symbol as it’s replicated or does it can it be like I see the symbol in a

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greater symbol but there’s other stuff going on and she was like just answer it however you want and I’m like but how am

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I supposed to get the right answer if I don’t know what the right answer is and that’s what slowed down my

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processing time um so which is something that I think can be both useful in certain environments um

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that you have people who are not just intuitively uh going for what they think the right answer is they don’t I guess

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follow those I guess heuristics is the word I’m remembering from yeah a htic a heuristic is is an intellectual shortcut

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so to speak so yes um so I guess in a sort of like intuition version of that um but on the other hand if you need an

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answer fast I guess what a lot of brains are adapted to do is compromise on that accuracy still get fairly accurate but

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be much faster and that’s definitely not one of my strengths you have your diagnosis and you’re heading back to

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college did you you know bring it to the Oxford College student disability services and get started with accommodations you know what was your

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next step once you knew I think that’s a very logical next step for a lot of people uh for me

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personally uh most of the accommodations that are sort of at the very least longstanding and more likely to be

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implemented are academic and I was generally not struggling uh in academic spaces there was a rise in

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unpredictability because College professors have a much greater sort of influence over what they teach and how

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they teach compared to my high school teachers um but I I was still

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pretty uh I was on Solid Ground in those classroom spaces and I actually had a

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leg up in terms of living situations because like I mentioned in the opening uh I was a camper for 10 years at a

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22 minutes, 45 seconds

Sleepaway Camp that was uh two months out of the year and then I was a staff member for three more

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years and while that can be incredibly daunting just on the face of it uh

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because I had been there so long it it I’m very thankful for the fact that I had been there from a young age because

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it sort of forced me into proximity with other people it taught me how to live in spaces with other people I couldn’t

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control without uh the nice thing about Camp is that you don’t sort of like it’s its own bubble in a way so if you stumble and

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fall you will get picked up again and there were people there who could understand if I was having a difficulty But

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ultimately it meant that you can’t shy away from conflict you can’t shy away from being uncomfortable and so it provided me that sort of resilience that

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maybe not everyone has the opportunity to experience when they’re coming into college for the first time and they’re like now I have to share my space with a

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whole other person yeah um and I imagine that’s especially true for autistic people in hindsight are there

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accommodations you wish were available that were not on offer that would have like persuaded you to go talk to student

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disability or was it not on your radar at all I mean my biggest area of struggle was really sort of initiating

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those relationships and the idea of sort of going to a person or a space or a service to be like please put me in

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contact with new people was almost antithetical because because the avoidance the anxiety was was there that

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was the major pressure about initiating those those sorts of relationships um however I’m not the

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only autistic student on campus right so especially as I’m learning from other people what their experiences are how

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even when they do everything right and they have a diagnosis which many of them didn’t or didn’t have access to

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um even those supposedly like nicely in place academic accommod were not always available to them or not

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implemented by every Professor because again they have their sort of autonomy and often will refuse to comply yeah and

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be and that’s just the academic stuff so even people who were trying to get a single because they would not be able to

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live a functional life for themselves or for other people if they were sharing that space with someone else it was incredibly difficult people who needed

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emotional support animals or service animals it was very difficult so while it was not necessarily the kind of

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infrastructure that would have uh greatly benefited me or at least my experiences on that campus other things

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about that campus were useful for me uh that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of room to improve on our campus and I

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imagine on many others yeah um yeah people who have been in this career space a long time tend to

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have very you know apologizing attitudes and there is the reality in your situation of well I want help initiating

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relationships but I’m going to have to initiate a relationship with someone in order to have them help me help I’m in a

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double bind um so it sounds like you stayed involved in the autism advocacy Group after you were diagnosed did that

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create like a a peer support network at least that helped you feel kind of held in the absence of institutional support

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absolutely so I think it’s it’s one thing to sort of in the abstract see people on a screen

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who might have similar experiences to you it’s an entirely other thing to show up in person once a week and see all

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these people who you may like pass in the hallway or you may share a class with who you know are seeing the world in a very similar way to you or if

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they’re seeing it in a different way they can enrich and Enlighten your perspective and that was one of my favorite things was sitting down and listening to how other people

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experienced autism in their own brains or there was a lot of comorbidity so a lot of people in uh ‘s autism advocacy

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27 minutes, 7 seconds

organization had autism and ADHD or Autism and OCD um and so listening to their stories their experiences their

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special interests we have PowerPoint nights PowerPoint nights are so fun um because I got to be educated on a new topic and I got to see their

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enthusiasm um so having that sort of space where you know you’re not going to be sort of surveilled and punished for

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27 minutes, 32 seconds

things that you can’t even clock yourself uh is was incredibly valuable to me to know that I wasn’t alone and I imagine is incredibly valuable to other

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people just to have that space to breathe yeah um and speaking of neurodiversity groups on campus that

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allow people space to breathe autism goes to college is so excited to be collaborating with bruan Nar diversity at UCLA for live podcast taping next

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28 minutes

month in order of autism uh awareness and acceptance month April so we love

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student Le uh efforts for inclusion um yeah were there

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28 minutes, 14 seconds

surprises in the wake of your autism diagnosis things that you didn’t expect changes that occurred that you didn’t see

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coming uh yeah I mean a lot of it has to do with diagnosis can be very useful as

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a tool for people in different ways and one of those ways more directly can be acquiring the support that they need um

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28 minutes, 38 seconds

for me one of the things that it did was allow me to completely recontextualize my past my present and

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28 minutes, 45 seconds

my future um to look back on experiences in childhood and be like that’s why I did that um or that’s why I was so upset

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28 minutes, 54 seconds

about that uh and then in the present be like oh I wasn’t just feeling really

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upset about that for nothing next time I’ll go and I’ll wear earplugs next time I’ll go and if I want to leave early I

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29 minutes, 10 seconds

can next time if I don’t feel like I can take doing XYZ thing I just won’t and

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29 minutes, 17 seconds

then I will supplement in some other way um and it allowed me to plan for for the future to know those things ahead of

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29 minutes, 24 seconds

time and really set myself up for Success um um and it’s also been very funny uh in discussions with my parents

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29 minutes, 32 seconds

God bless them uh because they’d be like that’s why you did that thing when you were little um and my my brother who has

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29 minutes, 39 seconds

ADHD went through a very similar thing he’s still at high school but he was diagnosed fairly late um and he is also

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29 minutes, 47 seconds

realizing that’s why I was struggling in this way in school and this is how I can now sort of take that and stride as I’m preparing for the college

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29 minutes, 56 seconds

experience have your parents begun to identify with the neurodivergent Paradigm because it sounds like your

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whole family is on the oh a little weird to oh one neurodivergent child to Oh all our kids are neurodivergent too no no

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30 minutes, 12 seconds

normal bananas in this household so so it’s very funny because um my my mother and I are at least at

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30 minutes, 21 seconds

this point in my life we very much on the same wavelength so we we have very similar fre you pages on Tik Tok that kind of thing um so she’s she’s been

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30 minutes, 29 seconds

very much by my side in this um and she also has ADHD um my father I I’ve uh been playing this game

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30 minutes, 38 seconds

of you know autism is hereditary right and he’s like yeah and he’ll he’ll uh be like but I’ll be like you’re the culprit

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I’m like he’s like I’m not the culprit I’m not the culprit uh and he’ll he’ll say or do something he’ll be like oh and I’m I’m really stressed when there’s

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30 minutes, 54 seconds

this break in my routine and I’m like interesting he’s like no no it’s not interesting um but

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31 minutes, 2 seconds

he we all have something going on in in our brains in different ways um but for

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31 minutes, 10 seconds

them well into their adult lives um sometimes having that diagnosis or that identification can be good because like

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31 minutes, 19 seconds

in the case of ADHD it means that my family can get the medication that they need um and sometimes it’s not particularly useful so we the important

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31 minutes, 27 seconds

thing is that we we have all learned to support each other even more now that we understand how our brains work a little more and we’re able to give each other

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31 minutes, 35 seconds

tips so now uh if we go out somewhere that’s loud I can be like just so you know it’s going to be over stimulating and we all know what that means and

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31 minutes, 42 seconds

we’re all able to plan for it yeah that’s wonderful so you

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31 minutes, 50 seconds

graduated at the end of the fall semester in 2024 just a few months ago what if you’ve been up to since how’s it

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31 minutes, 59 seconds

going uh well there have been sort of two I guess projects in my life uh one of them is I am currently employed at a

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32 minutes, 8 seconds

law firm part-time uh and I thank you in this economy I think

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32 minutes, 15 seconds

employment is a huge accomplishment oh thank you and that’s another area that can be really difficult because it’s another area that’s like sell yourself

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32 minutes, 23 seconds

to all of these people and even though you just put everything down on your resume perfectly write all of that again in this entirely new system um yeah so

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32 minutes, 32 seconds

yeah I’m I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here um but know I I really struggled with interviews I was not

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diagnosed at the time as artistic and ultimately the job that I got uh was was through a neighbor who was able to kind

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32 minutes, 48 seconds

of vouch for me that I wasn’t as weird as the first impression that I make frankly um I mean it really does speak

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32 minutes, 56 seconds

to the value of community and people in your life um the other project Shameless plug here uh is that my my father and I

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we actually have our own podcast uh called edication which is why I have the earphones and the fancy microphone uh

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33 minutes, 13 seconds

and we are looking to sort of provide different experiences and perspectives to the world of education so we’ve and

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33 minutes, 22 seconds

and we’re very much in our fledgling stages we are not the sort of professional outfit uh that yall have um

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33 minutes, 28 seconds

but we are looking to teachers we’re looking to administrators my father is a school counselor he was also a teacher

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33 minutes, 36 seconds

um before he was a school counselor um we I know I’m so it’s very fun uh and

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33 minutes, 43 seconds

we’re enjoying ourselves um but we also have a lot of connections through Camp because a lot of those people at Camp uh

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33 minutes, 51 seconds

who can make that time to be upper staff members are teachers because they have the Summers off but also because they have sort of experience with child

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33 minutes, 59 seconds

management with uh Conflict Management a resolution and because their vocation is to nurture the potential of children so

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34 minutes, 9 seconds

now that you’ve done it um and you know what it’s like to

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34 minutes, 16 seconds

navigate College knowing that you’re narative rich and also not knowing but just KN you have some specific needs

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34 minutes, 23 seconds

what are your tips in hindsight I think two major things uh but the first is going to sound very

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34 minutes, 33 seconds

obvious which is there is so much that you can’t control obviously when you’re in this new environment and there are so many

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34 minutes, 40 seconds

people that you won’t be able to control control what you can so those routines and structures that you might have

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34 minutes, 47 seconds

relied on from having an institution with a more authoritative presence like in a high school they’re not going to be there anymore and if you know that ahead

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34 minutes, 56 seconds

of time you could start working on setting up your own calendar or you can look ahead of time and see these are the places where I could eat or these are

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35 minutes, 4 seconds

the places that are within driving distance if you drive personally I have a lot of trouble driving and so that was something that I needed to know especially in my first years at Oxford

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35 minutes, 12 seconds

was what’s within shuttle distance and how would I get there um so knowledge is

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35 minutes, 18 seconds

power information is your friend um but you are entering a space of broader

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35 minutes, 25 seconds

freedoms and Independence and that is going to both be a useful tool for you and if you let it it can be very sort of

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35 minutes, 34 seconds

oppressive in its own way um so knowing as much as you can ahead of time about your class schedule about places that

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35 minutes, 43 seconds

you think might be safe for you about your options for food your options for laundry the sort of day-to-day things uh

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35 minutes, 50 seconds

having all of that as close as you can uh to within your sort of sphere of control control will then give you the

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35 minutes, 59 seconds

space to adapt to the things that you can’t control because then you only have to deal with one or two overwhelming

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36 minutes, 6 seconds

problems as opposed to 10 um the other thing is there’s a balance between comfort and

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36 minutes, 16 seconds

extending yourself or pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and that’s something that can be very difficult to navigate as an anxious person which I am or as an autistic person which I also am

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36 minutes, 24 seconds

um but in the beginning I was especially on the Atlanta campus where there’s so many more just because of scale there’s

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36 minutes, 33 seconds

just so much more opportunities so many more events I was trying to go to so many different things because I felt like I was missing out or because I felt

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36 minutes, 40 seconds

like I wasn’t pushing myself enough and at a certain point I realized there’s no point in me doing this I’m not getting anything out of it just because I’m

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36 minutes, 47 seconds

quotequote supposed to go you reach point of diminishing returns you’re you cannot can’t do it all exactly um but on

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36 minutes, 57 seconds

the other hand I’m also I know an avoidant person and there are going to be things that if you stick to them if you create that routine or if you

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37 minutes, 5 seconds

challenge yourself to go a little bit outside your comfort zone because you think those returns might actually bring something good into your life that even

37:13

37 minutes, 13 seconds

though it’s hard building The Habit makes it so much easier so for me something that I appreciated about starting treatment for social anxiety

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37 minutes, 21 seconds

was that it allowed me to say yes to more things and it’s also okay to like try something and realized that in h

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37 minutes, 28 seconds

highsight it’s not worth a second go around absolutely absolutely and it’s also okay to try something like it and then never want to

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37 minutes, 37 seconds

do it again so one of the biggest things that I put myself out there for was uh in the I believe fall of 2023 I went

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37 minutes, 45 seconds

with my friends to Atlanta pride and it was a big deal there’s a lot of people it’s very overstimulating but I got a

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37 minutes, 52 seconds

lot out of it and I never want to do it again I I still very much enjoyed it but you don’t have to go again just because you did it once you don’t have to be

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38 minutes

part of the club just because you showed up once because you’re learning about what works for you as a developing adult

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yep absolutely all right yeah well best

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of luck um with edication and with the

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38 minutes, 22 seconds

work at the law firm um ni of luck with your dissertations thank you thank you it’s you know

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38 minutes, 30 seconds

progress is steady

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