A more recent accommodation I received for my PDD-NOS was a program at Oakland University aimed towards helping high functioning autistic students make the transition into college life. This program was called the Peer Transition Program. An autistic student was paired with another student who had volunteered to participate in this program. More likely than not, this student mentor was majoring in psychology and planned on helping autistic people for a living. This student mentor would encourage the autistic student to become more active in the university with student organizations and campus life.
I was a participant in the Peer Transition program from September 2008 to January 2009. At this time I was a transfer student from the community college level, so I had already been attending college for two years prior to entering this program. My mentor encouraged me to join a student organization to become more involved with campus life. My reason's for joining the program were to see what it might do for me, I didn't really have a specific outcome in mind. After a few months, I decided to leave the program. I had decided that I would rather socialize on my own terms because that is what I had been doing since high school, my experiences in this program had helped me to realize that. My mentor was concerned that perhaps she should have done something different. I told her it wasn't her fault, I had received all the assistance that I was going to get from this program.
This is my own experience with such a program and other autistic college students may react differently.
No comments:
Post a Comment