Lydia Wayman autisticspeaks.wordpress.com I take in a gulp of air and shut my eyes tight before I plunge beneath the surface. One, two, three… It starts to feel like my brain is tingling from the inside. Four, five, six… I’m not counting in seconds, not in minutes, but in hours. Seven, eight, nine… I search for anyone, anything who will ground me through my ever-increasing internal chaos. Ten! When given the cue, I cannot break the surface fast enough, gasping for breath. I’ve done this thousands of times, and yet, after twenty-five years of daily descents, I am no more sure that I will survive the next one. —- I’m really not a writer. Writers have readers. I write because it’s the only way for me to get from one day to the next without semi-spontaneous internal combustion taking effect. I’m not a writer. I’m a processor of the world, an organizer…
Tag: autodidact
Brenda Rothman mamabegood.blogspot.com I have this image in my head whenever anyone says “learning.” Learning means a teacher standing in front of students, who are sitting at desks, listening quietly to the teacher talk facts, figures, and concepts. Anytime I say “learning,” I think “academics,” by which I mean “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic.” ‘Cause I’m a product of that kind of learning. From elementary to college to law school, learning was sitting in a room with a large group of people and memorizing. Jeez, the number of things I’ve memorized, the number of meaningless mnemonics. That’s why I think that the only way a child learns is from school, from an adult telling them facts. But that means a child is incapable of discovering something on his own. That he can’t explore and figure things out without an adult telling him to do so or telling him what it means.…