What is your greatest achievement as an aspie?

Good for you! Hang in there. My grandson is 7 and has Asperger's. It is encouraging to see your post. I see that need to succeed in him. However, when learning, he gets frustrated when he can't be the best right away and you have to really work with him to get him past that point. He is learning to play chess right now. He is good, but again, he wants to do everything in a hurry.

My greatest achievement has been to be a successful homemaker. Additionally, just having discovered and researched aspergers I am able to just now, after 42 years, begin to study and navigate myself through social situations. Even though I don't fully understand the nuances, I can now study and act through most social situations successfully. The other really big accomplishment is learning words to a song. I have never been able to learn a song's words, to mouth, hum, or sing along, and for the first time I am 3/4 through learning the words to James Blunt's song "You are the brightest star". I write one phrase a day on a square piece of paper. It requires a lot of patience but it can be done. Keep at it. It is worth the hard work. I made it through college and I did not even know what aspergers was. Your awareness of aspergers is a huge accomplishment in itself. Knowing what you are dealing with gives you a great advantage. I learned 0 song lyrics in 42 years and 3/4 of a song in just 12 days.

The doctors failed to diagnose my disfunction as Asperger's for most of my life, although for real I've been struggling with the syndrome ever since I was a little kid. I think my biggest achievement is actually finding out what is up with me. I mean, I used to, and still do, feel inferior because of my unusual behaviors. I failed on my relationships, I almost failed in high school and right i struggle with graduating from college. But I don't give up. It's easy to give up. I suppose that if it wasn't for a lot of people who actually do a lot to raise awareness for the syndrome, I would've never thought it even exists. When I was 6 my parents decided to send me to school a year earlier but psychologist wouldn't let me. If it had not been for their fight I would've had just repeated preschool year one more time. Just because I was not sociable and really shy. And because I COULD read. I remember being a child I was so filled with love for the world and wanted to talk to everybody but I had no idea how to start, what to say and all my attempts turned out to be catastrophies. I suppose that the fact that I carry on with what I'm doing and never gave up school is an achievement. Also I think that whenever i got kicked by some people who had no faith in me I thought - "I'll make progress later, you'll see". It is really painful to hear from 'normal' people (what does that mean, anyway?) that having education or even job is a miracle when you're Aspergian or autistic. It is, but not because we are less gifted than they are. Most frequently autistic people are genius but the problems with communication blocks them from presenting what mean. I would like to thank John Elder Robison for his book that helped me begin to accept my dysfunction and also, helped me begin to understand the state that me and my life are in right now. And for letting me know that i'm not the only child who had been said "look me in the eye, kid".