Thank you all for your insights and advice. I am really grateful to receive not only feedback, but warmth when it could've easily been censure.
I'm sorry if I've only been providing glimpses into my circumstances. I tend to get fixed on only one aspect of something and so I ignore the other parts and cause myself a lot of grief.
I spoke with my mom and read the IEP papers as suggested. What I found interesting is that in half of the battery of tests given to me as a 2nd grader, I did not score in the gifted, or even superior range. This comes with the qualifier that I became frustrated or overstimulated very easily during many of the tests and I believe the stress carried over into others that didn't bother me as much.
Ironically, my achievement test was much higher than my IQ test, the WISC-III. It was inconclusive with a 135 VIQ and 100 PIQ. I know the IQ>ach. discrepancy is very common, but I can't fathom how my IQ wouldn't be considered gifted but my achievement scores point to an HG level of functioning.
As far as diagnosis, they labeled me as a very ambiguous "Multiply Disabled Student" and never once used a specific acronym, even for the sake of comparison. During the conclusion of the report when I assume my difficulties would be summarized, they simply stated that I was a "Multiply Disabled Student".
The content of the report was far more focused on my classroom behavior than it was on my academic problems. They stated that I was a highly sensitive and self-critical child that would become frustrated at any challenge. My teacher who was interviewed for the report stated that I seemed like a very bright child that had occasional glitches which bothered me more than they concerned her. The school psychologist suggested that I had Aspergers because I had a difficulty relating to kids my age. She based her entire impression on the fact that I rocked when I became upset and that I wasn't really interested in socializing with kids because they couldn't discuss hacking video games or genetics with me.
I have considered Aspergers in the past as a possible explanation, but the symptoms which plagued me at that age subsided too quickly without any kind of intervention. As far as I know, you can't just have Aspergers and then get better from it.
As a toddler I had a balance problem and ran into things a lot. However, I had OT for a year and it never was a problem again. I later studied martial arts and placed in some competitions. I am also able to play the hardest songs on DDR while the actual Aspergers-diagnosed students in my school couldn't even complete a basic song. Rocking(as I said above) is the only stereotypical behavior I have ever demonstrated. I still do it now, but only in the highest level of privacy.
I was never obsessive but I tended to perseverate on things that bothered me or caught my attention. When something particularly stung, I would ruminate about it for days. This perseverance would sometimes lead me away from the main point of something, what my teachers described as "not seeing the forest for the trees". However, as I entered high school I was overwhelmingly a "big picture" person and I am still horrible with details. As you know from my previous posts, my VIQ/PIQ discrepancy closed and on the most recent test I took, PIQ surpassed VIQ.
One telltale symptom of Aspergers that I never had though was the social cluelessness. I always understood the social conventions of whatever age I was even though I found them immature. I was always able to figure out why people did things the way they did, and always knew what and what not to do to offend or bother others. Though I've always appeared eccentric to others, they have never doubted my ability to socialize. I have a large number of both acquaintances and close friends, 100% of whom are "neurotypical".In fact, I often give advice to those less socially-savvy ones. I know how to flirt and I am pretty decent at securing hook-ups. I have also had several genuinely romantic relationships both in high school and college in which I knew how to handle emotions appropriately. For all intents and purposes, I do not consider the autistic symptoms I once had to define me as a person and I simply consider myself an "eccentric neurotypical".
I know that I am genetically disposed to something like this, since my dad's brother is a high functioning autistic and his other brother has a severely autistic son. However since about middle school psychologists haven't diagnosed me with Aspergers upon consultation and say that I am in a normal range of functioning in every area. Thus, almost all of the Aspergers issues I find on LD sites are impertinent to me.
As I said before, I still believe executive functions are a weakness of mine and account for the great variability of my performance on different days, ranging academically from acing a test to failing it, or intuitively understanding a lecture to getting nothing out of it. With my past issues as a backdrop, it wouldn't surprise me if my executive functions are lacking.
Once again, thank you for readjusting your perspectives as new information surfaces (either from documents or my jumbled memory)
and I am sorry if I appear to not acknowledge your suggestions (I am considering them, I just want to fill in more unknowns for everybody helping me out!)
Jake <3
