College, forgetting things, and (Other People) With Asperger's Syndrome, oh yeah, did I mention forgetting things?

I've got no intern3ts again, because I'm at my mom's work right now. As of yesterday [Sept. 4th, '08] I finished my first week of college. Japanese looks like it's going to be fun. My mom is taking it with me. The first lesson was boring me out of my skull, though, I think at least half of the class probably was. It looks like a lot of people already knew a bit before. Someone who works at OCC said that everyone who takes it is already interested in it. Funny thing is, there was this guy my mom and I recognized and I was about to ask when my mom asks if he looks familiar and we both can't remember. Then the teacher calls on him and I thought I had an idea of who he was, but I didn't want to talk or pass notes to my mom because I thought she'd go 'don't do that' >o or something. A few minutes later she writes on her notebook who she thinks he is. (same person I was thinking of) XD At the end of class he came over and talked to my mom (I was busy talking to the high schooler that's even younger than eponymous cowherd [My solitary commenter]) and gave her his contact info. I wrote about this guy once before: it can be found over at my old livejournal. And I thought I'd never see him again. :p
My Office '07 class doesn't look too hard. We don't meet in a room with computers, which is strange. The one who designed the book for this class was an idiot. It's spiral bound, soft cover, and about an inch and a half thick. The thing is really flimsy and heavy which makes it feel like it's going to collapse in on it self and make a black hole. \o/ Oh noes.
Information systems looks... bothersome. I have to make a blog and blab about some computery thing or something and there's a final paper and case studies and grar. I dun wanna write a paper. They always fall apart about a quarter of the way in. Even when I think I know what I'm going to be talking about. The teacher said something about trying to figure out an alternative project, but I have no idea what I could do yet.
I've forgotten what the other thing I was going to type about was. :/ Now I've got another hour and a quarter to kill before my mom can even hope to get off. She never gets off at four when they close. Always after four. Usually after five or six. No wonder she's only memorized the first few hiragana. I'm practicing katakana and hiragana with a game and listening to The Beatles. You can get the game at lrnj.com. [Darn. I just lost the game. You has a hour? half hour? whatever. anyways- you have some time to forget about it before you can lose the game. No clue what I'm talking about? Google it. Darn it. Read this later and lost again.]
I've come back to this post on the eighth and have forgotten the numerous things I was going to originally put in here and kept putting off. Oh yeah, if you notice some sort of grammar/spelling/whatever mistake in this would you please point it out? My English has been going down hill for awhile now without any corrections being made by anyone but myself and my computer.
I recently came across an article (I lost the link, sorry) about how ADHD and sleep deprivation have similar symptoms and that doctors don't take that into account often enough. It makes me wonder if I really have ADD or if I just couldn't focus because I stayed up late all the time. I still do [stay up], obviously. I read some things about Asperger's Syndrome too, and the people whose kids were supposedly diagnosed with it sounded like they were obsessive compulsive to me. [I really wish I could find my hard copy of the DSV-IV criteria for it.] I was under the impression that it has more to do with social interaction than routines and memory. Though I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't common for people with AS to have other things going on and I've heard about how ADD/ADHD and Asperger's patients can be really smart or remember certain things well. I think I read some one saying they couldn't believe their kid had it because he was so smart or something. It's Attention Deficit Disorder (or one of the others I mentioned), Not stupidity disease. Anyways... I didn't look very hard, but I only heard about people who had little kids (2-3 year olds) diagnosed with AS, not teenagers or adults. One lady did submit a comment to one of the articles about her husband who was diagnosed in his twenties. She talks about how they 'lived hour by hour' not 'day by day' and how he had a fear of finding the milk in a different place. She also mentions how "And other times, he just forgets to look up, probably because whatever he is doing is mere ritual and makes no sense to him at all." Like does things without knowing the reason At All. I find it hard to believe he's managed to be school teacher and can't figure out why he does certain things. Another thing is that she thinks (Note: this is her ex-husband, I'm kinda hard pressed to take her word on it) he feels all superior to everyone around him and I get the impression that she attributes this to the AS. I could be interpreting what she's saying wrong though. Wait, no, she actually is. (I'm reading it as I type.) "People with AP have a superiority complex. It was almost as if he knew something that the rest of us didn’t and he was tormented by the secret." I'm pretty sure she means AS when she says AP, btw.
The story about the lady whose kid I think sounded like he had ocd to me is at http://www.epinions.com/content_3082133636 and the comment I'm talking about is by owtnursnarown on this page: http://www.epinions.com/content_3082133636/show_~allcom
My impression of Asperger's is more like what's described on aspergers.com. [http://www.aspergers.com/aspclin.htm] It talks about social isolation, peculiar speech patterns and inflection, and a small area of interest. I felt that the article partly glossed over the isolation. It talks about how he acts around the parents and strangers, but doesn't say a word about his friends or lack thereof. This is something I think has a lot to do with it, social interaction that isn't forced, like family, relatives, and the people he works with and who have to work with him in return. The comment talked about this quite a bit. [At first I didn't really see it until I was saying it didn't] There's a definite lack of eye contact and an inability to read other's emotions (according to the writer, I find it very possible he does understand, but might not know how to react or show that he does). She only makes mention of herself and his family, so no input into the subject of friends there either. The two pieces do cover the last one well. The boy has his movies and the man has numbers.
Also, the mother talks about how delayed her son's speech was when, the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it's used to diagnose AS) it specifically states "D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years)" [http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html] I wonder if the doctor even read the criteria, I doubt it's common enough for them to remember it off the top of their head.
Oops. Y'know how I said that the routine thing sounded like OCD? The DSV-IM (same link, udel.edu) part B: "2. apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals".
I think that wasn't what I wanted to say, but it's so long that I'm gonna just post this monster.