Uncredited: I’m no Flake
Unmasking the Truth About Success and Self-Doubt After a Late Autism and/or ADHD Diagnosis
If you’ve ever carried shame for struggling in systems that weren’t built for your brain, this series is for you. It’s about the silent pressure to “measure up,” the guilt of feeling like a fraud, and the invisible labor of masking just to survive. For late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD adults, success often comes with self-doubt. As graduation season shines a spotlight on achievement, I’m sharing what it took to finally see myself as worthy of mine. This is a story about unlearning that doubt—and realizing I was never an imposter.
This is the second of two posts in this series. To start the story in the beginning, click the button below.
[Uncredited: I’m no Flake]
Clark University was the perfect place to start my new life in 1993. It surpassed my high school in size without being overwhelming. It was in a large city, but not one that could easily distract me. It was in a different region, but still only a day’s drive from my hometown. It was explicitly non-religious; there was no campus chapel. It was the first college tour I went on. I knew it was my place within five minutes. The icing on the cake was a purposeful lack of both a football team and Greek life.
They ran a marketing campaign back then with an image of a pea pod that contained multicolored peas. The copy accompanying it read: “Clark University: Categorizing people isn’t something you can do here.” The campaign invited me to attend a school with a diverse student body while the university provided me with a majority-white, culturally-segregated, ivy-covered, New England university experience. It was the best of both worlds. The explicit marketing was true: diversity was all around us, including a significant number of international students. The implicit truth was that diversity was a matter of personal comfort levels. While there were exceptions, social groups were as siloed at Clark as they were at any other New England university. For students like me, it eased the transition from a mostly-white, christian community to a much more diverse one.
It was expensive, but I got a significant financial aid package in the form of grants, scholarships, and loans. A low-key selling point was a program called “Failure Removed.” It personified the “old college try” metaphor- to give something an effort when success isn’t guaranteed. The theoretical premise was that Clark wanted you to try difficult courses even if you failed. The technical premise was the removal of two failed courses from your transcript as if they never happened.
Don’t offer me a program like this and expect me not to use it. By my third semester, I completed both “failures”—the Friday 9 am biology seminar (with lab) and an interior design elective at Becker College (a Worcester College Consortium school). Neither were as interesting as I fantasized they would be and required a significant amount of time, energy, and investment to succeed. That, and they were more difficult than I expected. I quit going to classes, confident they wouldn’t show up on my transcript. I was two courses short after three semesters. It was okay. I had time to figure it out. It didn’t worry me like it did other people.
During my fourth semester, I got a request about meeting a man representing the scholarship I received. We connected one afternoon in the rare book room under the library. The middle-aged, suit-wearing man expressed concern about my academic performance. There were expectations for scholarship recipients and I was not meeting them. I had to improve. It was strange. I was getting a warning from a man I had never met before about my academic performance. The conversation was uncomfortable, to say the least. In the end I shook his hand firmly (as my father taught me), looked him in the eye (also as my father taught me), assured him I would do better, and attempted to forget about the whole situation the moment I walked out the door. I was overwhelmed.
Shortly afterward, I found peace with the realization that I could take more student loans if the scholarship was taken away. I would be okay. Spoiler alert: I kept that scholarship through graduation. I declared my major at the time of that meeting and my in-major GPA remained acceptable, apparently. I never encountered him or another scholarship representative again.
I waited to complete my missing credits until my final term. I could have added an extra course at any time over the next five semesters, but I didn’t. I could have taken courses during the three summers I lived near campus, but I didn’t. It’s not that I was avoiding it. I was busy. I worked multiple jobs most of the time and completed three internships with different organizations by graduation.
I was also living on my own. After my first winter break in Marcellus, I decided to minimize my time there. Life in Worcester was safer, built on my terms and focused on my needs. I made many mistakes and experienced a number of setbacks along the way. They required a significant amount of my time and energy.
Going into my final semester, I was in a difficult situation. From January to May, I had to complete the equivalent of six courses to make up for the two I was missing. I was intimidated, yet I had a strategy. I tend to stay steady in situations that overwhelm others, but struggle with things most people find easy. I chose a selection of classes with the “pass/fail” option to avoid damaging my GPA and planned to make up the missing credits with both an internship and a research project. It was a fantastic proposal, if I do say so myself. Everything hinged on the approval my advisor, the sociology department head.
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He was a smart, well-respected professor, researcher, and writer. He graduated from one of the most prestigious social science programs in the world. He intimidated me every time we met and he regularly chose to work with me. When I declared my major, he assigned himself as my advisor. As my advisor, he signed off on my course selections before registration each term. I arranged for my own internship that final semester. He assigned himself as my internship advisor. I identified interest in a research project. He assigned himself as my research advisor. My success or failure that term went through him.
In retrospect, what always puzzles me about this dynamic was that I never felt he liked me. I sensed that I disappointed him or let him down most of the time. I wasn’t allowed by university rules to complete either the research or internship as a “pass/fail” course. I accepted any grade I might receive as long as I passed. He expected more of me. That dynamic frustrated him.
I set myself up as an intern with the City of Worcester Planning Department. I took an urban planning course with the Director the semester before and he agreed to offer me unpaid work. One of my duties was to sit at an old computer terminal under the main stairs in city hall. I manually plotted property lines to create the first Global Positioning System (GPS) map of the city. My advisor would not approve credits for the GPS mapping alone, so he assigned additional readings, papers, and meetings throughout the semester. I have always struggled with reading and writing—especially formal educational text. It was easy to hide that from a professor in a seminar with several other students. It was more difficult to hide while facing them on the other side of their desk.
I spent hours in my advisor’s office that final term for both my internship and research project. My research partner was a friend who lived down the hall from me in our freshman dorm. Her presence was a refreshing change. The two of us researched the occupational attainment of Jews and Irish Catholics in the US in the eighteenth-and-nineteenth centuries. She was very methodical with her process and forced me to meet her in the computer labs multiple times a week. Though I rolled my eyes a lot, I needed her structure and was proud of our work.
My remaining course load included two philosophy classes, a public speaking course, and etymology. A typical week involved classes, research paper/internship meetings, an internship, around 20 hours of work, and partying. I did a lot of partying. I was 21 and a “regular“ at a bar down my street, The Blarney Stone. I had to regulate somehow. Alcohol and drug use was an unhealthy, yet popular, coping mechanism among my peer group in those days. As busy as I was at the bar, I still found time to explore the rave/electronic music scene and was amongst the last to prepare for (and bomb) the paper-based Graduate Entrance Exams. It was a packed term.
One of my saving graces, in addition to time at Annie’s diner, was spending time with my friend Jennifer in her dorm room. Jen would regularly give me a hard time for prioritizing my research partner and the computer lab over time spent with her. We had more important things to do. We were both introverts and loved having deep, outrageously creative conversations. We could sit for hours on opposite ends of her twin bed, planning my future life in a treehouse. We listened to music. We smoked cigarettes. We talked about current affairs. We solved the problems of the world. We supported each other. I am forever grateful for the time we spent together and the regulation I received that I so desperately needed. While I spent meaningful time with a lot of people back then, nothing supported my neurodivergent needs quite like time spent with her.
By the beginning of May, I completed each of the mandated meetings with my advisor and passed my internship, research project, philosophy and elective courses. My internship grade was low, which wasn’t a surprise. My advisor’s disappointment only stung as long as I was forced to spend time with him. Etymology remained the singular outstanding credit standing between me and graduation.
When I submitted my paper on the complex and painful history of racial slurs, I asked about the grading timeline. I told him a sad story about disappointing my family before graduation—blah, blah, blah. It was unnecessary and obvious he’d been in this situation before, probably several times earlier that day. He didn’t even have to make eye contact with me to move past the moment’s discomfort. As he tossed my paper in a rectangular metal basket with the others, he simply said, “You pass.”
That was a relief, to say the least. I was happy to graduate. I didn’t have to lie to my family. I was free to enjoy Senior Week.
The adventures that followed were both memorable and forgettable simultaneously. Like most life events, it was a blur that lacked the significance at the moment that so many people claim to experience. Don’t get me wrong—I was happy to accept positivity while it flowed. It’s just that my real-life never mirrored the same sorts of experiences depicted by characters in movies, books, and TV shows. My feeling, before and after graduation, remained the same: lucky to be included.
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Looking back, I acknowledge the shame and guilt I carried since submitting that paper. I believed I cheated and graduated without deserving it. I believed I let the scholarship sponsors, my advisor, and my etymology professor down. I believed I forced their acceptance of my below-average performance due to a lack of alternatives. I had potential I didn’t use. I was a fraud, only moving forward because the earth has to spin on its axis.
My nickname in college with one group of friends was Flake. It originated from a semester when I was obsessed with making paper snowflakes. It stuck because my behavior aligned with the word’s informal definition: an unreliable, eccentric, or unconventional person. That was me. I developed a reputation as unreliable in childhood and it continued in college. I committed to things that I would not complete. I backed away from promises. It was hard to take me seriously. Inconsistent actions and misread intentions damaged my credibility.
It is funny because, despite being Flake, I followed through when it counted. Out of the group of seven friends I spent most of my time with my freshman year, I was one of three that graduated. I am not saying that to disparage friends who chose to leave school; every life path is an equally valid one. I say it to emphasize that I finished what I started—on time as planned.
Nobody who named or called me Flake knew about my childhood other than the “reformed bad kid” stories I shared with them. I didn’t tell them how my reputation haunted me, pushing me to perform belonging instead of truly feeling it. I never shared how I felt my flaws were significant enough to accept bullying from friends like a tax. It wasn’t their fault that I projected my insecurities like an awkward shield. If I didn’t acknowledge the traumas of internalized childhood narratives, how could I expect them to? They were just interacting with me in the form I was presenting to them. On top of it all, we were all very young and still learning about the world around us.
I acknowledge I projected onto my professors too—especially the director of my program. Given my childhood experiences of rejection sensitivity, it’s logical that I’d continue to struggle in college. He had nothing to do with that. It was a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ scenario for him. I was drawn to sociology. My passion for the subject helped me overcome the academic challenges of most of my coursework. But behind the scenes, I struggled. Reading was especially hard for me: slow, exhausting, often overwhelming. While I had a natural flair for words and could organize big ideas well, the research process (reading dense texts, extracting meaning, citing sources) was a last-minute scramble every time. I rarely felt like I understood the material, just that I was trying to keep up.
My director, like most professors, was a dedicated reader and writer. Of course, he relied on those tools to teach and assess students; what else was there? I didn’t have language for the challenges I was facing. So I masked them, pouring my energy into seeming capable while quietly burning out. That semester, I sat in his office and exposed what I thought were personal flaws. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t apply myself. I was lazy. These felt like facts; conclusions we both silently agreed on, without knowing what we were really seeing.
Those meetings were reminders that I was not as good as everyone else. I wasn’t worthy of approval. If I was successful, it was with an asterisk—barely meeting standards. I bounced my way through the system and came out bruised on the other side. It was my fault, since others seemed to get through just fine. The system that started in childhood continued into college and would continue into adulthood.
The scholarship hung over my shoulder in moments of self-critique. Scholars exceed expectations; they don’t simply meet them. I visualized the other recipients graduating with honors chords over their gowns. They completed their course requirements early and took fun electives their final semester. They had job offers or were enrolling in elite graduate programs. Contrast that with me: the guy who barely graduated and went to work as a barista. Their scholarship sponsors were proud of their achievements. I felt like I let mine down.
My perspective is much different now, following years of talk therapy and an autism/ADHD diagnosis. I realize I didn’t appreciate the entirety of my accomplishments. I didn’t accept truths hidden by shame and guilt others put on me in childhood. That Sunday, as I walked across the stage to get my diploma, I was also celebrating things like:
Living independently from my family.
Working as a police dispatcher.
Joining the Socialists for a semester.
Performing in a student-written and directed play.
Working at a group home with six adults with disabilities.
Making long-term friends.
Working as a summer camp counselor for non-ambulatory kids.
Contributing to Worcester’s first GPS map.
Dying my hair multiple shades of Manic Panic.
Interning with non-ambulatory kids at a city elementary school.
Dancing all night long at clandestine raves.
Helping a homeless friend get back on his feet.
Getting a fake ID.
Losing my fake ID at a place called Sh-Booms while I attempted to take adults from the group home to oldies night.
Attending the “Rally for Women’s Lives” March in Washington.
Building a life for myself that felt more authentic and safe than ever before.
I accomplished all this because I created my own accommodations—without acknowledging my needs, and without support. High-masking, undiagnosed neurodivergent people do this all the time. Despite experiencing hidden traumas, we make things happen. We’re hidden in plain sight and we’re everywhere.
The truth is, I was worthy of the scholarship and the degree I earned. I am a success story. I worked hard. My heart was in it. I cared. I did an amazing job with what I had. I am choosing to be proud of it all now.
In my coaching work, I help clients to name, acknowledge, and normalize their neurodiversity. Engagements begin by reviewing a long list of neurodivergent presentations to identify those that most impact a client’s life. This exercise kicks-off a journey to identify the unique ways neurodiversity presents in each person—their individualized “spectrum.” Each neurodiverse person has a unique combination of presentations that influence how they see, experience, and move through the world. The process of naming, acknowledging, and normalizing neurodiverse presentations is deeply meaningful and provides a foundation for increased well-being in the future.
I listed sixteen truths above that I should have celebrated at graduation. Here are sixteen neurodivergent presentations I experience that give even more reasons to celebrate them:
Executive Dysfunction: Difficulty starting or finishing tasks even when you want to.
Task Switching Difficulty: Struggling to stop one task and start another.
Time Blindness: Losing track of how long things take or how much time has passed.
Procrastination-Driven Activation: Needing a deadline or crisis to get started.
Routine Maintenance Struggles: Difficulty keeping up with daily tasks like cleaning or bills.
Transition Intolerance: Resistance to switching tasks—even pleasant ones.
Ruminative Thinking: Replaying interactions or mistakes repeatedly.
Sensory-Emotional Spillover: Needing decompression after busy or overstimulating days.
Internalized Ableism: Judging yourself for not meeting neurotypical norms.
Chronic Social Mis-attunement: Feeling “out of sync” or too intense around others.
Difficulty Reading Social Cues: Missing body language, tone shifts, or group dynamics.
Rejection Sensitivity: Deep hurt from even mild criticism or perceived rejection.
Fear of Misunderstanding: Constantly worried about being perceived as rude or off.
Pathological Altruism: Over-helping others to the point of personal harm, often due to empathy or guilt.
Demand Avoidance: Strong internal resistance to demands, including self-imposed ones.
Camouflaging: Mimicking others to blend in or avoid scrutiny.
Chronic Self-Monitoring: editing tone, posture, or words to appear “normal.”
People-Pleasing as Survival: Adapting to others’ needs at the cost of your own.
Things could have been different back then if systems around me acknowledged my neurodiversity. Imagine the acceptance, safety, respect, and dignity that might have followed. Not just for me, but for everyone involved—my professors, peers, and the broader community. We all deserved better. We all deserved more humanity, flexibility, and belief in each other’s potential.
That didn’t happen and I am at peace with that. There’s no changing the past, only the present and the future. I hold no grudges. Everyone did their best—me included.
Multiple truths can exist at the same time. Ultimately, a truth’s value depends on the individual who believes it. One truth I believe is that things didn’t have to be as hard as they were for the May-of-1997 version of me. That guy overcame a lot to succeed—he was a hero. He took risks, worked hard, tried new things, and made a difference. While he made mistakes, he simultaneously made commitments and followed-through. He cared deeply for others, pursued justice, stayed curious, and independently found solutions to problems he had no part in creating.
He started his career as a barista and would go on to have amazing experiences. Through the years he grew as an advocate, collaborator, manager, problem-solver, mentor, coach, leader, teacher, teammate, friend, family member, husband, and neighbor. He put his efforts into meaningful work while earning awards, professional certifications, and a graduate degree—with a second on the way. Most importantly, he would go on to gain the respect, honor, and love of an amazing community.
Maybe that’s what being a scholar really is: following a thread of interest so persistently that it reshapes your life. My lifelong obsession with the social sciences, driven by an autistic intensity I once tried to hide, ended up becoming the key to my own healing and the foundation of my work today.
I think the scholar in me deserves that round of applause. I’ll take it.
[About These Stories]
These stories are told from my personal perspective and memories, which are inherently subjective and may contain flaws, gaps, or interpretations shaped by time and trauma. Others involved may remember events differently—and their experiences are valid, too. The truth often lives in the space between these perspectives. I do not intend to harm or challenge anyone else’s narrative, but to honor the versions of myself who lived through these periods of time. I tell my story as I experienced it, knowing others may carry different—and equally real—truths.
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