[Upbeat music]
I guess what I would like to show
Is um, for most of my life I've been a
My favorite part of ACI was to get to know
other people who are autistic as well.
Personally I think like being there, being
here and actually experiencing and seeing
other autistic people is just really
awesome.
I've never been in a place where
I've connected with people so quickly and
just been understood and that has been a
really really incredible experience.
Learning how to just be in the adult
world, also learning how to have some
sort of agency.
You have a community of autistic people
and like disabled people and
neurodivergent people and everything
I really liked being in a huge group of
autistic people instead of just you know
being the only one in my group.
I'm here to find myself and also to
have better leadership skills how to
advocate more effectively being a
little bit more self assured, a little
more confident.
after this week I feel a lot more
confident of myself as an autistic person.
And I feel like I am in the right place.
We learned about how to organize
the goals that we have so that we can
actually get things accomplished.
Because a lot of the things that I wanted
to accomplish it felt too big for me so
now they feel a lot more manageable.
And we also learned how to leverage
social media in a meaningful way.
With here, with ACI what I learned is it
is really important for me to become a
better leader and to be able to educate
others.
I like learning how to like
navigate politics and just sort of
being a part of that process.
To be honest you know the School House
Rock I really had no idea how it works
you know how you get a bill to actually be
passed by you know by actual methods and
so of like a way to bring advocacy into
learning how to be in the adult world
We, you're active, you move as a group.
And in the room, and you can commit and
like accomplish great things that can
help pass along information about
some biz, biz that we don't want and
some biz that we do want that
will help everyone.
knowing that it's important to
continually instill that history, to
continually learn about that history and
also continue making that history.
Like spreading awareness and what's
important.
To also spread acceptance.
We learned about the history of the
disability rights movement and the
history of the neurodiversity movement
and I also liked the discussions about
autistic culture because I think that's
something that isn't discussed enough and
that I would really like to build on.
Before I came to ACI I thought that to be
a leader you had to have a certain kind
of personality and that was one that I
didn't have.
I didn't think that I, as
someone with a disability, could change
anything, and now that I've been around
all these other people that share my views
and I've learned how to effectively
communicate what I feel about these issues
there isn't any use in being sad.
Had some sessions on things like policy
making and planning, some networking,
things like that.
I really liked when we had dinner with
professionals and getting to meet
notable people.
I went to speak to the
staff people of Senator Barbra Boxer
and senator Diane Feinstien.
We talked to the congressional
representatives, to disabled professionals
and knowing what their experiences were
like.
We're pretty fortunate we went
out for dinner last night and you know,
we didn't care what people thought and
we were pretty loud but we were talking
about our special interests so much.
My favorite part of ACI was whenever I got
an opportunity to talk in smaller groups
because I felt like I was able to get to
know each other better that way.
I really
liked the community and how everyone
was openly being themselves.
The most interesting session for me was
definitely the one about student
communities and groups.
I'm planning on going back to my home town
and start an ASAN chapter.
I'm going to definitely be more active be
a leader in my my community.
You know
be the change that I want to see.
to change the attitudes toward autism
so that hopefully it can improve the
ethics and improve the research quality
and I think that's just really helpful.
We have an organization that exists on
campus but I often deal with tokenism
because I'm the only person of color
in that organization.
I want people to not
feel invalidated, Like if they're autistic
or not autistic enough.
It's really
important to be open about your identity
I'm going to take what I've learned about
social activism and disability rights back
to my campus.
Eventually I would like to go back to my
campus and start a cross disability
coalition.
absolutely I would recommend ACI to
other autistic college students
I definitely would.
Oh yeah yes totally.
Yeah definitely.
I've learned a lot, there's like a whole
breadth of things so far I think is just
really helpful.
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