Hazel's Blog

Mostly a blog of my brain

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 31

Hi there it's Hazel and welcome to episode 31!

So I went to my final university interview yesterday and let me tell you, it was the most unautistic friendly interview I've been to.

There was about 30 of us in this interview and they said it would be 2 hours long, so I assumed they'd go slowly one by one, doing individual interviews, however, that was not the case. They split the room in half and went to my half 'you guys will on a tour of the block first' and said to the other half 'the rest of you are doing a group interview' and my heart dropped. I am fine in individual interviews, however, a group one shocked me completely because I was not expecting it.

So as we went through the tour, my confidence began to sink and half an hour later when my interview began, it had hit rock bottom. We were split in half and believe there were 2 groups of 6 and then they stated that there would be 6 minutes per question, which basically meant we had less than a minute to talk for each question.

I went extremely quiet and the interviewer had to lean in to me, just to hear my answers because my anxiety had peaked. I didn't answer as well as I could've and in reality, I don't think I had the time either. To make it worse, everyone in else in my group was listening to everything I said and it was the same for them but some of them were extremely confident which made it worse for me.

I felt because of this lack of time, it turned into a one-upmanship competition as there were people like, I write articles which 500,000 people see, I manage xyz's social media, I've set up my own business and all I could say was I run a blog and a podcast which has almost no viewers on each. That was a massive confidence blow and seemed to almost reverse everything that therapy has helped me with improving my self-esteem and brought me back into the 'I don't do anything, I'm a failure' mentality.

So after that interview, it completely set in stone my first choice and my insurance choice and now all I'm waiting for is an offer from them.

Now, lets turn back the clock a few days to Monday. It's good old mock week! and to sum it up, it was a complete disaster.

To put it into context, it wasn't my fault and the fault lay in the SEN students room's poor organisation skills. I will try not to rant too much about this, so I will do my best to sum up all the complaints I sent to my head of year afterwards.

First of all, they forgot I had computer support and then proceeded to be put on a random computer, which somehow wouldn't let me sign in. The chief examiner for my school was rather rude to me when she went 'well why can't you sign in?' and I had no clue why.

Turns out, I was on a staff computer. Then they went to find me a laptop and started quizzing me about where I wanted to sit and I froze and couldn't answer. Then they found one of the computers was a student one and I managed to get sorted on there.

That was until the chief examiner was like you must do your exam in 'size 12 with double spacing' and I'd never heard this before and she was insistent that I should do it like that and didn't seem to get that I was confused. Luckily, when she did, I was allowed to work the way I wanted.

The next few ones were that they decided, in a room you can't ventilate, that they should ventilate it by keeping one of the doors open. I don't think they understood that this was terribly off putting for the three of us all sat doing mock exams in that room because we could hear every conversation really loudly and then screaming children in PE lessons.

They also decided it was a good idea to put someone with a verbal prompt in the same room as me and one other, which it isn't the girls fault for needing it, but the SEN rooms fault for putting someone who needed to talk with 2 people who needed silence.

Now this is the last complaint and the worst one. Whoever started my exam decided it was 1 hour 45 minutes not 2 hours 45 minutes. So at 10:50am when the guy who had been swapped into our exam said we had 5 minutes to go, I was shocked. I still hadn't answered question 3 yet and that should take the whole hour. I then went 'sir but the exam is 2 hours 45' and he was like, I've been told it's the length I've stopped you at so I will have to stop you and take your papers in whilst you have a rest break and I find out what the true length of time for the exam is.

Emails were sent and the chief examiner was called and verified it was a 2 hour 45 exam and we got the full amount of time in the end. Unfortunately, I had a breakdown in between and it took me a while to get back into the swing of things, but I did, in the end, finish the exam.

My head of year wrote a huge complain about this issue and the majority was fixed the next day. However, even though he made sure the door was closed at the start of Tuesday's exam, the examiner in the room kept opening it and every time someone shut it, he would open it again letting the talking be heard for all of us inside.

So unfortunately, it didn't go the smoothest, however, this will all be taken into consideration when I get my results.

But thanks for reading, see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 30

Hi there! It's Hazel and I can't believe I'm at 30 entries already!

Sorry for being a bit inactive this past week, I've not had the best week so I'll tell you all about it.

It all started on Tuesday evening where I had to talk to my boss about a review of my past shift before my next one. My boss turned round to me and told me that I was standing around too much and I kept having to be told what to do and I should have to do things more spontaneously. I got really upset afterwards because I knew I wasn't suited for this job as spontaneity and proactivity don't come naturally to me and I just need a list of this is what you have to do, now do it. I had told the lady who ran the shop about my autism but I don't think it really helped me.

For the next almost week I fell into what I believe is depression. I know I shouldn't self diagnose, but that is certainly the easiest way to describe it. I felt down all the time, I had no motivation to do anything, including playing video games and if you've read this blog before, you'll know I love them, which said something was up and all I wanted to do was stay in bed with a book.

This affected me severely the next day. So on Wednesday it was my school concert, I still felt sad but I was somewhat excited, that was until on the soundcheck it all went wrong. I forgot the words halfway through, but luckily picked it up fast and continued. That shook my confidence massively, more than it ever would have normally and I was so upset and considered pulling out, which I didn't.

After a long tearful phone call to my parents about pulling out, I went to the music classroom to practice and all seemed well for the concert but oh boy, did I have no clue what was going to happen then.

So when the concert came, I found I was 18th out of 22 performers, so a long way away and so throughout that time, the adrenalin kept building. When it was my turn, I stood on stage, the music started and I forgot everything, the lyrics wouldn't come to me and I froze before running off the stage.

I ended up back in the back of a music classroom sobbing, basically having a panic attack and wishing I would've pulled out when I thought about. However, I wanted to prove I wasn't a coward and that I could sing. Not long after, the lyrics came back and I went on one song later.

I did get through the whole song and got a huge cheer, which made me feel amazing that everyone enjoyed it. However, it didn't help when my parents saw the footage (it was a students only concert because of covid) I got critique that I didn't perform it enough and should've done more and they knew the whole lead up to that performance which brought my mood down again.

It was then just a low rest of the week, dreading my work shift on Saturday, then Saturday came. I got to work and completed the day and enjoyed it, which was good and I thought I could keep the job. But sadly, today I got fired, saying that we didn't work well together and that I have lost my job, so my mood plummeted again.

But that's all for today, for those hit by storm Arwen, stay safe! We lost a fence, a gate and a greenhouse pane and my school lost part of the roof.

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 29

Hi there! It's Hazel and I had my first two uni interviews today.

First of all, it was really scary because I've never done anything like this before and I know I need to make myself look as good as possible so they would make me an offer. I hated sitting in the waiting room, waiting for the interviewer to arrive because it certain made my nerves skyrocket, however, they were okay.

By okay I mean one went really well and one disastrous. The first interview I did was great and whoever interviewed me bounced off me really well and would ask questions based on what I was saying such as how did you discover newswatch? why do you like listening to the breakfast show? how would you rewrite this article? and then we got onto books at the end and it was just a nice informal chat and it made me feels so at ease and he even helped me find a way to get my podcast on Spotify.

However, with the second one I felt whoever was interviewing me was rather condescending, especially when I mentioned that I hadn't been able to make an open day due to living very far away. There was one question asked which was hard about if you could write any article on any topic and be able to interview anyone, what would it be? So I answered about autism and mentioned Chris Packem, Sophie Baverstock and someone from Foxes Afloat but because the interviewer didn't know who Sophie was, he cut me off and then started randomly referring to my personal statement about someone else I'd mentioned, however, she had nothing to do with the topic. I was told I could take as long as I need to answer.

Later on in this same interview, he asked me about my blog, so I talked about this and then afterwards he said something about listening to my blog and then had a moment of realisation that he was talking about my podcast. But I'm still confused as to why a journalist doesn't know the difference between a blog and podcast. So sadly this university has lowered itself on my rankings because of this interview.

But that's all for today! I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 28

Hi it's Hazel and welcome to today's update!

So today I ran an assembly for the year 9's in my school about the Holocaust, it was part of a project I am doing for lessons from auschwitz event I have been a part of.

I had planned this assembly over the holiday but hadn't really practiced presenting it till I had actually done it today. All I had to prepare me was a bunch of notes I had written for myself on my own copy of the slides and then I blagged it.

My assembly was about 10 minutes long and covered my experience on the event, statistics, personal stories, a bit about Auschwitz, how the Holocaust relates to the world today and finally the kaddish (the Jewish mourners prayer). I had to cover all of these things in my assembly because that was required to get some kind of award at the end of the event.

I was really nervous before I spoke, I'd never done anything like this before, but it went really well. All the students listened well and I barely stumbled over my words, I even got through the kaddish in Hebrew with very little slips up because I couldn't read the font very well.

To make things better, my head of year spoke to me at the end to tell me how amazing it was and then asked if I would do it again on Tuesday for my year group, of which I accepted.

So overall, it went amazingly!

Thank you for reading, today's update was a little bit shorter than usual but I hope you enjoyed it!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 27

Hi there! It's Hazel and I have a huge update of things to talk about today.

First of all, I had my trial day for the patisserie on Saturday, I was there for about 3 hours and completely messed up, I wasn't good at spontaneously doing anything, I went quite quiet and mostly stayed in the back corner doing the washing up, because I didn't know what else to do other than stand around.

I tried my best to be chatty when I needed to be, but I guess being a quietish person with anxiety really doesn't help me. There really isn't much space for mental health in the workplace I found. This experience prompted me with a book idea, I want to write it in the style of a kids book and I want to call it 'The Mouse Who Tried To Be An Elephant' about a mouse, who is a shy person or has anxiety or any other mental health problems and how they struggle even comparing to a cat which is a small animal, but is way more confident than them. But the cat tells the mouse that she's going to get nowhere by keeping on being a mouse and that she should evolve to be an elephant, the most confident and well off of all the animals. This is to show the hardships of keeping up a confident front when you aren't.

Next of all, was the highlight of my school holiday, I want to my first ever comic con since July 2019 and it was one of the best days ever. I went dressed as Venti from Genshin Impact by a majority vote from my instagram followers. The other character in the vote was Monokuma from Danganronpa (both outfits I never have worn out yet because of covid) and I'm so glad I didn't go as Monokuma because there was at least a minimum of 10 people all as that character, whilst I was one of 2 Genshin cosplayers, the other being Hu Tao.

I had missed conventions so much and was dead excited to finally go to one, but sadly none of the people I already knew could go, so I went alone. However, I made so many new friends and talked to so many people and was significantly more confident than I normally am because being in cosplay and being a convention with like-minded people make me become a new person.

One of my highlights of the day was being shot in the head by a Squid Game guard. Why? Because I walked past and yelled at them 'haha you can't kill me, I have no debt' then had a realisation that Venti is a broke God who has far too many tabs at Diluc's Taven (Angel's Share) and then proceeded to get shot in the head.

I also had a group of people who would yell 'Barbatos' at me, every time I walked past them and then I would do a whole spiel about how I am Barbatos in the flesh, descended from Celestia.

I also entered the cosplay competition, I was on the reserve list from 10:45am and the con had early entry from 10am. I went and bothered the guy running it just before the competition started to ask if anyone had dropped out and if I could still take part and he said it was a 50/50 chance.

I did get into the competition and when I first got on stage, the same guy said something like 'see, you did make it' into a microphone, in front of everyone, I was mortified. However, I kept up my Venti style charisma and managed to get through my introduction and pose with great confidence. However, when I finished, the guy said 'you're not getting paid extra for that' and that's when I knew it was game over for me in that competition.

It was definitely 100% rigged in the results, the boy who won the under 14's knew the man running it, the girl who came second in the over 14's (which I was in), also knew the guy and had gone to many of these cons before. The first place was a guy in a home made armour, which they made sure the whole audience knew and third place was a furry. Somehow, the guy asked one furry if their outfit was home made and they said no, which the guy then made a comment about them being cheap, but didn't ask the furry in 3rd place until after they'd won, which made me suspicious. However, there were some lovely people who came up to me afterwards and told me that I put on a great show and should've won which was really sweet of them.

Last thing about this con is my shopping spree haul, I bought:

A set of metal wire elf ears,

A plaque that says 'I can't adult today, I'm a unicorn',

A Squid Game badge,

A Yanfei acrylic standee,

A Hatsune Miku print,

A Hatsune Miku sticker,

A Hatsune Miku water bottle.

The con really motivated me to get back into cosplay making so I scrapped my project that was too hard and have started a new, easier one of Gloxinia from 7 Deadly Sins.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 26

Hi there! It's Hazel and welcome to an autistic guide to a cafe trial day.

Yes, I did get offered a trial day for a patisserie (which basically functions like a cafe) and my first thought was 'oh no this is not good'. I guess it was my fault expecting to go in, get interviewed, then find out if I was accepted or not.

So I turned up today in the uniform which is all black, no facial piercings (I don't have any), no weird hair colours (even though your hair is covered) and no nail varnish and waltzed into the shop at 2:45 for a trial starting at 3, an hour and a half before closing.

However, It took half an hour before I was able to chat to the boss because customers just kept coming in. I did my best to not look nervous, smile and be chatty and friendly, and I guess it worked.

I was eventually invited, by the other girl working, behind the counter to drop off my bag and get my apron, hair net and hat, for obvious hygiene reasons and then off I went to learn the ropes. Let me say there's a lot to remember. There are multiple box sizes and its learning what food is on and which goes in which box, how to use the till, where you get things from, how to stock things up, how to server a customer, the specific way things are packed down and so much more. My brain is definitely throbbing from information overload but luckily, questions are always welcomed.

I spent most time trailing after Lily, the girl working with me and watching what she did whilst she explained. I also ended up on dish washing duty, which I made sure to put as much effort into because there was no way I was looking like a slacker on my trial.

I did however, begin to learn things and feel more settled in the environment and my pre-existing anxiety began to fade till somehow, it was the end of the day.

I actually, had a lot of fun and loved working there and was even invited back for a second trial on Saturday (the busiest day) and this will be the deciding factor.

I do hope I get the job. Wish me luck! and see you next time.

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 25

Hi there! It's Hazel and finally the university visits have finished. Yay! But, boy do I have one heck of a story to tell you today.

So first to give you some context, me and my dad got into our hotel room at about 3:30pm, before going out at around 6pm for an hour to a Turkish restaurant (it was so nice!). Then we came back and went to bed.

Everything's fine till about 1:30am when a weird noise starts coming from the door to our room. My dad thought I was just stuck in the bathroom, however, quickly realised I was right beside him, so got up to check the door, and low and behold, there was a man trying to get into our room with his key card. My dad tells the man that he's gotten the wrong room and he's just disturbed us and then shut the door. The man stops trying the door and we assume everything's fine and try to go back to sleep.

15 minutes later, we get a knock on the door and it's the security, however, he's not alone and has brought back the man who tried to get in our room without even checking if he's gotten the right room. The man starts making all these claims about how this was his room about how all his stuff was in here, which it wasn't. He then proceeds to call my dad a liar and a thief, which neither was true.

So eventually, the security guard wants to look in the room, my dad complains because I'm in there and I'm 17, autistic and 100% terrified. He does, however, let the security guard in but stands watching the man to make sure he doesn't come into the room. The security guard looks round the room and then spots me on the bed on the verge of a panic attack and quickly turns round to leave the room explain to the man that I was in the room and my dad wasn't lying. The man trying to get in then claims he'll call the police on us, which is quickly followed by my dad getting angry and slamming the door (and I'm not surprised because it was 1:30am).

I then couldn't sleep, I was terrified and on edge, every sound made me think the man was coming back with the police and I was so unbelievably anxious that I ended up playing on my phone for an hour to distract myself and calm myself down.

The police never came and neither did the man come back.

My dad spotted the man at breakfast the next morning, with his stuff which not surprisingly was in his room. The man then claimed to his mate that he was sure they'd switched the rooms around (which they hadn't).

We did file a complaint and got a full refund, which was the only plus to it, but overall it was really scary.

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 24

Hi there! It's Hazel and welcome to another episode of my blog.

So I've been struggling to focus at school these last few weeks, I've always been watching the clock, feeling bored and letting my thoughts drift away to things that are distracting. After getting in contact with my learning mentor, we believe I'm struggling because of burnout because I don't have enough time to relax.

You'll understand why this happened if I show you what my week has looked like for the past couple of weeks:

I sleep anywhere between 9:30-10:30pm till 7am on weekdays and later on weekends.

Monday - School till 3pm, then relax

Tuesday - School till 2pm, then go to counselling, then go to piano lessons

Wednesday - School till 4pm, circus btec from 5-9pm

Thursday - School till 4pm, then relax

Friday - School till 2pm, then drive to the location of the university open day

Saturday - Go to a university open day and come home (normally arrive home around 8-9pm)

Sunday - Relax all day

It's quite full on and I work for an hour solid in each free period and am very strict on myself about not working so I keep constantly going to the point I can't continue.

I'm also growing increasingly over tired, I'm sleeping in more, missing my alarms and having barely any time in the morning to watch the news before cycling to school.

In the end, I think I've over worked myself a bit too much and it's not like I have October half term to relax, I still have piano lessons going on for a recital in November, an assembly on the Holocaust for my Lessons From Auschwitz project and a talk to plan to people about being a neurodiverse child. It's busy...

But I'm hoping I'll at least be able to somewhat recuperate my energy. But definitely not this weekend, I'm doing two university visits this weekend, followed by sixth form assessment week. I really have no time.

But that's it for today! Thanks for reading ! See you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 23 ~ World Mental Health Day

Hi guys! It's Hazel and today it is world mental health day and so I am going to talk about my mental health when picking a university.

So yesterday was visit number 4 and it was one I wasn't sure if it could beat my favourite university I'd visited so far because I loved it so much. It was difficult at first talking to disability support and having a look round the main campus because I was feeling sad. I had been feeling sad since one of my practice exam questions came back really bad the day before, which had a knock on effect on my mood. It wasn't until later on, did I brighten up, however, I had to have a meltdown first for that to happen.

What I mean by meltdown is not a temper tantrum or anything similar. My meltdowns stem from autism and it's when my brain goes into overload about things and each meltdown is different depending on the context of the situation.

This meltdown came through the journalism course talk. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it, until, the lecturer mentioned that those applying had to do an interview. That's where I collapsed. I had decided in my head that it was better to give up because I didn't watch the news, have a favourite journalist, etc. I then became extremely upset and didn't want to be at the university anymore and it didn't help that I got a lecture from my parents too.

At lunch (which was straight after), I refused to eat or drink anything because it made me feel and also because I was sad. I then loaded up BBC News on my phone and began to read on it. It took a lot of time with frustrated parents before I did snap out of it because my parents were talking about my podcast and from there my mood went up.

We went on a tour round the block I was in and I got to play on a greenscreen, look at news rooms and the TV and radio areas and I was wowed by all the fancy technology because that's what I want to do.

After that tour, we went back to the main campus to go looking at accommodation but before that, I went to speak to the stand that was doing languages because I really want to learn Mandarin Chinese and I found I could learn this language for the full 3 years - or 4 if I took a placement - but the years I was not doing this as part of my course, I would have to pay. But I didn't mind.

I also learnt about the students union there too and got some free reusable coffee cups, then headed out to get ice cream.

We then went looking at the accommodation and there were two separate places, the more expensive one was amazing and so well designed with lots of space and I loved it. The less expensive one was very small and the building was definitely in need of refurbishing, but I was not comfortable sharing a toilet with 3 other people, especially if I was in a mixed dorm.

But I thoroughly enjoyed the day, even with the meltdown and now I have to go back to my favourite uni because I can't decide which I like better.

But that's it for today! Thanks for reading and see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 22

Hi! It's Hazel and I'm starting the scary journey of finding the university for me and I went on my very first campus tour, here's how it went.

I went to nameless (due to my personal privacy) university yesterday, as of then it was my first choice of university, as of now, there's another that's also being considered for my firm choice. That is, if I get in.

I was under the guise that we were going for a journalism tour, based off what the website asked you to put in and because we got corrected, that was the start of my autistic meltdown.

I was absolutely terrified for most of the tour and spent more time with my hands in front of my mouth or biting my hoodie sleeve, which might have made me look like a right baby, but I couldn't help it.

The first campus looked amazing and I was so excited to see the journalism newsroom but had my hopes crushed when the building was closed and we could only see the outside.

I did manage to lighten up towards the end but all that fear had ran me out of energy and I was already extremely tired at 1pm.

We then grabbed some lunch and headed to look at the accommodation. We were looking at the ones near the uni because that's the only ones we thought were open. That was until we talked to a lady in one of the accommodations who noticed I was a quiet person and told me the place I wanted to look at was open.

It was about 15 minutes away from the campus and up a huge hill, so much so that I really need to invest in an electric bike now. But no one was there and it was locked, due to a lack of people coming to look round.

Luckily the guy who was watching the halls was there and took me on a tour and if I do choose this uni, I am 100% staying there, it was amazing!

We then went to a second campus to look around. It was an all on campus one, not in the city like the other and I didn't like it as much because I would rather be in the city than permanently on campus. But it was nice to look around.

I was given some tips about how to watch movies in lecture theatres!

But after spending mostly my entire day being scared of the uni students and the campuses being daunting, I was beat, but I enjoyed looking around and it was a mostly good day.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 21 (Summer Camp Edition)

Hi there it's Hazel! I'm finally back after a bit of a too long break because I've been struggling to find things to write about (which is also called being too lazy too) but I actually have something to talk about today! Yay!

So if you haven't seen on some of my earlier posts, I am a youth summer camp leader and 3 weeks ago I led for my first time and this is how it went.

Coming from a northern city in England, it was already difficult because everyone else was from London and were all talking gossip about people at school and would leave me out of everything, telling me I didn't want to know. I felt left out and isolated because I couldn't join in conversations as much because I didn't know who anyone was. This went on for the full four days of pre-camp preparations and it was quite difficult, another thing that happened was someone used the phrase 'you're not Jewish if you don't know...' and this was about a musical called 13 which was about a Bar Mitzvah. I'd never heard of it because I mostly know things that people tell me about or that I've seen come on tour and I wasn't sure how to respond because I didn't know it.

We also had multiple clashes in interests because the interests of all the girls (who I clashed with more) were more mainstream such as watching love island (I hate that show with a passion, it's disgusting), being die hard mamma mia fans (the songs are annoying and the film is awful in my opinion) and this is about everyone, they love pop music (again, I hate pop music and would much rather listen to vocaloid, jpop, electro swing, heavy metal and whatever is on my weird playlist). So because of this we clashed quite badly, especially over our opinions on love island because I'm so opinionated on how much I hate that show and they love it we got into a somewhat argument, so I left the building and went back to my dorm because it was the evening when we could do basically what we wanted.

Now I've gotten that off my chest, I need to say that I loved the group of people I was leading with. Yes we didn't get along interests wise and north, south divide didn't help but they were lovely to lead with and some of them I've come out with friends for life (well if we can keep in contact).

When the kids came it was so daunting, but luckily my friend Ash (who is leading with me) was on the coach with them because they had just had covid and had to isolate before coming, but they were fine.

I can't really remember fully what went on every day but I can tell you that the first meal time was horrible. I had this one kid on my table who begged me for the full half an hour about what we were doing next and I couldn't tell him at all and was panicking about what to say. I grabbed one of the senior leaders and was like "help, I don't know what to do" and he gave me some tips but even then, the kid wouldn't get off my back. He started being like "I hate it when people keep secrets from me, my mum once kept a secret from me and it was so horrible so tell me what we're doing please" (this is not exactly word for word what he said but he did bring his mum into it).

However, dinner was luckily over and I thought I was done with him but whilst we were blocking the entrance to one of the buildings whilst the activity was being set up, he went at me again and I was really struggling and panicking. Ash, who is one of my closest friends and knows me better than any of the other leaders, quickly spotted I was in a bad position and turned to me and said "Hazel, I think you're needed inside" and instantly got me out of that stressful situation. I thanked them for it later because it really saved me from a panic attack.

I only had one major panic attack through the entirety of camp, which is the best I've ever come out of one before. The one I had was because we were running early and had to think of something to do. I was suddenly told in front of all the kids with no prior warning that I was leading an invisible circus session and I found and excuse to leave the room and then I panicked. From there on out, the people running the camp knew they had to pre warn me about anything that was causing major changes and I would have to do things on the spot (even though I already told them that when we talked about my needs on a call prior to camp).

Last extremely negative moment when leading, then I'll get onto the positive sides. The kids were so hard work and one day they had 4 discipline talks and it did nothing. We were getting so annoyed and upset that Tammy had to do a full powerful speech about how upset we all were and I could see she was struggling too. Because of this, she wasn't in the next session she was leading with me (and I do not and will not blame her for it because she was so upset and needed that break). Luckily, Ethan was there to help me out and helped run the session and keep the moral high up for the kids as I was really struggling. At dinner I basically broke and after went to sit in the welfare room, there was another kid in there from another bubble and so I moved a chair just to put more distance between us and it was stuck to a phone lead and the phone clattered to the floor. This kid was very noise sensitive and was so frightened, I apologised so much to them before they got taken out and that was enough to set the tears off. There were leaders from the other camp there who knew me and comforted me (socially distant) because they understood I was having a terrible day.

I was then kicked out the welfare room because kids from the other camp were eating in there and this was for safeguarding reasons and so I got sent to one place to wait for the welfare officer but she was already there with someone else. I was basically a stranded autistic person, mid meltdown, not knowing where to go.

I did get rescued by another set of leaders who make our resources and they sat and talked to me whilst I cried it out. I really wanted to go home then, I hated it so much that day and soon the welfare officer came and I talked it out to her before ringing my parents and telling them about it.

I didn't go home in the end and made it all the way through.

Now for the good moments.

Meetings in the evenings were the funniest moments ever, where we talked about about our day and told funny stories and they never failed to make me laugh and always made my day, plus they were always followed by snacks!

We led some amazing activities where the kids got so into them and joined in with everything so that we all had a blast in the end. Site activities were so fun and I got to do high ropes, crate stacking and climbing and I loved it. Me and Ash went as a pair in crate stacking and I fell off at 6 crates, while they got to 13 and it was supposed to be a pairs challenge. But let me say, I screamed the whole way up the crate stacking.

The last night of camp talent show was hilarious. I got to do my poi in it because I was not comfortable doing what everyone else was doing, which was being randomly assigned acts on the go and you had to go up and improvise. But all the improvisation acts by the leaders were so funny, there was; the freedom sandwich song with a singer and someone with a broken finger on recorder, bohemian rhapsody without the vowels, slam poetry about the clavicle and more and it was so funny and such a great night.

The last night of camp in general was great because I pigged out on ice cream and popcorn and got my face painted as a cat. It was great except me 2 hour shift of watching the quiet sleeping area, which was dead boring but then I got to sleep early.

Finally, I did a talk on autism, at first it was just a half an hour chat session where Ash came to sit and listen and also crowd control in case anyone was silly in it. I only had 3 people turn up and another leader ran a football chat session to try and bring more people to mine (how sweet of them) so I ended up with 5 of them, all of them boys.

I thought they would mess around but they were so mature it was amazing! They asked loads of interesting questions about what it was like to be autistic and I answered them all and I loved this talk so much because I was so happy when it ended because it went so well and all the boys said I was now their favourite leader and it made me so happy.

I then ran this talk again in a session which was an hour where you could move between chats freely, whenever you wanted to. Ash was inspired by my autism talk and wanted to do one on being non-binary however, they didn't want to stop people from coming to mine. I turned round and said it doesn't matter about who comes and who doesn't, you should lead it, don't let me hold you back. And they did it! I was so proud of Ash for leading that talk.

I ended up getting all the boys in my talk, whilst Ash got all the girls (which they all apologised to me about not coming but I said it was fine and that they could come and ask questions at any time). All the boys were mature again and I got to happily chat about being autistic and I loved listening to all the questions they asked and anecdotes about people they knew and it went so well again.

Finally, my last highlight was Ash's 'why don't we talk about periods' session which most of the leaders all assisted on because it was so interesting. All the girls were sharing stories, I shared a story and even lots of boys turned up and one was brave enough to ask where the blood goes which I was so proud of him for asking. Whilst the female participants found that question funny, we were making this boy feel good for asking because we thought it was a mature question to come from a 12 year old boy and happily answered it.

To help desensitise people to some of the words we were using, we had everyone yelling period, menstruation, period blood, etc and it was good fun and I loved it.

And that's all about being autistic as a summer camp leader, will I lead again? Probably not. I considered trying again next year but it clashes with the commonwealth games and whilst there were positives from leading, there were lots of negatives too that were off putting and I'd rather go to the commonwealth games.

I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 20

Hi there! It's Hazel and man has my weekend been long.

I've been on zoom for 8 hours on both Saturday and Sunday and let me tell you it was long.

Why? you may ask about why I tortured myself to be on zoom all day and that's because I was planning a summer camp!

Overall, the weekend was good fun but I'll keep repeating how insanely long it was. We started basic frameworks for lots of activities including: fun activities, educational activities, issue groups (where you learn about gender or mental health, etc) and small group activities where you pick a session to go (such as sport, art or music) and they were all fun to plan.

However, on one of my groups activities which was a chocolate themed murder mystery (I did not suggest this and was quite salty that I wasn't put in the prep for the star wars training camp), we struggled. In planning this session we had to take into account we had 6 leaders and not everyone could be one of the suspects. The rest of the group wanted to do a station rotation which I knew was so impractical for a murder mystery with this little leaders. So after the session finished on the Sunday, I took it upon myself and went rogue and rewrote the entire session to something a bit more practical and easier for the leaders to lead.

In my other groups we were doing accessibility for educational where I suggested I could talk about what it's like to be autistic and the accessibility issues I face and we created a whole bunch of activities to clearly show issues in the world, this involves splitting the group in half, where half of the group we make at a disadvantage to emphasise difficulties.

In mental health we created session on what is mental health? about myths and stigmas there are around mental health, how to spot a mental illness and how to maintain a positive mental health. That was fun to plan as I got to talk about all the things I'm really passionate about.

In sport we are running one circus session (courtesy of myself) because I really wanted to show my skillset and I planned that session alone which my partner was fine with because I knew exactly what I'm doing and then we planned sessions of old school sports and capture the flag mixed with other sports.

Our first deadlines got set and I was stressed but luckily I got all of the sorted out now and ready to go!

So this is what planning a camp is like, hope you like it! See you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 19

Hi there it's Hazel and here's another entry.

So, I had two mini anxiety attacks and a breakdown today. First one was out of embarrassment because a girl in my class had to leave and isolate due to being in contact with someone with covid. The teacher taking her out made a comment about how the class was completely silent and I thought I was being funny by making a joke about it being like a walk of shame. The teacher then said that I was being very supportive and laughed and I tried to laugh it off but I felt so embarrassed and anxious in case I had hurt the other person's feelings.

The other anxiety attack was during a conference I had to watch in school. We were all allowed to bring snacks and so I brought a bag of tortilla chips. However, they rustled a lot when I got them out and my teacher was like 'oh are you one of those people who are really loud in the cinema'. I felt so embarrassed and sunk into my chair and wished I'd disappear. I always feel like that teacher tries to find something she could embarrass me on.

The breakdown was in music. We were doing a checklist for examination purposes and I was getting confused over box meanings and still didn't under stand when my teacher tried to explain it. I then got really sad and frustrated because I didn't get it and I thought I would lose marks on my coursework too. I felt really depressive, like I'd annoyed everyone and that I hated that I was autistic and some other deeper things that I won't touch on.

However, I did go to my first counselling session today and they're now going to match me up with a counsellor but my sessions won't start till September due to me being away all summer.

But that's today in a nutshell, see you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 18

Hi there! It's Hazel and I went stilt walking yesterday!

I could already stilt walk confidently before I did this session, however, I was scared of falling. Falling is an extremely integral part of stilt walking, if you can't fall properly or can control your fall, you could hurt yourself or somebody else badly.

I have had a few bad experiences with falling before which made me scared of it. First one is where I got whiplash due to weak back and I was scared of doing it again. The second was that during a performance, my circus teacher (whom I was performing with in a duo act with him on stilts and me doing poi) fell badly and broke both his wrists.

Because of this fear of falling, I was demoted to the half metre stilts and I felt so ashamed and embarrassed because my fear of falling made me look like I couldn't stilt walk, even though I could walk fine on the 1 metre stilts.

Luckily the guy who ran it was very friendly and helped me work up my confidence to practice falling and slowly, I became more confident. By close to the end of the session, I got onto the 1 metre stilts and was walking fine on them and I even managed to do one fall, which was a big step I had overcome yesterday. It felt great that I started to beat a fear and makes me excited to do a walk about some day in the future.

Thanks for reading! See you next time!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 17

Welcome to Hazel being 1000% forgetful and totally forgetting to update this blog.

Well anyways, mock week has just finished and let me get this straight, it sucked. I had 5 exams across the course of the week, due to them having to be split over lesson time because covid... At least I had 5 and not like my friend who had 10.

I had 2 days off last week for study leave and it was so hard because I struggle to work at home and all I wanted to do was go to my school library and hide in the corner and work but nope, wasn't allowed.

Luckily, I think I did pretty decently, I came out of my exams more positively and somehow, miraculously did not get ill from over stressing, yay! I mean I did have my parents being absolute idiots whilst trying to keep me positive.

Also, for a show I'm performing in a few weeks, I finally have an act! I've had so much trouble making it and never finding something that I liked and now I have a whole 2 minute routine and I actually like it, so that's good.

But that's it really, I have an act, mocks suck and they're making us wait a whole 2 weeks for the results so they can do a 'results day'. Well that's one way to keep everyone stressed.

But thanks for reading my ramble, bye!!!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 16

Hi it's Hazel and welcome to another update.

Yesterday was hard, and by that I mean really hard, I had 3 breakdowns at school in a day.

The first one was because of stress for my mock exams and feeling like I would be able to remember everything and therefore fail. My teacher took me outside and gave me a pep talk (which was really helpful) and told me I worked harder than anyone else in the class and that she wasn't worried about me at all, which helped my confidence.

My second one was when my teacher was asking us to pull out quotes from the front side of an extract (I'm a literature student) and someone said a line with the word 'torment' in it. I hadn't noticed the line on the first page and flipped to the back and my teacher said we continued on that page, so I put my hand up for back page quotes. However, I was in the wrong place and embarrassed myself in front of everyone and I had a breakdown and went quiet for the rest of class.

My third one started as a joke, there was a ringing of a bike bell and someone went to me, 'oh I think someone stole your bike'. I then got extremely paranoid because I don't lock my bike up as a struggle because of tiny staples (I managed to find an easier way today). Then they were like 'well get a better bike lock' and wouldn't understand my situation and then the teacher joined in and started commenting about my personal choice to not cycle in a helmet, leading the entire class to start commenting on it. I felt so sad and embarrassed that I wanted to pack up my stuff and leave there and then but luckily I suffered through the lesson.

Today has been much better but I'm not sure if I want to face my English Language class again tomorrow because of what happened.

Bye for now!

[aerial-aspie]

An Autistic Point of View 15

Hi there! It's Hazel and today is Miku Expo 2021 Online!

I have been waiting for today for the best part of a year and it's finally here. If you haven't realised, I love Hatsune Miku and because of corona they are doing an online expo and of course I couldn't miss it.

They were doing it 3 times so everyone could watch and I debated whether or not to pull an all nighter because I'm obsessed. Luckily, I chose not to but still woke up very early.

Waiting for the concert took ages because I was so excited and there was a bunch of DJ's just before and I love watching Utsu-p DJ, his remixes are amazing! Pinocchio-p couldn't make it so they just posted a bunch of his remixes instead.

I voice chatted with my friends for the entirety of the concert and it was so fun, I was screaming so much during Burakku Jikorizer and Ungray Days and then singing along to A Thousand Little Voices and Highlight and it was so fun. There were so many songs I didn't know, which for an expo normally doesn't happen as there's only 2-3 out of 22 songs I don't know but there were so many more I didn't know or had only heard once or twice.

The new models looked amazing, I was a bit sceptical at first but they looked amazing and they finally gave some love to the Kagamine's V4X outfits which never happens as they are always in their V2 outfits. I loved the specially made designs for A Thousand Little Voices, Lucky Orb and Highlight but I'm still upset that my friend's design didn't win the competition for one of the outfits. Because she didn't win, yesterday I decided to surprise her with a drawing of it.

They did change the dances to all of the songs that have been performed before except Lucky Orb which me and my friends complained about but it didn't matter really because the quality of the expo was amazing. I kept getting distracted by all the special effects or even how floaty they had animated Luka and Meiko's skirts.

Of course I must mention the band, they were phenomenal as always and make the songs sound so amazing and as if you were really in the stadium.

But now I have to go because the expo doesn't finish till 5pm and there's 2 DJ's and another showing of the concert still to go and I don't want to miss it.

See you next time!