u/seuautistadepartamen

I was already feeling a bit depressed about a master’s program that’s turning out to be quite disappointing, and now the election results have left me even more depressed and paralyzed; it’s also as if all the paths that have led me this far have collapsed all at once. Not only do I see that the career I’ve chosen is turning out to be quite disappointing (due to factors beyond the career itself), but I also see that it will come under attack in the coming years, and that, overall, the future isn’t looking very good here.

Besides that, I can’t help but feel a bit lonely, inadequate, and frustrated. Not that I didn’t feel that way before, but I feel like everyone and everything around me is becoming more extreme and polarized. To be honest, I’ve always been haunted by the feeling of being unlucky—my financial situation (or my family’s) is good (I won’t have to worry about buying a place to live, and I’ll most likely even inherit a small income), and I’m supposedly intelligent, but at the same time, I’m bald (in my early 20s), autistic, ugly, deeply awkward, perhaps slightly repulsive, and I stutter a bit. I don’t have many friends. For a long time, I believed the solution was a kind of determined intellectual self-improvement as a way to overcome my “shortcomings.” Nowadays, as all my horizons crumble and I still feel as if I’m watching everything from the outside, it seems I was naive and like I wasted my life, or much of it.

Hello! I am curious if any of you has ever used this book (or any similar books focused on getting you to read in German) along with courses focused on communicating and having communication (that is, being able to write and speak with/to others in German) as one of your goals while learning German. I am thinking about using it because I want to start reading more complex things in German (including academic articles and books), but I wonder if, being at the beginning of B1, this could be useful to me — and I wonder that if it can indeed be useful to me, what strategies should I follow while using this kind of method/book. I am curious to hear about your thoughts and/or experiences!

Hello! I am curious if any of you has ever used this book (or any similar books focused on getting you to read in German) along with courses focused on communicating and having communication (that is, being able to write and speak with/to others in German) as one of your goals while learning German. I am thinking about using it because I want to start reading more complex things in German (including academic articles and books), but I wonder if, being at the beginning of B1, this could be useful to me — and I wonder that if it can indeed be useful to me, what strategies should I follow while using this kind of method/book. I am curious to hear about your thoughts and/or experiences!

I am wondering. I am just beginning a masters in social sciences — and I am particularly interested in theory and in the critical theory (especially Frankfurt) — and I feel like I am such a slow reader. I feel like I can read 10-15 pages of Weber, Bourdieu or Marx, and that I might be even slower reading Adorno, Habermas and Horkheimer. I wonder if that is normal or if any of you ever had this issue/dilema. I should note that I think I am a decent reader — my professors often compliment me for my density — but again, I feel like I am painfully slow at times.

I have autism and I’m 24 years old. Ever since I was little, I think I’ve had a bit of a hyperfocus—or a special interest—in other places, cultures, and languages. It also didn’t help that, in addition to the awkwardness of autism, when I was little (and even into my teens), I had a speech impediment, which made everyone perceive me as a foreigner (and refuse to accept that I was Brazilian).

Ever since then, I’ve wanted to live abroad—maybe out of sheer curiosity, after spending my whole life fascinated by others; maybe because I’d finally be a foreigner in a foreign land, rather than a foreigner in my own country. I’ve never had the chance to travel abroad, even though I could afford it (in theory) and speak other languages, but I feel that during graduate school, the opportunity might arise. So I’d love to hear about your experiences! (Edit: I think the question was too open-ended. I would basically like to know about integration, making friends, differences with being at home, and so on.)

Eu tenho autismo e 24 anos e desde pequeno, acho que tenho um pouco hiperfoco/interesse especial em outros lugares geográficos, culturas e línguas. Também não ajudou que além da awkwardness do autismo, quando pequeno (e até a adolescência), eu tinha um problema de fala, que fazia que todo mundo me lesse como estrangeiro (e não aceitasse que eu fosse brasileiro).

Desde então, eu desejo morar fora; talvez por curiosidade mesmo, após passar uma vida toda fascinado pelos outros; talvez porque finalmente eu seria um estrangeiro em terra estrangeira, em vez de um estrangeiro em meu próprio país. Eu nunca tive a oportunidade de viajar para fora, apesar de ter condições (em teoria) e falar outras línguas, mas sinto que na pós-graduação, a oportunidade pode surgir. Gostaria então de ouvir as experiências de vocês!