adult autistic students

Hi, Sorry this post did not seem to go up at the time that I wrote it. I just now realized that there was no post here..lol. But anyways, the original post was regarding the occurrence of seeing adult autistic students in the writing center. Though not extremely common, it does happen, on occasion that you may be assigned a student who falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. My most recent experience has occurred just this year. When I was first told that I would be working with an adult autistic student, to be honest, my reaction was one of "where is this session going to go?"... (In terms of my analyzing of what could be coming up next). And in essence, since not all autism cases are alike, a consultant really does not know what is ahead for them when they are told that they will be tutoring an autism student. One thing I had to check myself on was my mental process of visualizing a tough case before it ever happened. I think it was the word "autism" that caused me to jump to this visualization. I automatically pictured a difficult appointment. To my great revelation, I now know that I was silly to do this, because this appointment was probably one of the best ones I have ever had. Let me explain. This student seems to use his autism almost as if it were a gift. Rather than giving in to his frustrations, which happens in students with autism (heavy emphasis on routine and a dissuasion of breaking it) he was able to catch and check himself. Also, (and again, every autism case is unique to the person) he was indeed demonstrating very clear thinking, and he is very passionate about the subject that he was writing about at the time, which made for an excellent paper. In summation, I would recommend, don't let the word "autism" throw you, and cause you to have a (albeit, perhaps subtle) impression in the back of your mind which exists only because you heard the word "autism" before the appointment began. In this scenario, the old adage defiantly rings true: one cannot judge a book by its cover, or shall we say, its medical diagnosis/label. Perhaps these students, in some way, are actually here to teach us....