My Life with Autism

by Meaghan Amarillas, Student at CLE Monterey

My life with autism has been an interesting and challenging life, but I never imagined that I would be advocating for people and kids in the autism community.

It first started when I was in 8th grade. I was not properly diagnosed until I was 14 years old, and I felt like I needed to tell my classmates about why I acted and learned differently than they did. So I wrote a letter explaining my autism and I decided to read it out loud in front of my class, along with my teacher and school principal. When I first went up, I was a little nervous because I don’t always like talking in front of people, but I got over it fast. All I needed to do was read from my letter, and I did. When I was done, I got an applause. That was my first time telling my personal story of autism, and I thought as I got into high school, I could tell more about the autism community.

It was my junior year of high school, and I needed to find something to do for my senior community service project. About halfway through my junior year, I made the decision to go back to my middle school, and teach the 8th grade class about autism and other learning disabilities that many children have.

During the first half of my senior year, I went to teach the class on six different Fridays. I managed to do a whole lesson on autism, which the students really got into. I showed them how to see the world as a student with autism.

When I started college, I took a break from advocating for the autism community. My mom, who works at the University of San Francisco as a professor to help teachers become better teachers, asked me to talk to her students and to answer questions on how to work better with a child or young teenager with autism, and how to accommodate to their needs.

Because I did such a great job at the university, I got asked by one of the teachers who was a student in the class to talk to the staff and faculty at her school about my autism and how it works, along with different techniques that helped me have a successful educational career. The teachers, along with the principal, found it really helpful and informative.

I got to go back to USF to talk to a new class of teachers who my mom was instructing, and talked about how to work with students on the autism spectrum, and answering any questions that teachers had.

When I moved down to Monterey to go to CLE, they discovered how good I was talking about CLE and its supports, along with me talking to different people about my autism and talking about different types of autism. They were happy to see a student who was so good at talking about the challenges of having autism. One place I talked about how CLE works was at the Autism Speaks Walk, right in my hometown in the Bay Area.

In the fall of 2013, I got a call from my mom asking me to come home for a weekend for a special meeting for the school diocese. The superintendent of the diocese was an old principal of mine. I gave a small speech to the principals, teachers, and special education teachers about being a college student with autism, and showed them that it can happen for any student with autism.

Just this past January, I got to join two other students from CLE for a student panel to talk to educators, parents, students with autism, and other program directors about my experiences at CLE, and how its services have helped me become a strong, independent young woman. It included talking about how I graduated from community college and got my AA degree in Social Science with honors, and how I transferred into California State University at Monterey Bay. I also talked about how I learned to use the bus, clean and live in an apartment with a roommate, cook on my own, manage a budget, and how the tutoring helped me become a better student, organizing and doing the work on my own.