Does this sound like a person with aspergers.

[Jordy]

A college professor of mine commited suicide during the covid pandemic. I found a memorial page on the college website and this is basically how he is characterized.

A typical example of "still waters that run deep"
Very introverted
Passionate about knowledge
Quiet and self-reserved
Difficult to get close with
Talented at programming and very abstract thinking.
Always wore dark clothes
Stayed in the background
Every ones in a while when he sought contact with his colleagues, he would ask the entire team to go out for lunch by email, it stood out as being very awkward and he clearly didn't know how to go about it.
He was very talented and competent but didn't know how to present himself to business folks and casual people.
His awkwardness and poor communication resulted in him being very poor at planning and organizing meetups with colleagues.

Of course some of these would also fit people who are highly gifted, sensitive, introverted and shy etc but not necessarily autistic. But to me he does seem to fit the stereotype of the gifted nerd with Aspergers very well.

 

[Slime_Punk]

That's pretty much how I'm described by everyone I know. Sounds entirely possible to me, and I kind of assume the 'stereotypical nerd' type is associated with HFA a good portion of the time, especially if social difficulties are thrown into the mix.

 

[Jordy]

I think he got a very large portion of his contact with people from university and college. When the pandemic came around and the universities went online he lost this, and he may have realized that a lot of the people he liked talking with didn't have much interest in him outside of the universities context, circumstantial friends essentially.

 

[330]

Yes

 

[Raggamuffin]

Could be, I suppose we'll never truly know. Suicide would indicate depression, which could have been a co-morbidity of some form of neurodiversity. It sounds quite likely though.

Ed

 

[SusanLR]

Sounds like it to me.
Interestingly, one of the things it mentions is wearing dark clothing.
I've noticed that with my own closet and the colours other Asperger's I know wear.
If you opened my closet, you would see almost all dark colours, especially shades of blue.

A sidenote... I remember once on Criminal Minds, it was said introverts and loners
like muted and dark colours. They usually try to keep things real on that series.

 

[330]

Only Black and Grey in my closet

 

[Raggamuffin]

I used to only wear dark or muted colours. I've started being more expressive with what I buy, but part of me feels like it's a bit too showboaty, and it makes me feel uncomfortable at times.

Ed

 

[Aspychata]

Sorry to hear this about your college professor. Wish that he had some type of outlet to get support. We really do need to help those that come to this forum seeking answers about their life.

 

[AprilR]

This reminds me of one of my uncles who was a college Professor.
It's sad that he commited suicide, probably had little to no help with his problems.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Just shows how blurry the difference between being on the spectrum is versus not being on the spectrum is think of quantum mechanics at the macro scale.

He sounds like a number of professors in the sciences, most notably Paul Dirac. limit to being alone not interfacing. with others, Ludwig Boltzmann committed suicide, so this behavior is not unprecedented.

 

[Jordy]

What bothers me is that reading through the article that was written about him and seeing how he is characterized by his environment, i feel like i could understand why he didn't enjoy life and might even want to end it. Feels like people who are born with that type of personality are born to be unhappy in life. Being an overly sensitive quiet person is not fun, being regarded by your environment is an oddball (even a gifted oddball) is not fun.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

One of my closest friends, worked at a university before he passed away the politics is brutal all he did was pass out and maintain the lab equipment in the physics lab. the brighter they are the worse it gets. He had some disabilities. not sure why he passed stroke, heart? he kept our friendship quiet; his family and coworkers did not know my number. Along with the disabilities I think he was one of us. He was a genius at fixing equipment, so the environment could have been a contributing factor.

 

[GypsyMoth]

One of the reasons I hope to work in academia someday. Not being obtuse here, folks there are fairly accepting of odd speech patterns, long pauses, and not making eye contact when speaking. I feel very comfortable among those who were my professors and the professionals I have since met. It's like we don't have to do a lot of background chit-chat to talk about what's important to us.

Maybe it was like that for him. Sure, there's office politics but established professors have networks of people they never/rarely see with whom they communicate somewhat regularly. (Academia is a small world.) But the matter discussed is most usually their studies, so there's not a lot in the way of personal affirmation.

I'm sorry to hear about your professor friend. Probably--like someone else just said--when Covid hit he realized he didn't have a lot of genuine friends to reach out to. It could also be that he had been dealing with depression and without his work and daily activities to engross him, the depression did.


(About the clothing choices, due to criticisms received at my last job I have lightened my clothing choices considerably to fit in better. But when I finally do teach, it's back to dark colors again. They just feel better somehow.)

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

One of the reasons I hope to work in academia someday. Not being obtuse here, folks there are fairly accepting of odd speech patterns, long pauses, and not making eye contact when speaking. I feel very comfortable among those who were my professors and the professionals I have since met. It's like we don't have to do a lot of background chit-chat to talk about what's important to us.

Maybe it was like that for him. Sure, there's office politics but established professors have networks of people they never/rarely see with whom they communicate somewhat regularly. (Academia is a small world.) But the matter discussed is most usually their studies, so there's not a lot in the way of personal affirmation.

I'm sorry to hear about your professor friend. Probably--like someone else just said--when Covid hit he realized he didn't have a lot of genuine friends to reach out to. It could also be that he had been dealing with depression and without his work and daily activities to engross him, the depression did.


(About the clothing choices, due to criticisms received at my last job I have lightened my clothing choices considerably to fit in better. But when I finally do teach, it's back to dark colors again. They just feel better somehow.)

I worked at a testing lab years ago, a lot of PhDs, one always came to work with military fatigue pants camouflage
pattern. just another eccentric.