Part Three: Talking with Dr. Temple Grandin, Author of "Animals in Translation"

I remember reading that one of them men you worked with came and tossed a deodorant to you.

That's right. HBO is making a movie about me, starring Clare Danes, and that scene is going to be in the movie.

So, if it's not a secret, can you talk about it a little?

No, it's not a secret. One of the things I had to learn was not to be such a dirty slob. and I had to have people get pretty blunt with me to get me to change my ways. And I was real angry at the time when they did that, but then I changed my ways. Because I wanted the job.

And therefore you opened doors for yourself.

That's right.

So, that's a good segue to what I wanted to talk about now. What special challenges do high-functioning autistic students face in getting into college, taking college courses and getting jobs in the outside world?

Well, one of the biggest challenges is uneven skills; you can be good at one thing, and bad at another. For example, I can't do algebra. Algebra was impossible. I'm finding a lot of students that absolutely can't do algebra but they can do geometry just fine. They need to be able to take geometry. For them, algebra is not the prerequisite for geometry. Some of the kids who are brilliant at math, reading is hard. So, what some of them may need to do is maybe take a reduced load, take a little longer to get through college.

The other problem is bad test results. Lots of times you had to get in through the back door and the way I got into my undergraduate college is my mother went and talked to the dean and he let me in on probation. And I got good grades. How did I get through college math? Well, thank goodness, in the "60s, it was not algebra. The regular college math class in the late "60s was finite math. It was probability, statistics and matrices. It was a little less abstract. And with tutoring, I was able to do it.

Thank goodness.

Yes, thank goodness is right.

But who is there in high schools, and colleges, and college admissions advocate for autistic students?

Sometimes it's a mentor teacher, sometimes it's a parent, sometimes it's a guidance counselor. I had quite a few teachers who were willing to help me when I was in college. Mr. Dionne, the math teacher, I went into his office after nearly every lecture, and he'd tutor me.That was very nice of him to do that - and getting good teachers to take an interest in a student - and I had a number of good teachers.

The other thing is that good teachers get attracted to ability. And they could see the things where I did have ability. And when I was going out and starting my freelance livestock handling equipment business people thought it was really weird. But when I showed them one of my drawings they said "oh wow, you did that?" Then they had respect for me when they saw the drawings. One of the things I had to learn was that I had to sell my work rather than my personality.

That makes perfect sense. In many ways, you live the dream life. You split your time between your two loves - working with the meat processing industry to keep them on target with humane treatment of their livestock and traveling around the country and the world talking with groups about autism. What happens at the sessions regarding autism? Are they support groups? Informational for nonautistic?

They're usually austism conferences. And most of the audience is usually a mixture of parents and teachers, speech therapists and guidance counselors. and a mixture of parents and educators. And a lot of things that I'm telling you right now has come right out of my autism talk.

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