I spent five years studying computer science at a public university of applied sciences in Vienna. I understood the material, and I actually liked most of it. But my brain works differently, and the university never figured out what to do with that. So every time something went wrong, the answer was simple: it was my fault.
One thing should be clear from the start. This is not about capability or background or effort. It is autism and ADHD meeting a system that gave me no support and no scaffolds, navigated alone in a country that refuses to accommodate them, with no peer community and nobody who understands. That is what produces this outcome.
What exams are actually like with ASD
I can understand a concept completely, deeply even. But when I sit down in an exam and read a question, my brain connects it to something slightly different from what the professor meant. It makes total sense to me. I write my answer, I hand it in, and it comes back wrong.
It happened because I read the question and my brain took it somewhere else. That is what ASD does. It is a different interpretation that feels just as valid in the moment.
This happened constantly. I'd prepare for weeks. Go into the exam feeling solid. Then one weird phrasing and everything falls apart. Afterward I'd try to explain what happened. That I misunderstood the question, that it's connected to how my brain processes language. Nobody wanted to hear it. You got it wrong. Next.
The programming project
This one still gets to me. There was a programming project where you had three attempts to pass. During COVID, they relaxed the rules. If you failed the first attempt, you could keep working on the same project for the second. Made sense. I did that. Same project, first try into second try.
Then came the third try. I figured the same rules still applied. Why wouldn't they? Nobody said anything different. So I kept working on my project. Then one day, completely by chance, I asked the professor a question about my code. And he just casually mentioned that the third attempt requires a completely new project.
Nobody told me. There was no email, no announcement, no update on the course page. I found out by accident, eight days before the deadline.
Everyone else had two months. I had eight days to build something from scratch. I failed.
Fighting for help every single time
There was no system in place, no standard accommodations for neurodivergent students. Every single time I needed something, I had to start from zero: explain my diagnosis, show the paperwork, remind them that I exist, convince someone that yes, this is real, and yes, I still need help.
By the time anyone did anything, it was already too late. You don't get help before you fail. You fail first, then you try to get help, and then they tell you they can't do anything retroactively. So what's the point?
And when miscommunication happened, when I understood an instruction differently because that is literally how ASD works, there was zero willingness to consider that maybe the instruction wasn't clear enough. The response was always that I should have known, that I should have asked. Every single time, the entire weight of the miscommunication landed on me.
Funny how COVID changed everything overnight
When COVID hit, the university suddenly understood that people struggle under difficult circumstances. They adjusted deadlines, changed exam formats, and let students continue projects across attempts. Everyone got patience and flexibility because everyone agreed the situation was hard.
But ASD and ADHD don't go away after a few months. They make every semester feel like what COVID felt like for everyone else, and for that there were no adjustments and no flexibility. COVID was temporary and the entire world bent over backwards for it. My brain is permanent and nobody bends at all.
The "education quality" excuse
Whenever I pushed back on something, whenever I said this isn't fair, the response was always about standards. We can't give you special treatment. We have to maintain education quality. If we make exceptions, it lowers the bar for everyone.
The rules changed without anyone telling me. I got eight days while everyone else got two months. I had a documented condition that the university had on file. Miscommunication that could be directly explained by my diagnosis was treated as carelessness. And their concern was never fairness, or whether their system actually works for everyone. It was whether it looks rigorous on paper.
After five years I was done. I never stopped understanding the material. I was done because every path led to the same place: I was blamed, told to try again, given no help, and I failed again. There was nothing left to try that I hadn't already tried.